As it turns out, Illinois House Democrats didn't need Republicans to put 30 votes on a significant pension-reform bill.

There's been worry for at least two years that the Democrats would have to rely heavily on Republicans to get anything out of the chamber and that maybe even 30 Republican votes - half the required 60-vote majority - wouldn't be enough to pass a pension-reform bill.

But 41 House Democrats voted for a bill this month that severely whacked retirees' annual cost-of-living increases. Just 25 Republicans voted for the bill - five votes fewer than they've repeatedly said they had for a significant pension-reform proposal.

The measure would cap annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) at $750 or 3 percent, whichever is less. That change has the impact of limiting COLAs to only the first $25,000 of annual pension income. Anyone who makes less than $25,000 would continue to receive compounded increases until the cap is hit.

The proposal also forces retirees to wait until they either are 67 years old or have been retired at least five years to receive their annual COLAs.

This past weekend, we brought our daughter to Davenport's Putnam Museum and did the full tour. We saw Flight of the Butterflies 3D on the Giant Screen, walked through the new Bodies Revealed show, and saw all the cultural-, regional-, and natural-history displays that visitors have known for decades, from the mummies to the Asian artifacts to Bix's cornet.

But what kept Emily's attention was the Spark Learning Lab, a modest career-themed room with the goal of preventing high-school drop-outs.

Our daughter is five and in no danger yet of dropping out of any school - or pursuing any career beyond princess-ing. And the Spark Learning Lab is geared toward fifth- and sixth-graders. But she loved the lab's drawing program with the dual touch screens (one on the computer and one where the picture was being projected), the construction-plank set (which she's playing with on this issue's cover), and the feature that allows visitors to build tube structures and - with the help of a blower - either launch table-tennis balls or keep them aloft.

One station in the room lets visitors connect batteries to simple electrical devices, and another shows how structures they build with Lincoln Logs or those aforementioned planks might fare in an earthquake. The "concentration station" fosters communications skills, as one person describes a block structure and a partner tries to build its twin using verbal instructions alone.

If you want to see where the Putnam is headed, you can look at the conceptual drawings - posted in several locations - of its planned STEM learning center. The $1.5-million project is currently in the fundraising phase, and the museum expects to open it in June 2014. Putnam President and CEO Kim Findlay said adding the STEM center to the Putnam now is "the right time and the right thing for the community and the museum."

But you'll get a hands-on sense of the Putnam's direction in the Spark Learning Lab. Larger-scale hints are available in the interactive components of the current Destination: Space exhibit, with its compressed-air tennis-ball launcher, and a bicycle wheel and rotating platform demonstrating angular momentum.

Implicitly and explicitly, all of these draw a line from playful exploration to science to careers, and that's what the STEM center will do on a much grander level. It's an attempt to transform the nearly-century-and-a-half-old Putnam from "nice to necessary," to use a phrase that's common in the museum field these days.

With American drug-use levels essentially the same as - and levels of drug-related violence either the same as or lower than - those in countries such as the Netherlands with liberal drug laws, public support for the War on Drugs appears to be faltering. This was most recently evidenced in the victory of major drug-decriminalization initiatives in Colorado and Washington. Some misguided commentators go so far as to say the Drug War is "a failure." Here, to set the record straight, are 17 ways in which it is a resounding success.

1) It has surrounded the Fourth Amendment's "search and seizure" restrictions, and similar provisions in state constitutions, with so many "good faith," "reasonable suspicion," and "reasonable expectation of privacy" loopholes as to turn them into toilet paper for all intents and purposes.

2) In so doing, it has set precedents that can be applied to a wide range of other missions, such as the War on Terror.

3) It has turned drug stores and banks into arms of the state that constantly inform on their customers.

House Speaker Michael Madigan was hoping on March 7 to avoid the same results as the previous week.

Back then, one of his pension-reform proposals received just one vote - his own. None of his other pension amendments received more than five votes.

That wasn't supposed to happen. Members of his leadership team thought some of those amendments would get at least a few dozen votes. Oops.

Making matters worse, the House Republicans refused to even participate in the process, with not a single member voting up, down, or "present" on Madigan's amendments.

Asked about the GOP refusal to vote, Madigan on last Wednesday's Illinois Lawmakers television program said he believed the Republicans had made a "mistake."

"They're elected," Madigan told host Jak Tichenor. "And their electors tell them to come here and vote. They don't tell them to come here and not participate."