Almost nothing frightens state legislators more than redistricting. The drawing of new legislative district maps after every census causes more bouts of heartburn than just about anything else.

Take a look at the day after the September 11, 2001 attacks, when several state senators flocked to a secure computer room to check on their district boundaries just ahead of a critical map-making deadline. The rest of us were still in shock, but those senators were taking care of business. Their business.

The ultimate goal in redistricting for legislators is not only to get a map that allows them to remain in their current homes and discourage competition from the other political party, but also to draw a district that eliminates primary opponents and includes their strongest precincts and closest allies.

(Editor's note: This package also includes the sidebars "The More You Make, The More They Take" and "The 'Contract' and 'Article 8 of the Articles of Freedom the Works of Continental Congress 2009' on the Income Tax.")

Were our federal and state constitutions written to limit and control the actions of the people or limit and control the actions of the government? The Iowa Constitution reads: "All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for the protection, security, and benefit of the people, and they have the right, at all times, to alter or reform the same, whenever the public good may require it."

What denotes "public good" is no doubt the seed of discord between those who would see government take or borrow resources to provide for those that cannot provide for themselves and those who would see government ensure the protection of personal property so the people may provide for themselves and each other.

(Editor's note: This is a sidebar to the editorial " Is Your Government Your Servant or Your Master?" This package also includes the sidebar "The 'Contract' and 'Articles' on the Income Tax.")

"Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors ... and miss." - Robert Heinlein, Time Enough For Love

When Karl Marx and Frederich Engels published The Communist Manifesto back in 1848, they considered the implementation of the philosophy of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" to be so absolutely essential to the establishment of a socialist-communist state that it was given the number-two spot in the Ten Planks: "A heavy progressive or graduated income tax."

So essential, indeed, that only the first Plank superseded it: "Abolition of private property and the application of all rents of land to public purposes."

As another April 15 passes us by, and the Internal Revenue Service proceeds yet one more time to pillage a substantial fraction of the wealth created by the producers of the United States, I can't help but wonder just how many people truly grasp the collectivistic principles that underlie the income tax.

It seems like everywhere you look these days, the Illinois Democrats are getting hammered.

Most of the Democratic carnage is self-inflicted, like the Scott Lee Cohen debacle, or the brutal gubernatorial primary, or the troubles at U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias' family bank, or the decision to run a lobbyist with close connections to House Speaker Michael Madigan for Cook County assessor.

But some of the media coverage is going far over the top lately, and a few people in Chicago really need to take a breath already.