The state legislators negotiating the new massive energy reform bill were said to have made real progress at their Tuesday working group meeting last week.
Shortly before that meeting began, a legislator who is a longtime union ally and is involved in the talks told me the consensus was that "a pound of flesh" would have to be extracted from Exelon, which wants more subsidies for two nuclear power plants and has been under a dark ethics cloud as the US Attorney's office probes its and its subsidiary ComEd's Statehouse activities.
Well, lawmakers may want to increase the weight of that flesh to be extracted after a routine federal court hearing was rocked by a bombshell that could complicate the negotiations.