Usually when polls are taken about tax hikes, the respondents are "informed" about the benefits of raising more government money, whether it's for education, public services, or what have you. So, not surprisingly, those polls regularly show lots of support for tax increases.

But a recent poll of 800 Illinois voters taken this month on behalf of the Illinois Coalition for Jobs, Growth, & Prosperity, a business group, only asked whether Illinoisans favored raising taxes to balance the state's budget.

Because the state is in such a deep hole, that's pretty much all any tax hike will go for anyway - and it won't even fully accomplish that. And since most people don't pay a great deal of attention to state government, that's all they probably know about the tax-hike plan anyway.

So the results probably won't surprise you.

It's tough to find people who truly believe that Governor Pat Quinn will ultimately pull the trigger and give the go-ahead to draconian budget cuts in the coming fiscal year to force a tax hike. But his people insist it's coming, and the administrative planning does appear to be moving forward with all deliberate speed.

The governor has basically three choices.

"They [the president and National Security Advisor] have the right to send our children, men and women now, in the name of democracy to go kill people and be killed and torture and perhaps be tortured in return, which is always going to be the end result of torture. And so, I think there's nothing wrong with holding these people to the highest possible standards. It doesn't happen enough. But that's what we have to do." - Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist

From its inception, America has stood for the principle that everyone is under the law. There are no kings or power elite that stand outside the law. Yet this has been overlooked in the midst of the escalating debate over the Bush administration's alleged authorization of torture.

Much of the debate thus far has focused on President Obama's decision not to release photos depicting alleged abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan by American service personnel. However, this is but a smokescreen issue for the more troubling question: Who should be held responsible for these abuses?

Almost every reporter who covered the unveiling of new budget-cutting recommendations by the governor's Taxpayer Action Board last week claimed the "TAB" had found a half-billion dollars in reductions for the coming fiscal year. It was reported that way because that's what the board's chair, Illinois Taxpayers Federation President Tom Johnson, said.

Johnson's comment demonstrate how amorphous, politically difficult, and fiscally suspect many of these proposals really are. If you do the math, the board's report actually claims budgetary savings this coming year could be as high as $1 billion if all its recommendations are implemented.