In a unanimous ruling, the FEC “gave” Internet bloggers the same “media exemption” from federal government regulation that newspapers enjoy. (You know, that “freedom of the press” loophole.) So, we can blog! We bloggers and little ol’ net-surfers can write whatever we want to about politics and our generous leaders. Shout it from the rooftops of cyberspace!

One conservative blogger termed the FEC’s decision “a tremendous win for speech.” Liberal blogger Duncan Black posited that “This could have been an utter disaster, but it appears to have all worked out in the end.” The Washington Post reported that any concerns we had for our freedoms, as the federal tribunal mulled over the fate of Internet speech, were “unfounded.” We are supposed to be very glad. Delighted. Tingly all over. But don’t be glad. Definitely don’t tingle.

Why not? Because our rights — and let’s agree that freedom of speech is a real biggie — are supposed to come hard-wired. They’re “inalienable,” “endowed” to us by our “Creator,” as the Declaration of Independence puts it. Do you honor the FEC as your “Creator”? Next thing you know, the Defense Department will announce, to much fanfare, that it won’t be quartering soldiers in our homes. The courts will then declare that they’re A-OK with continuing use of trial by jury. Gee, thanks.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

How do politicians to “take it all back”? Well, not long ago Maine’s solidily Democratic government enacted a health-care scheme that was supposed to cover, ultimately, all 130,000 uninsured Maine citizens. Governor John Baldacci said it would reduce the “cost-shifting” that non-payers caused the system, as well as cut medical costs overall — without raising taxes!

In the first nine months of operation, the new system enrolled only 1,600 previously uninsured individuals, according to Tarren Bradgon and Adam Brackemyre in the Wall Street Journal. And the enrollment rate has very much levelled off. The cost of insuring just those 1,600? $19.5 million. And yet the governor claimed the system saved $137 million! How? Well, when pressed, that figure was revised down. By over half. And even that looks mighty suspicious to Tarren Bragdon of the Maine Heritage Policy Center, who has been crunching numbers.

But Mr. Bragdon is not the only source proving the poverty of Maine’s policy. The politicians themselves have already refuted it. You see, they’re raising taxes to cover the program’s costs. It’s called a “Savings Offset Tax,” meaning that any alleged savings to the health care industry will be nabbed by the government in the form of a 2.4 percent surcharge on medical services! That’s how politicians “take it all back”: not by admitting they’re wrong, but by grabbing what they claim to have delivered!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

He’s up to his old tricks. Senator Tom Coburn, what is wrong with you, always challenging the corrupt politics of the entrenched career politicians! Get with the program, Tom! Politics as usual! Porkbarrel by the Mack-truck-load. Ignore your colleagues’ pilfering of the public trust, so they’ll ignore your — Uh, I mean, start pilfering the public trust, would you, Senator?

In case you can’t see it, I’m holding up a neon sign that says IRONY. Actually I’m in the front row, seat 1-A, of the true friends of the commonweal who are cheering Tom Coburn on. Next to me on the bleachers is columnist George Will.

Will reports that Senator Coburn is ignoring all the hints, sharp elbows, and kicks under the table about how rude he is actually to object to the mass plunder engaged in by fellow congressmen. Will writes, “When Coburn disparaged an earmark for Seattle — $500,000 for a sculpture garden — Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., was scandalized: [She said:] ‘I tell my colleagues, if we start cutting funding for individual projects, your project may be next.’ But Coburn, who does not do earmarks, thinks Armageddon sounds like fun.”

Will is right about Coburn. Coburn is right about earmarks. If you don’t engage in such abuse, you can’t be blackmailed by threats that your abuses will be discontinued. Honesty does have its advantages.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Like most reasonable Americans, I’m against pork — that is, the federal spending on local projects that have no national interest. But sometimes I feel a little guilty using the word. One hates to malign the noble pig.

For some time I had thought that “pork” was merely a shortening of “pork barrel.” But according to Mencken’s “American Language,” that’s not the case. “Pork” was used as a pejorative for this kind of spending back in 1879; “pork barrel” he found later, in 1913. The original metaphor was the pig.

These days, pork is distributed to various regions in appropriations bills, in special “earmarks.” You hear a lot about “earmarks” these days. No one has ever fully explained to me this business about “earmarks.” When I earmark a passage in a book, I fold over a small corner of the page. It flaps over like a dog’s ear, duly marked. But that’s wrong, too. As Merriam-Webster puts it, an earmark is “a mark of identification on the ear of an animal.” How agricultural! It’s gratifying to learn that the Senate’s euphemism for “pork” is, well, a pig-raising-related concept. No mixed metaphors here!

It’s handy to think of Congress as farmers in the business of raising pork. It’s what politicians trade — with the special interests that fund their re-election campaigns. So no single-minded careerist would allow his own earmarked livestock to be gored. It all makes sense. Except, of course, for we, the people.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Sometimes politics is just plain fun. If you forget the morality of it all, and take every press release as just another rough draft for “The West Wing,” the drama becomes comic pretty quickly.

Take the act of “taking credit.” Every politician takes credit for anything good that happens under his or her watch — even when it is obvious that whatever policies that politician has espoused had nothing to do with the success. Every four years nearly everybody pretends that it’s the president who makes the economy go — or go bust.

But, what with Congress’s spending and taxing, and the Federal Reserve’s hand on the money supply spigot, you know that just ain’t so. The presidency is just one small cog in the wheel that . . . well, usually harms the economy, not helps it. And when the economy is doing well, don’t businessmen deserve some credit? So it’s worth a chuckle every time somebody pretends that “our guy” has done such a great job.

In our current president’s recent State of the Union speech, he demanded that more money be spent on the War on Drugs, and then took credit for the fact that America’s youth are experimenting with illegal drugs less than they used to. Trouble is, as Jacob Sullum of Reason magazine pointed out, that impressive downward spiral in drug use started under President Clinton. How did THAT happen? Drugs may be no laughing matter. But politics is.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob