Transcripts from the Blagojevich trial showed that the former Gov. thought he could make history  by appointing an African American woman to the U.S. Senate. In fact, he said: 

“You know, appointing the first African American woman U.S. senator is historic.”

He went through a list of possibilities that even included Oprah.

Unfortunately, Blagojevich’s command of basic facts is a little, um, off. In fact, Carol Moseley Braun was the first (and only) African American woman to be U.S. Senator. Later ran for president in 2004. She’s from Illinois. You’d think an Illinois politician would know that like the back of his hand.

Well, except for maybe a narcissistic-sociopathic one.

Yesterday was the deadline to file an objection to the candidacy filings for independents or new parties. As expected there, there were a flurry of objections to all candidates for statewide offices with one exception: The Constitution Party’s Randy Stufflebeam, who filed for U.S. Senate.  Stufflebeam along with the the CP’s other statewide candidates made a single filing that included 34,000 signatures. However, while the other CP candidates were challenged, Stufflebeam was not.  If all the candidates were printed on the same petition, shouldn’t it stand to reason that they should all be challenged?

Strangely, Stufflebeam is not yet crowing about getting onto the ballot on his Web site, and no major news media outlets that I could find are reporting on his apparent ballot access success just yet.

If in fact Stufflebeam was not challenged, he will become the fourth Senate candidate on the ballot and would represent a more conservative alternative to the fairly moderate Republican Mark Kirk.

On Monday, the petition filing period opened for new party and independent candidates, and as expected we have a bunch of new candidates in various statewide races. However, most of the new candidates are in fact the same person.

Christopher Pedersen, of Joliet, filed as an Independent Conservative for Governor and Lt. Governor – twice. He also filed twice for both United States Senator and 86th State Rep., and once each for Secretary of State and 43rd Senate. Pedersen is entitled to make the filings — a sort of electoral ”junk shot” – however, he will eventually need to withdraw from all but one of the races.  Regardless, I’d put his chances of staying on the ballot for any race somewhere around zero.

Willie “Will” Boyd, Jr. of Greenville also filed an Independent for U.S. Senate.

Follow the action here.

UPDATE: Pedersen has now filed a third time for U.S. Senate.

The Senate and House both voted to override Gov. Pat Quinn’s amendatory veto of S.B.28, the McCormick Place reforms. The House is now adjourning, possibly until next Fall.

Industry groups had threatened to move their trade shows to other cities if the bill did not pass. Quinn, apparently attempting to appease some labor groups, dragged his feet on signing the bill before issuing an amendatory veto.

If you thought Cullerton was really anxious to put some restrictions on those legislative scholarships he gets to hand out, check out this tale of two vetoes.

Cullerton on potential McCormick Place veto:

“I can’t imagine the governor not signing it. If for some reason he got confused and vetoed the bill, we would quickly go back to Springfield and override his veto and make it the law of the land,” said Sen. John Cullerton, Illinois Senate president.

And what about the legislative scholarship veto?

Cullerton will discuss Quinn’s veto with lawmakers closer to the fall veto session, Phelon said.

What’s wrong with next week?

The anticipation is over. The Illinois General Assembly will be back in session next week. The House meets 4 p.m. on Monday, the Senate at 4 p.m. on Wednesday. Committee meetings are scheduled in the House earlier that day.

Curiously enough, on the calendar in the Elections & Campaign Reform committee is House Floor Amendment No. 4 to S.B. 2168, which could, of all things, expand the State Central Committees for established political parties organized under Alternative B.

Currently, under Alternative B, which is used by the Democratic and Green Parties, the State Central Committee is made up of two committeepeople elected from each congressional district (a male and female). This amendment would add the caucus leaders in each chamber of the General Assembly to the State Central Committee as well. So, in theory, a party could have as many as four SCC members from one particular district.

It seems pretty innocuous, but consider that the bill doesn’t add, say, the governor to the SCC, nor the U.S. Senators. Only the caucus leaders in the General Assembly. It would appear that this is designed to give extra votes on the SCC to the state legislature — and the person who controls it.

Here’s an example of irresponsible reporting by the Daily Herald on what did and did not get done this legislative session.

This article was clearly written to make people angry, not to provide real information. They criticize the state legislature for not getting the budget done, but on the other side of that coin, some members of the State House deserve a lot of credit for blocking a totally irresponsible budget that depends on borrowing to pay the pension fund.

