The Chicago Tribune editorial [1] on Illinois' recently passed ethics bill is a must read. It outlines the process by which the ethics bill almost didn't become law, despite the fact that no legislator, at any time, voted against it, and those who delayed it insisted they were doing so only to improve it (but never, of course, did). Even numerous pay-to-play [2] scandals weren't enough to get legislators ashamed enough to get behind a bill preventing them from taking campaign contributions from state contractors.

If it weren't for the deus ex machina [3] of Barack Obama's call to the Senate president, there is no doubt that the bill would not have been passed, and almost none of the legislators would have squeaked a word of protest.

The editorial leads us to wonder what we would learn from reading the transcripts of legislators' phone conversations. Maybe the Illinois public needs to treat its politicians as if the public were a totalitarian government and the politicians were its citizens.