Twenty years ago, Secretary of State Jim Edgar and Attorney General Neil Hartigan ran for governor against each other. Both men released their tax returns without much fanfare.

Four years later, Governor Jim Edgar and his opponent, Comptroller Dawn Clark Netsch, both released their tax returns. It wasn't much of a story.

Then, in 1998, gubernatorial candidate George Ryan released his tax returns for the first time. He had adamantly refused to do so while he was secretary of state. And Ryan continued to refuse to release anything other than his current returns. Most of what he eventually got busted for happened while he was secretary of state, which may be no coincidence.

Sooner rather than later, each of us will have make a decision about his/her national identity as an American. The question will be whether, as an American sovereign, you are willing to relinquish your status in favor of a merging with other sovereign nations, beginning with Mexico and Canada most likely, to form an entirely new form of international/global governance; hence the term "new world order."

This choice of national identity is no longer science fiction. The media has finally brought this grave issue into mainstream focus, and the evidence points conclusively to just such an eventuality. Every day, America is drawn further into the global financial meltdown through Washington's policies of intervention, financial aid, and our own out-of-control borrowing that forces taxpayers' participation on whatever level our international creditors dictate.

The Iowa Racing & Gaming Commission decided Thursday that the state is ready for one more casino -- not four -- and commissioners said they don't believe the issue will be addressed again for three to five years.

Lyon County will be the home of Iowa's 18th state-regulated casino, and the 20th overall when including the state's two Native American casinos. Licenses for casinos in Tama, Wapello, and Webster counties were turned down, with commissioners citing financing problems and the likelihood of pulling business from nearby casinos in voting against those licenses.

One of the things that became crystal clear last week during the Illinois Senate's debate over a new state budget was that the Democratic legislative leaders have completely broken the budget-making process.

It's no big secret that more and more power has been concentrated into the hands of the leaders - the House speaker and the Senate president. And now they have it all.

Long gone are the days when the appropriations committees had any input. Also vanished is the "budgeteers" system, in which appropriations chairs and experts from each caucus would sit down to hash out the budget's details. Instead, all of the work is now being done by staff at the leaders' absolute direction.

As a consequence, senators barely had any idea about what they were voting for last week when they approved a budget along party lines. The committee hearing before the vote provided precious few details and instead revolved around partisan bickering over a Democratic maneuver solely designed to embarrass the Republicans. Republicans repeatedly denounced the budget process as far too rushed and wholly un-transparent, and they were right.