Illinois GOP Chair Pat Brady created a furor earlier this year when he came out in support for gay marriage. And there was a serious effort to remove him from office – one that seemed to have failed. Not the Chicago Tribune is reporting that Brady plans to resign tomorrow.

As we’ve been reporting for a few weeks, now that Senate Dems have passed a budget, Republicans have suddenly lost their enthusiasm for hallowed official processes and are resisting Democratic efforts to return to “regular order” and debate the differences between the House and Senate budgets in an at least somewhat transparent way. Even by Capitol Hill standards it’s rare for parties to reveal this kind of procedural hypocrisy so abruptly.

There are a few reasons for that. Part of it is just that the GOP budget is a political loser and Republicans don’t want to give Dems the opportunity to relitigate damaging election year debates over how much the rich should pay in taxes, what should happen to Medicare and so on. Republicans are also seemingly trying to slow walk the budget process so that it lines up with the much harder deadline of increasing the debt limit.

Which brings us to the Senate floor Monday. Read More