The conclusion of John Whitehead's August commentary "The NSA: The Abyss from Which There Is No Return" (RCReader.com/y/nsa1) deserves serious consideration: "Once you allow the government to start breaking the law, no matter how seemingly justifiable the reason, you relinquish the contract between you and the government that establishes that the government works for and obeys you - the citizen, the employer, the master. And once the government starts operating outside the law, answerable to no one but itself, there's no way to rein it back in, short of revolution."

For the past six months, the more egregious mass-surveillance activities of the National Security Agency (NSA) have been disclosed to Americans, confirming our worst fears. Nearly every form of communication we engage in is being recorded and stored for purposes that are seriously unconstitutional, regardless of judicial oversight done in secret by a special court. And even though our leaders, both political and bureaucratic, assure us that its activities are legal, they are only speaking to administrative sanction. This means that the legality of what they are doing is not necessarily constitutional, nor apparently does it need to be when perpetuated under the guise of national security and/or keeping us safe from terrorists.

Let's take a quick look at the campaign-finance disclosure reports filed last week by some of the statewide candidates.

• Bill Brady. It goes without saying that the $66,104 Brady reported raising during the third quarter was beyond pathetic. But here's how bad the Republican gubernatorial candidate's performance really was: Even Sheila Simon outraised him. The notoriously poor fundraiser Simon pulled in more than $106K during the quarter. And if it weren't for the $200K in leftover funds from his 2010 governor's race, Brady would've reported having just $73K at the end of the quarter. He also spent a bit more than he took in - which isn't very difficult, considering his paltry take.

Governor Pat Quinn refused to say for several days whether he'd support a $1.2-million-a-year tax break for Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) to move 100 jobs out of Decatur and open up a world headquarters and new tech center in Chicago. But last week he made it clear that without pension reform, the ADM proposal would be a nonstarter and he would veto it.

"He won't even consider the ADM bill much less get on board when pension reform has not been done," a Quinn spokesperson told me.

"The best way to help jobs in Illinois is to do pension reform," Quinn himself told the Associated Press. "To distract legislators in any way from this issue of a lifetime is just plain wrong."

Quinn didn't say, probably because he wasn't asked, whether he thought a vote on gay marriage during the upcoming fall veto session would also "distract legislators." But a spokesperson later explained that pension reform was vital to the state's economic interests, and gay marriage, while important, was not.

And so the governor has seized yet another political hostage in his quest to ease Illinois' enormous budget problems by reducing pension benefits for public employees and retirees.

A bipartisan chorus seemed to rise as one last week to urge Governor Pat Quinn not to appeal a ruling by a Cook County judge. The judge ruled that the governor had violated the state Constitution when he vetoed lawmaker salaries this summer. Quinn said he vetoed the appropriations because he was tired of waiting for legislators to finish a pension-reform plan.

Despite urgings by both Democrats and Republicans to drop the whole thing, Quinn forged ahead, issuing a defiant statement in which he vowed to pursue an appeal of Judge Neil Cohen's decision voiding the veto and ordering lawmaker paychecks to be processed "immediately."