During the House floor debate over the National Rifle Association-backed concealed-carry bill last week, I was told by an intimate of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan that the speaker wanted to make sure the bill received no more than 64 votes. Because the bill preempts local-government home-rule powers, the bill required a three-fifths majority of 71 votes to pass.

The anti-gun forces had been demoralized the day before when their highly restrictive concealed-carry proposal received just 31 votes, so Madigan wanted to do the same to the NRA, I was told. The idea, the source said, was to show both sides that they couldn't pass their bills on their own and that they needed to get themselves to the bargaining table and work something out.

I've always believed that just because somebody claims to be a reformer, it doesn't mean the person has the right solutions.

Many years ago, an activist named Pat Quinn came up with an idea to change the Illinois Constitution. He used the petition process to get rid of a third of Illinois House members in one fell swoop. This, Quinn said, would save money and make legislators more responsive to their constituents.

In reality, all that did was allow a guy named Michael Madigan to more easily consolidate his power. And one way he consolidated that power was by spending lots more money. Quinn's plan backfired.

But even though this sort of thing has happened over and over again here, the media tends to give reformers a pass, almost no matter what.

So I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised when I read the major media's news reports of last week's Senate Executive Committee hearing. It wasn't at all like the meeting I attended.

Admittedly, I arrived a little late and had to leave for a meeting before it was over, but from what I saw, Illinois Gaming Board Chair Aaron Jaffe's years-old criticism of the General Assembly's gaming-expansion bills was exposed as hollow and not entirely fact-based. He badly stumbled through his testimony, couldn't directly answer questions, and - despite long-standing public criticisms, a notebook filled with thoughts, and a history as a state legislator himself - seemed woefully unprepared for the hearing.

The 10th anniversary of the start of America's illegal and aggressive war against Iraq should not pass without recalling that the mainstream news media eagerly participated in the Bush administration's dishonest campaign for public support. It is no exaggeration to say that most news operations were little more than extensions of the White House Office of Communications. Abandoning even the pretense of an adversarial relationship with the government, the media became shameful conduits for unsubstantiated and outright false information about Saddam Hussein's alleged threat to the American people. Included among the falsehoods were reports that Saddam had a hand in the 9/11 attacks, had trained al-Qaeda fighters, and had attempted to obtain uranium ore and aluminum tubes for nuclear bombs.

Put bluntly, the disastrous invasion of Iraq - which was sold on the basis of lies told by President George W. Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice, and others - might not have happened without the enthusiastic help of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and others. The blood of more than a hundred thousand - perhaps more than a million - Iraqis and 4,500 Americans is on their hands, too.

A recent meeting between Metro East legislators and Governor Pat Quinn's staff turned heated at times, and as a result nothing was accomplished in the standoff over Quinn's appointments to the Southern Illinois University Board of Trustees.

The governor's three appointments to SIU's board were unanimously rejected by the Senate in late February - the first time anybody I've talked to can remember anything like that happening. But the governor has doubled down instead of compromising.

Quinn replaced three members with close ties to the university's Edwardsville campus, which is near St. Louis. For years, governors followed a "gentleman's agreement" that gave the Edwardsville campus three of the governor's seven nominated members. That agreement has coincided with explosive growth at the formerly backwater campus, so locals are loath to go back to the old days of being treated as the redheaded stepchild of the Carbondale campus. Just one of Quinn's new appointments had connections to Metro East, a complete unknown who applied for the trustee post on the Internet.