The First Amendment Center has since 1997 annually surveyed Americans' attitudes toward and knowledge of the First Amendment. Last September, on Constitution Day, the Center released its 2008 results, sadly demonstrating the worst level of awareness amongst those surveyed ever.

• 39 percent would extend to subscription cable and satellite television the government's current authority to regulate content on over-the-air broadcast television.
• 54 percent would continue IRS regulations that bar religious leaders from openly endorsing political candidates from the pulpit without endangering the tax-exempt status of their organizations.
• 66 percent say the government should be able to require television broadcasters to offer an equal allotment of time to conservative and liberal broadcasters; 62 percent would apply that same requirement to newspapers, which never have had content regulated by the government.
• 31 percent would not permit musicians to sing songs with lyrics that others might find offensive.
• 68 percent favor government restrictions on campaign contributions by private companies, and 55 percent favor such limits on amounts individuals can contribute to someone else's campaign.

The survey found that just 3 percent of those questioned could name "petition" as one of the five freedoms in the First Amendment. Only "speech" was named by a majority of respondents, 56 percent. Less than 20 percent named religion, press, or assembly.

The State of the First Amendment 2008 survey, including questions and responses, as well as survey methodology, is available online at FirstAmendmentCenter.org/sofa_reports/.

It is boiling down to this: How meaningful is the United States Constitution to Americans, and are the founding principles still relevant, let alone worth fighting for? It is that simple. The U.S. Constitution is the single most revolutionary document in the history of governance, bar none, and through its establishment created the most innovative and prosperous nation on Earth.

Pat Quinn is the most popular Illinois governor in more than a decade.

A new statewide poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports found that Governor Quinn has a 61-percent job approval rating. The poll of 500 likely Illinois voters conducted on April 14 claims that Quinn's job-approval rating is five points higher than U.S. Senator Dick Durbin's 56-percent "favorable" rating, and six points lower than President Barack Obama's home state 67-percent job-approval rating. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus three percentage points.

Two years ago, I alerted people to the fact that the groundwork was being laid for a new kind of government in which virtually everyone is a suspect and it will no longer matter if you're innocent or guilty, whether you're a threat to the nation or even if you're a citizen. What will matter is what the president -- or whoever happens to be occupying the Oval Office at the time -- thinks.

At the time, I was voicing concerns about the liberties the Bush administration was taking in its application of the term "enemy combatant." Today, under the Obama administration, the perceived threat is coming from an altogether different direction: "right-wing extremists."

It is more apparent every day that the "change" Obama was elected to bring will not be forthcoming when it comes to the financial sector and foreign policy. Like Bush's former henchman Paulson, Obama Treasury Secretary Geithner advocates the elite global banking interests and is a puppet of the Federal Reserve Bank (which is neither federal nor reserve - remember? RiverCitiesReader.com/commentary/neither-federal-nor-reserve). It is just that simple.