Billions of dollars worth of badly needed state construction projects on roads, bridges, schools, and transit were abruptly halted last week when a state appellate court tossed out Illinois' entire capital construction program and all its funding sources.

The state is appealing to the Illinois Supreme Court, but if the appellate-court ruling is upheld, it's probably not going to be easy to replace this thing.

About 21 House Republicans voted for the $31-billion capital plan's controversial funding mechanisms - video poker, vehicle fees, and tax hikes on candy and booze.

Except for video poker, those fee and tax hikes have gone almost completely unnoticed since the bill was passed in May of 2009. But with a brand-new and tremendously unpopular income-tax hike still burning white-hot in the public's gullet, and a whole bunch of "new conservatives" elected last November, re-approving the tax and fee hikes isn't going to be a simple matter.

"Of course, there is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists. But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live. And that would not be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die. In short, that would not be America." - Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), voicing his concerns over Congress' passage of the USA Patriot Act (October 25, 2001)

Russ Feingold, a staunch defender of the rule of law and the only senator to vote against the ominous USA Patriot Act, recently lost his bid for re-election to the U.S. Senate to a Tea Party-backed Republican. From the start, Feingold warned that the massive 342-page piece of legislation would open the door to graver dangers than terrorism - namely, America becoming a police state. He was right.

The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments - the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments - and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well. The Patriot Act also redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience were considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.

The Patriot Act justified broader domestic surveillance, the logic being that if government agents knew more about each American, they could distinguish the terrorists from law-abiding citizens - no doubt an earnest impulse shared by small-town police and federal agents alike. According to Washington Post reporter Robert O'Harrow, Jr., this was a fantasy that had "been brewing in the law enforcement world for a long time." And 9/11 provided the government with the perfect excuse for conducting far-reaching surveillance and collecting mountains of information on even the most law-abiding citizen.

An out-of-state education-reform group raised a whopping $2.8 million in the days leading up to historic state caps on campaign contributions.

All of the money raised by Stand for Children's Illinois PAC came in five- or six-figure contributions from some very major Chicago-area business types. Members of the famed billionaire Pritzker family kicked in a total of $250,000 on December 29, two days before the end of the old campaign-finance system, which allowed for unlimited contributions to groups such as Stand for Children's PAC.

Thomas E. Woods Jr.'s recent Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century is a must-read book to understand what is at stake for each of us in the states, and what we the people can do to restore our constitutionally protected liberties.

But before we can restore anything, we must first be clear about what is lost, and how we lost it. In Chapter 4, "What Is (or Are) the United States, Anyway?" Woods opens with a fascinating inquiry: "Was the United States created by a group of independent political societies that established a federal government as their agent, reserving all undelegated powers to themselves? Or was the United States the creation of a single, undifferentiated American people?"

Woods asserts that the federal government was created by America's original 13 colonies, operating as separate and distinct states, which established a compact, known as the Constitution for the United States of America, for dealing with foreign nations, common defense when necessary, and commerce between the 13 chartered states.

History, when studied in earnest, reveals that the various states' ratification documents accepting the Constitution emphasized one dominant, overarching principle: Powers not specifically enumerated to the federal government in the Constitution are automatically retained by the individual states. No exceptions.