State Senator Ernie Chambers of Nebraska is suing God.

He claims that God is making terroristic threats against him and his constituents. Chambers has filed his suit to dramatize the fact that another lawsuit is supposedly frivolous, one a woman filed against a Nebraska judge who barred her use of the words “rape” and “victim” in a sexual assault trial.

Except, as usual, Chambers finds a way to demonstrate the exact opposite. Her lawsuit seems of real interest. His? Well . . . frivolous.

When I first read the story I guess I wasn’t all that surprised to see Chambers’s name. You see, last year the good senator sued to overturn Nebraska’s term limits law.

Nebraska limits its legislators’ terms in office to eight years in a row in its single chamber, the unicameral. Voters enacted the limits three separate times, over some hostility from the state’s highest court and without any help from the so-called “representatives” of the people, folks like Chambers.

Sure, Senator Chambers himself demonstrates the need for term limits. And he likes to pretend that the whole idea was a plot to get him. But term limits are not aimed at one person. They cut across the board, bringing in new blood and also pushing out the old.

Chambers has been in office for the last 36 years. He’s termed out in 2008. Both God and man will be glad to see him move on.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

I have to give grudging acknowledgment to the efforts of Congressman Jeff Flake. Who, according to one headline, is “still preaching against earmarks.”

There are many ways office-holders can throw money at various groups to try to build their power base. Earmarks are just one of them. But as cozy bribes go, they are pretty blatant.

Still, no matter how blatant an abuse of power, many incumbents defend these special local projects ferociously. Give a multi-term congressman the satiric award of “King of Pork” and he’s likely to throw a party. “Hurrah! I’m the King of Pork! Yeah!”

Flake, on the other hand, has repeatedly gone after pork projects. But according to the Arizona Republic, “out of a total of 50 earmarks totaling more than $77 million that he challenged this year,” he managed to kill only one, a $129,000 earmark for a Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree project. So we’re stuck with deficient Christmas trees for now.

I applaud . . . but not as loudly as I might. Jeff Flake reneged on a term limit pledge. When he ran for the seat of outgoing Congressman Matt Salmon, back in 2000, he pledged to serve no more than three terms in Congress. He’s in his fourth.

Our representatives break their word all the time. But the case of Jeff Flake is particularly disappointing. He has this strong streak of good in him. But Jeff, even good people have to keep their word.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

I’m a child of the ’60s. I had long hair and still have an album with Jimi Hendrix playing the Star Spangled Banner on electric guitar.

Boy, I love that music. But even so, I’m just not for taking taxpayer money to promote the Woodstock generation. That’s just not my bag, man. When it comes to earmarks, I just can’t make the scene.

But baby, New York Senators Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer sure can. They think one million dollars should be taken from taxpayers and sent to a museum in upstate New York that commemorates Woodstock. They earmarked that cool million in a recent bill.

But, not so fast. Senator Tom Coburn offered an amendment to the bill to kill this earmark. And then a strange thing occurred: sanity broke out over much of the Senate. This million-dollar pet project was defeated, 52 to 42.

“I’m pleased my colleagues took a bold stand today in defense of common sense,” Coburn said in a statement. “Maybe this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius for taxpayers.”

Tom Schatz of Citizens Against Government Waste quipped, “Taxpayers are dancing in the streets and saying ‘yippee’ over the defeat of this hippie earmark.”

And, as John Lennon probably meant to say, “When you talk about earmarks, don’t you know that you can count me out.”

It’s gonna be . . .  all right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Leon Drolet and the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance are not very popular . . . with politicians and Lansing insiders.

But they were clear. Michigan taxpayers told legislators they would launch recalls against those who voted to push big tax increases against citizens.

So, after legislators did hike taxes, what could they expect?

The Michigan Taxpayers Alliance is now working with local leaders on recall petitions against those who voted to raise taxes. Recalls have already been filed against six legislators, and MTA promises that ten — five Democrats and five Republicans — will face recall in what the group calls the “first round.”

Citizen action sure can make a difference.

I love seeing voters hold elected officials accountable. Some folks? Not so much. Remember all the moaning by insiders over the recall of California Governor Gray Davis? Today, in Michigan, there’s even more hysteria.

In Detroit’s Metro Times, Jack Lessenberry impugns the recalls as “a form of fascism.” He compares recall to “When Benito Mussolini . . . [and] his Blackshirts used to intimidate and kill members of Parliament. . . .”

Amazing! Petitioning one’s government for a vote of the people to determine who will represent those people gets equated with political death squads murdering their opponents in cold blood. Who’d think that?

Someone without a good argument. Get a grip, Mr. Lessenberry.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

What bill in Congress receives both bipartisan backing and support from a majority of House members, but, instead of going to a vote, has been gutted by the leadership, who refuses to allow the unadulterated bill to the floor?

Why, the Internet Tax Freedom Act, of course.

Nearly 240 House members have come out officially supporting a permanent ban on taxing Internet access. But Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership in the House scheduled a vote not for the permanent ban, but for a weaker, four-year extension of the moratorium.

They brow-beat members into signing on to the weaker version, and used every trick in the book to keep the full, widely supported version off the floor.

Why?

The idea of foreswearing a whole domain of tax revenue just eats away at them. Money left in citizens’ pockets? That doesn’t help them spend money, does it?

But tax lust is old hat. The story here is that politicians, within a year of promising a new, open form of bipartisan coöperation, have so obviously squelched any such thing. The leadership of the House has proven tyrannical and as in-groupy and partisan as the last bunch.

Republican Representative Robert W. Goodlatte, who had supported the permanent tax ban, characterized the move as a take-it-or-leave-it demand.

It’s the Congressional leadership that I’d like to take or leave . . . leave behind in history. Term-limited out, perhaps?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.