Keeping politics out of government. A good idea, no?

Well, it’s one thing to prohibit government workers from using taxpayer-paid government worktime to engage in elections and campaigning. That works.

But more elaborate schemes, like the Missouri Plan, have perverse effects on both politics and government.

The Missouri Plan is the method that a number of states use to select judges. Instead of directly electing judges by the people — as done in many western states — this scheme gives much of the work and the power to a small committee. The committee is run by the state’s ruling judge, and is made up of bar members and appointees by the governor.

In Missouri, it has usually worked in secret and has put in office some rather left-leaning judges.

It’s not that politics has been taken out of the process. It’s that the people’s political preferences have. They’ve been substituted by the prejudices of legal professionals.

Wow, what an achievement. Messy democratic politics replaced with back-room establishment maneuvering.

The issue got hot last summer, when Governor Matt Blunt faced a liberal slate of nominees pre-selected by the committee. Now, one of Missouri’s Supreme Court members has been promoted by the president, leaving a vacancy.

Meanwhile, a group funded by George Soros, “Justice At Stake,” is defending the corrupt, in-crowd system. Even anti-politics makes for strange bedfellows.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

It’s almost E-Day in California. February 5. Extension Day.

”E-Day” is clunky as monikers go. But that’s appropriate, seeing as how Proposition 93 is such a clunkily devious effort.

Prop 93 would double maximum tenure of Assemblymen, increasing it from six years to twelve. And it would boost the tenure of Senators by 50 percent, from eight years to twelve. In short, Prop 93 is a flat-out, unvarnished weakening of term limits.

Indeed, provision for a so-called ”transition period” would allow many sitting legislators to serve even longer than twelve years. As Phil Blumel, president of U.S. Term Limits, puts it: ”It’s a naked power grab by incumbents.”

Yet it’s being promoted as a cut in maximum tenure. The California Secretary of State played along by accepting a proposed ballot summary for the measure that stresses that ”total” possible tenure in both the Senate and Assembly would be trimmed from 14 years to twelve.

Which could now be served in a single chamber.

Funny, the ballot summary doesn’t even mention that the term limit would be boosted 100 percent in the Assembly, 50 percent in the Senate. Of course, term limits are about limiting the tenure on individual offices, not some possible combination of offices.

The whole thing is a rather slithy-toved hat trick. The sordid strategy depends on voters’ never finding out what Prop 93 really does. I bet they will find out.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Hillary is up; Barack is down. Or is that vice versa? Mike is up; Rudy’s down.

Many presidential campaigns have their ups and downs, until only one remains “up.”

But the real story is: you are up.

It’s now your turn. Vote!

But as sly economists and clever mathematicians like to remind us, no one voter usually makes a difference. Our votes may be counted (if we’re lucky), but they don’t count — not like our dollars do. We voters don’t decide elections, individually. Certainly not presidential elections, which are designed to tally up preferences from huge pools of voters; it’s the ratio of the divergent streams of those pools that decide elections. Our individual votes are like drops in the bucket.

But, closer to home, our power — even as individuals — increases.

There are fewer voters, locally, so when we convince a friend or neighbor of the wisdom of X, or the justice of Y, or the pure thrilling statesmanship of Z, our influence can really amount to something.

So, if you are concerned with, say, the growing instability of our non-invested national pension system (Social Security), keep tabs on the issue, keep asking questions, keep needling the complacent. But don’t stop there. Look closer to home. Have your county, city, or state politicians enacted non-invested or even unfunded pension systems?

They have in many areas around the country. And citizens have fought back. They’ve made a difference.

You can, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Last October, two colleagues and I were indicted by Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson. Our crime? Helping a petition drive to limit the growth of government spending.

Supposedly, we three willfully violated an arbitrary residency requirement for signature gatherers.

As I’ve explained at the freepauljacob.com website, we acted in good faith to comply with Oklahoma’s unconstitutional regulation. If the prosecution succeeds - if we do get jailed for ten years - it would be a chilling precedent. And sadly, that’s the point: to intimidate citizens from making any future petitions of government that might inconvenience the political establishment.

That’s why a Steve Forbes editorial asked, “Has North Korea Annexed Oklahoma?” and termed Edmondson’s actions “thuggish.” A Wall Street Journal editorial called the AG’s prosecution “bizarre,” expressing fear it would make citizens “think twice before challenging political elites.”

Several Oklahoma legislators have called the prosecution wrong-headed and politically-motivated.

So, Edmondson has begun - you guessed it - a PR offensive. In an opinion piece for a local paper, he wrote, “The Oklahoma Supreme Court and the multicounty grand jury both independently found these defendants to be in substantial violation of Oklahoma law.”

But wait a second. Neither a court, nor the grand jury, have found us guilty of anything. As an attorney and the highest law enforcement officer in the state, Edmondson must know this.We get our day in court. See you there.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

What if government could throw you in jail for recording what it does in public?

That may not be what America is coming to. It does seem to be what Newton, Massachusetts, is coming to.

A Newton activist hid his camera during a 2006 political protest in order to tape a police officer. He has been convicted for — get this — wiretapping. That thing you do — or the government does, with or without a warrant — to covertly record conversation that the parties have reason to believe is private.

A district court judge sentenced Peter Lowney to six months probation and imposed a $500 fine for secretly continuing to film after police had ordered him to stop. Lowney hid the still-functioning camera in his coat.

$500. The going rate, I guess, for being a reporter on the job even after somebody in authority objects to being held accountable. Lowney was also ordered to remove any video of the event from the Internet.

Could have been worse. In some societies, watchdogs suffer long imprisonment or even the firing squad for daring to collect and provide such evidence.

But what a lunatic precedent. Is this really a road we want to travel in the United States?

Do we need a formal federal law protecting the civil right of citizens to photograph, film, and otherwise record the public conduct of public officers? That’s what some commentators are advocating. It should be unnecessary. But I guess it isn’t.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.