Rob Kendall, Abdul al-Qibhabaz, Jim Merritt, the program is Statehouse Happenings, your weekly look at what's going on with Indiana politics and government before we begin the program.

Let's meet the award-winning panel. He'll be with us for the first part of the show today.

You know him from IndyPolitics.org, an author, a broadcaster, an attorney, and a provocateur, Abdulahib Chabaz.

Hello.

Hello, my friend. How's it going? And you know him from 30 years in the Indiana Senate, the great Jim Merritt. Hello.

All right. So let's start with, since we've got you for the first part of the program today, Abdul.

We got into this a little bit on a Kendall and Casey program, this bizarre initiative by the speaker of the house, Todd Houston, to attempt to attract 33 Illinois

counties to locate in the state of Indiana.

I am floored by this.

Other members of the media are perplexed by this.

I don't ever see the logistics by which this could actually happen. Tell us what's going on,

because I know you delved into this yesterday. Yes, we did. The speaker was basically laying out

the House Republican agenda, like they always do the first, you know, first week of session.

That's right. So we're there, and he went through his agenda items. And then the last agenda item, which is one that sort of made my jaw drop to the floor. He basically wanted to

create the sort of welcoming commission that would welcome those counties in Illinois that

want to secede from the state and join Indiana. Now, how exactly that would work is I was

scratching my head because, number one, you know, state boundary lines are federal matter.

Yeah.

The Congress got to prove it.

The state legislatures got to approve it.

Illinois is run by Democrats.

Democrats have a super majority in Illinois.

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