A new labor agreement allows some SEIU members two days off every year to lobby Springfield for more state money.

A blast e-mail from Jim Oberweis yesterday quoted the Capitol Fax about his debate performance but used an ellipsis to skip over the word “wacko.” Hey, I meant it in a good way.

Democratic treasurer candidate Alexi Giannoulias wants a compliance audit of Bright Start, but says he doesn’t actually know of any problems.

Edwin Eisendrath still can’t convince Rod Blagojevich to debate him. But Esquared says he won’t dispatch the usual guy dressed in a chicken suit to follow the governor around (that guy already works for somebody else).

Cook County could double the tax on cigarettes, to $2 a pack, and some don’t like it.

Hiram Wurf muses about the netroots.

The strange saga of the $20 million high-speed train to (almost) nowhere gets even weirder.

A township assessor may be too much in love with property tax caps. (I have bad memories about the word “assessor.” I lost the county spelling bee after I misspelled that word in 6th Grade because, believe it or not, I was too embarassed to spell a-s-s, so I left off an “s”.)

Proviso craziness.

Did Mancow refer to Governor Blagojevich as “Charles Manson“?

Some reasons why Democratic governors in “red” states and Republican governors in “blue” states appear to be thriving.