In reality, the House really didn’t spend a lot of time on the Monkey bill, so to include it here as a big item under the DONE column, while only giving passing mention to pension reform and McCormick Place, is just plain misrepresentative. Really does the readers a disservice. Personally, I’m pretty sick of reporters playing these idiotic games to get people fired up.

So if you don’t want to be a Daily Herald factoid zombie, and want to know what was really done, go straight to the source:

House Bills Passed Both Houses

Senate Bills Passed Both Houses

First thing you’ll notice is that, it’s more than just the Monkey bill. I am working on a handy primer for Spring Session legislation and what I think about it. It’s a work in progress, but it’s definitely a more honest attempt than the garbage the DH is putting out there. I’d encourage you to look up the bills, read them (or skim them, looking for the underlined/crossed out parts, which are the changes) and decide for yourself.

Quinn has vetoed S.B. 365, a rather modest set of reforms of the  controversial legislative scholarship program. Quinn’s reasoning is that he wants to see the program totally eliminated. Of course, because he issued a total veto instead of an amendatory veto, Quinn has ensured that the scholarship program will continue operating in its current shady and dysfunctional fashion.

The $13.5 million program allows legislators to give away scholarships to anybody they choose, with the state universities bearing all the costs. Many lawmakers have set up processes to ensure that qualified candidates — not necessarily politically connected ones — are selected. But some legislators make the decisions themselves, leaving open the possibility that some scholarships might be awarded for the wrong reasons.

The bill would have prohibited a legislator’s relatives and donors from receiving scholarships. While eliminating the program would be better, this bill at least placed some rules on how the scholarships are awarded.

Now, Quinn could have used his amendatory veto and rewritten the bill to make it do what he wanted. But he did not do that. Instead he pinned his hopes on another bill, H.B. 4685, which passed the House, but not Senate. That bill would eliminate the program entirely. That bill has a LONG way to go before it passes, and the legislature is not even in session to consider it. In short, it could be years before this thing goes anywhere.

Yet again, Quinn failed to use his amendatory veto effectively, and now it’s up to the General Assembly to override the veto. And I’m guessing they won’t. So it’s business as usual in the State of Illinois.

The House moments ago approved by a vote of 65-51-0 a measure (S.B. 3658) that would give a sales tax holiday in August for families to buy school supplies and clothes. As altruistic as that sounds, the sad fact is that the state has a $14 billion deficit and has $6 billion in unpaid bills. Rep. Bill Black (R) pointed out that the state would be forfeiting $25-50 million in tax revenue when our schools are not getting paid.

Rep. Jack Franks (D) made an absurd argument that this bill creates jobs, without really explaining how a temporary tax holiday actually creates jobs. He also said that the average family spends $400 on back to school shopping and this bill would be a significant savings for them (as if they’d be saving $400). But really, the tax on $400 is only $26 and with this bill, that tax would drop down to $4. What would the average family do with $22? Who knows. But isn’t it worth $22 to keep the state from financially imploding?

The issue of school choice is one championed by Republicans, yet surprisingly 1/3 of the GOP House members representing DuPage voted against S.B. 2494, a voucher program pushed by State Sen. James Meeks (D), which would make vouchers available to students at the worst performing schools in Chicago. Here are the votes:

41 – Biggins (R) Yes
42 – Pihos (R)  No
45 – Coladipietro (R) Yes
46 – Reboletti (R) No
47 – Bellock (R) Yes
48 – Connelly (R) Yes
55 – Ramey (R)  No
56 – Froehlich (D) No
77 – Saviano (R) No
82 – Durkin (R)  Yes
84 – Cross (R)  Yes
95 – Fortner (R) Yes
96 – Senger (R)  Yes

GOP: 8 yes, 4 no
DEM: 0 yes, 1 no
Total: 8 yes, 5 no

Overall, the 47-66-2 vote, short of the simple majority needed to pass.

The actual roll call is nowhere to be found on the IL General Assembly web site because of a procedural move called “postponed consideration” — essentially a “do over” where the vote is thrown out, and the bill can be brought up again later (presumably after changes are made, arms are twisted). But fortunately, Capitol Fax had the good sense to videotape the voting board before the results disappeared into the ether.