Two weeks ago, as stocks tumbled and a sense of malaise set in nation-wide, Congress scrambled to get together a plan aimed at avoiding a complete economic meltdown. The gentleman from Illinois’ 15th district delivered a rebuke to Washington’s power brokers by casting a “nay” vote on the initial financial bailout package, which failed to clear the House. However, the sweeteners thrown into the revised package weren’t enough to keep Rep. Tim Johnson from casting another “nay” vote.

A statement released by Johnson criticized the bailout plan as unfair to taxpayers in monetary cost and principle. In the same statement he also claimed to have argued for greater regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the past.

During last week’s presidential debate, Republican Presidential Nominee John McCain managed to snare his Democratic counterpart into a long and testy exchange regarding the practice of congressional earmarks, in which McCain blasted their impact on federal budgets.

Regardless of whether you think the practice is enriching or bankrupting the country, Illinois’ 15th Congressional District is getting it’s cut.

Under increased scrutiny of the earmark process, Congress recently agreed to shine some light into the smoke-filled back rooms where power brokers wheel and deal away the taxpayers money. Members of congress are now required to disclose their earmarks. So where is Congressman Johnson sending your money?

As energy prices continue to put the screw down on America, its politicians continue to fling about questionable statements concerning energy policy and push even more dubious legislation.

Where does Rep. Tim Johnson stand?

Johnson probably wasn’t chanting “drill baby, drill” during the Republican National Convention. He’s not a global warming naysayer. He doesn’t want to drill in Artic National Wildlife Refuge. He subscribes to the Midwestern orthodoxy on ethanol. He wants to stick it to OPEC and energy speculators. Johnson is also a fan of the nuclear energy churned out by Exelon (who are also fans of him).

Who is Timothy V. Johnson?

He represents you in Congress. Although just one voice among 435, the man has leverage in deciding where your tax money goes, how (and if) the environment is protected, what laws will be applied to what parts of a woman’s body, who will be bombed, and what wall separates the lives of private citizens from the prying eye of the National Security Agency.

Being a member of congress is an important job. So SP.com politely asks, "Who is Tim Johnson, and what is he doing in Washington in our name?"

In the southeast corner of Champaign, the black soil plowed for generations into small wave-like rows is being cleared to make way for housing and office space. A number of prim, attractive and similar looking houses line the roads. Brick walls with stone trusses and beige siding enclose them. Their walkways cut through neatly trimmed lawns to stately front door steps surrounded by woodchips or small seas of carefully selected pebbles. There are no thick, stout trees here — only saplings. The neighborhoods are too new for them to have grown tall.

People will commute to and from these homes. They’ll raise children, and take out mortgages to live in them. But these houses are also ground zero for a thorny issue facing growing cities throughout the U.S.: sprawl.

During the 1990s, the invisible hand of the free market gave Champaign the finger. Buildings were abandoned as businesses fled to more profitable areas on the city’s periphery. Downtown became a ghost town. Blight and decay marked much of the city’s core, until the city stepped in.

Although the city of Champaign continues to approve a number of subdivisions on its periphery, it has steadily wooed developers into investing and re-investing in the core of the city. Champaign is following the lead of many cities by encouraging urban infill, which is the redevelopment of existing lots and buildings. However, the revitalization of the city core hasn’t been cheap.

Read the "sounds like" section on any bands myspace.com profile and you'll likely get some self-aggrandizing gibberish, something nearly unintelligible, or the drivel of a band member who has no idea what their band sounds like. Two Girls, actually four guys who will be rolling through Mike 'N Molly's on Friday, fills this section of their myspace with an apt description: "the kind of music you wish hippies would make."

Although the band boasts a percussionist in addition to a regular drummer, the band avoids degenerating into a "crunchy" drum circle. Front man Joel Madigan's sludge-tinged, riff-driven guitar work slithers through the layers of percussion, invoking early stoner-psych bands like Kyuss. Maybe they'll make people dance like hippies should dance.

Sharing the stage will be local indie-pop outfit Hot Cops, featuring former Green Light Go bassist Mike Daab. Think textured, and emotive indie rock with towering vocals and harmonies.

On Friday, Mike and Molly's will become part local venue and part Revolutionary War re-enactment when local metal outfit Bang 76 strikes a chord heard halfway around downtown. The four-piece band rocks out in garb worn by the American Revolutionary Army, complete with powdered whigs and white face paint that gives them statuesque presence. Musically the pallid-faced quartet seems to channel distorted guitar-laden and angst-soaked grunge and metal of the early 90s.

Frontman "Gen. G.W." belts out crooning and guttural melodies over the drone of palm-muted guitar interspersed with Sabbath-inspired riffs. Although they may not rock as heavily as a band like Slayer, the fact that they play while wearing serveral layers of hefty jackets and ruffled shirts in the central Illinois humidity makes them no less brutal. After the show, find a British person and give them the finger.

On Saturday, local jammers, Zmick will deliver their ground-up mixture of funk, reggae, jazz, and progressive that would surely move the butts of any patchouli drenched, birkenstock-clad audience. Falling just short of the platonic ideal of when "jam" meets "band."

Interestingly, they are juxtaposed with Santa who will churn out their own brand of local indie-pop laced with pyschedellic underlinings and toweringly piercing vocals. Adding to the indie-pop ambiance will be Tall Tale a piano-driven, female-fronted local quintet, whose soulfull (but gently delivered) vocal inflections become so rythmic at times it's hard not to bob your head a little.

Lindsay Bever spent last winter trying to heat her apartment in Champaign with her oven. Her heat stopped working. She had complained to her landlord, who Bever said, did nothing about it.

Four years prior to Bever’s experience with her landlord, the Illinois General Assembly had passed the Residential Tenants’ Right to Repair Act, which was meant to give tenants a way to sidestep inept landlords.

However, tenants like Bever still have little recourse.

Last night at the Cunningham Town Board meeting, proponents of instant runoff voting, a controversial method of election where voters are able to rank their preference of candidates on the ballot, scored a small victory when the board deferred a move that could have quashed their efforts to have an advisory referendum placed on the November ballot.

During the last few years activists have used the Cunningham Town meeting, where citizens are able to place to place advisory referendum on the November ballot largely free of elected officials, to push issues ranging from the withdrawal of troops from Iraq to the impeachment of President Bush.

In downstate Illinois, a law aimed at protecting tenants from landlords who might retaliate against them for calling in a building inspector is almost never used.

Does this mean that landlord-tenant relations are just peachy in the land south of Chicago?