The headline in the British newspaper The Telegraph overstated it: “UK cancer survival rate lowest in Europe.” Four paragraphs down we learn, instead, that “In total, 52.7pc of women survived for five years after being diagnosed between 2000 and 2002. Only Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, the Czech Republic and Poland did worse.”

The funny thing about the predicament — and by “funny” I don’t mean to imply that I’m laughing in any way — is that Britain’s National Health Service spends three times more per patient than Poland does.

Well, as we’ve seen here in America’s schools, throwing money at problems just doesn’t work. Not when the real problem is the quasi-socialist method of distributing the goods. Incentives go all out of whack, even information goes out of whack. Bureaucrats and managers suck up huge hunks of money without actually directing services where services are due.

One researcher in Britain explained the cause pretty well: “We have good evidence that survival for lung cancer has been compromised by long waiting lists for radiotherapy treatment.”

Yup, I’ve argued this before: socialized medicine rations care. And the chief way socialized medicine does this is with rationing by waiting.

You cut down demand,
To meet your limited supply,
If, by making them wait,
Enough patients die.

There’s rhyme there, but not much reason.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

You may not be Wyatt Erp, but if you have a gun, then you have something to shoot back with if somebody else with a gun shoots at you.

Virginia Tech, site of a mass murder a few months ago, is a “gun-free zone.” Or you might call it a triumph-of-hope-over-experience zone. If there are no weapons on campus, who can shoot anybody?

Of course, a person intent on mayhem doesn’t always obey such rules.

Andrew Dysart is a senior at George Mason University senior, where he organized a chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus. He wants state legislators to change a Virginia law that allows universities to outlaw the Second Amendment of students and others on campus.

About the Virginia Tech victims, Dysart says, “[T]he students . . . really should have had a chance. They should have had the chance to defend themselves if it came down to that.”

In a perverse twist, campuses like Virginia Tech can’t ban outsiders to the campus from carrying weapons for which they have permits. As Dysart puts it, students therefore “don’t have the same rights to self-defense on campus as the general public.” Now, this is not a contradiction we want to solve by extending the ban on self-defense to our whole society. There is no virtue in making everybody as helpless as possible when attacked.

At least one Virginia state school, Blue Ridge Community College, does let students and teachers arm themselves. Other campuses should too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

You’ve heard about “speaking truth to power.” How about speaking truth and getting attacked by power?

Dianna Pharr is a Texan who decided to get involved. The Eanes Independent School District, which governs the school her son went to, had money problems. The wealthy school district’s budgets had become controversial in the community; proposed budget cuts seemed to cover everything but sports.

So Ms. Pharr did research. She gathered information. But when she offered to volunteer her services to put up public district information on a website, she was turned down.

So she put up the info on her own website. Without comment. The local library even linked to her site.

And then the school board retaliated. The board released her young son’s confidential medical information to the public during a school board meeting.

And they didn’t apologize. No, they hired an attorney. Dianna Pharr took it all the way to Washington, D.C., defending her son pro se. And she got her judgment. But instead of obeying the law, apologizing, or changing procedures so that other children’s rights were not violated, the school district appealed.

You know, I often say “power corrupts,” but I still shake my head when a local school board decides to go rogue. Over power. Position. Secret spending.

WikiFoia , a website promoting Freedom of Information Act requests, presented Dianna Pharr with its Sunshine Troublemaker of the Week Award.

Keep up the fight, Dianna.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ATTN: Ms. Pharr isn’t done yet. She has asked the Education Department’s Inspector General to look into the school district’s behavior. You can make a difference in encouraging such an investigation by emailing or calling Education Secretary Margaret Spelling. Email her at margaret.spellings@ed.gov or you can call to leave a message with her office at 202-401-3000. Ask her to take action to hold the Eanes Independent School District accountable to the law. Please feel free to forward this Common Sense commentary.

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Citizens in Kenai Peninsula, Alaska have had a tough time. But also an easy time.

The Alliance for Concerned Taxpayers says petitions to limit assembly and school board officials to two terms were the most challenging they’d ever done.

Supporters had to collect about 1500 signatures to get the measures on the October ballot. According to citizen activist Vicki Pate, “We had an extremely short window of time to collect the signatures required on each petition. . . .”

That’s not all. Term limits had already been passed in the borough. Twice. In the early 90s. And repealed by the borough assembly. Twice.

An all-too-familiar pattern. See, the career politicians, whether in D.C. or down the street at the town hall, just don’t like definite, inescapable limits on how long they can hold power. They’re determined to kill term limits. So we (the people) just have to be even more determined than ever to protect our democratic rights.

It’s been hard, but also easy. People understand term limits. They understand why entrenched political monopolies aren’t a great idea. As petitioner Petria Falenberg reports: “In some ways, this was one of the easiest petitions we have ever collected signatures for. . . . It was not uncommon for people to come looking for us. . . .”

So petitioners collected more than twice as many signatures as needed. The petitions have been certified. Term limits will be on the ballot, and it’s going to win. Again.

Politicians can’t stop progress forever.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Some people you can really count on. Some you can’t count on at all.

Both statements pretty much sum up Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. As in “you can count on not being able to count on him.”

Blagojevich recently signed a pay raise for legislators, after promising during his campaign that he would definitely not sign any such pay raise. Oops.

As one legislator of the governor’s own party put it: “He’ll say anything and do the exact opposite. For him to do a complete flip-flop, I would say, it’s the only consistent thing he does.”

Why did the governor go back on his word? Well, you know, he wanted to bribe legislators and, now I’m just guessing, he really didn’t want to use his own money. So Blagojevich gave legislators a nearly 10 percent pay raise using taxpayers’ money.

The Governor explained his flip-flop: “I want to say this in a nice way, but that [salary increase] seems to be, among many legislators, the single biggest priority for them.” What does he want? The Chicago Tribune stated it plainly: a “a massive expansion of state-subsidized health care.”

What is it with bribery and Illinois governors? Former Governor George Ryan was convicted of taking bribes. Now Governor Blagojevich is making bribes . . . to the entire legislature.

The governor should have kept his campaign pledge — kept his word. That’s the right thing to do, even if you do stumble upon a really good political opportunity for bribery.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.