Jared Gray is an 18-year-old high school student who works as a janitor for Southern Utah University. One day he found a bag of cash lying in the parking lot, obviously one of the school’s deposit bags.

The bag was labeled with the amount: $108,000.

Jared didn’t hesitate to return the cash, saying he was raised to be honest. To express their gratitude, SUU officials will give him a scholarship if he attends the university.

Most people would applaud Jared’s honesty. Sadly, though, not everyone. A number of people, posting to the CBS News website, called the young man a “loser” or “stupid” for not keeping the dough.

Apparently, they assume it’s reasonable to steal whenever one is unlikely to get caught. If so, wouldn’t it also be reasonable actively to pursue such opportunities — in short, to become a career criminal?

That makes we who work “suckers.”

If you’re going to live a moral life, it’s common sense to live it on principle. This means you don’t become an entirely different person, a crook, when it’s allegedly “easy” to do so. Easy, that is, for a person of poor character.

Starting life as a crook would have blighted Jared’s whole life. Instead, now he’ll always be able to recall his easy good deed with pride; and, happily, people who know him will be able to trust him . . . stuff that’s more valuable than money itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

When I was a lad, most people insisted that government was the only institution that could provide a whole, vast array of services, including water and sewage.

Times have changed. Governments all over the world are loosening up their allegedly “natural” monopolies, allowing private companies to go to work.

In Alabama, a number of private developers now see an advantage in going into the sewer business. Rates of government-run sewage systems are so high that developers can make money by setting aside acres to treat the sewage of their own developments. And save customers money, to boot.

An article in Alabama’s Birmingham News begins like this: “Homebuyers at a new Ross Bridge neighborhood in Hoover could enjoy lower, more stable sewer rates than their neighbors on Jefferson County sewer if a privately run sewer plant is approved at the site, builders and regulators say.”

The article quotes a local director of environmental protection saying that it just makes more sense to treat sewage closer to the homes. Centralized sewage is cumbersome and too expensive. “In ten years,” he said, “this will be the primary way domestic wastewater is handled in the country.”

So, when the subject of sewage comes up, don’t sputter. You know what to say: Give the efficiency of the market a chance. Don’t get soaked by government monopoly, natural or otherwise. After all, there’s no use flushing your money down the . . . drain.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Politicians often do everything they can to get out from under term limits — in Knox County, Tennessee, to the extreme. The politicians there simply ignored the limits, and went on with business as usual.

Then came a lawsuit. It went to the State Supreme Court, where the justices ruled, in effect, that of course the term limits law passed by the voters applies.

So, in January, the County Council held a meeting to replace its illegal members. That is when they showed their true colors.

Dan Barry, writing in the New York Times, charmingly describes the event: “Before an audience of hundreds, the commission staged a political version of a bedroom farce, with its members calling repeated recesses, retreating to a back room, shouting at one another and even swearing in one appointee during a break.”

The upshot? The old council filled 12 new spots, with likely suspects, including

• the son of one outgoing commissioner
• the wife of another
• the father of a sitting commissioner
• the sheriff’s top aide.

As Barry put it, “a catfish could have been appointed if properly connected.”

But this spectacle spurred a huge number of people who usually stay away from politics to get involved. A lot of new faces ran in the February primary, and persist for the coming August general election.

Yup: Term limits to the rescue.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

An appeals court has shot down a lawsuit against gun makers filed by New York City.

New York is one of many cities that has sued gun manufacturers on the grounds that the gun makers knew their guns would be used in crimes and sold them anyway. Supposedly the companies failed in their responsibility by not policing retailers, vendors entitled by law to carry and sell those guns.

With equal logic one could go after knife manufacturers for selling knives. Or the manufacturers of any object heavy enough to hit somebody over the head with.

Or PC makers. Plenty of crimes have been committed using a laptop. Not to mention the various software on these machines. Or telephones. Cell phones. Have any crimes been committed using these instruments? Are all the manufacturers of these items properly liable for the conduct of costumers who use their products to break the law?

New York’s lawsuit was not about a lapse in any company’s legitimate responsibility. It was about a new way to try to impose gun control and further restrict the rights of citizens to acquire personal armaments . . . which people use not just to hunt or collect, as some presidential candidates would have it. Guns are also handy in defense against violent assault.

So, now that that this indefensible tactic has been shot down, will it stay down?

That, we’ll see.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Just “being a professor” doesn’t make you smarter than your students. Or more grounded in reality. Or common sense.

Take Priya Venkatesan, a Dartmouth academic who teaches a class in something-or-other to do with science, postmodernism and higher or lower consciousness or something.

She is suing some of her former students. Why? Maybe it’s like climbing Mount Everest: You do it to see if you can. And this professor apparently thinks modern anti-discrimination laws entitle her to go after students simply for criticizing her teaching.

Roger Kimball has the scoop over at PajamasMedia.com. He quotes Professor V’s minatory email to her students. In it she merely says she is suing “some of you” under Title VII of what she blunderingly calls “anti-federal” discrimination laws. She obviously didn’t like her students’ class evaluations, which she ominously says she will reproduce in a book.

Don’t wait for her to find a publisher. Many of the evaluations have already found their way onto the Internet. Typical criticisms include “awful,” “nonsensical,” “worst course ever.” Sure, we can’t know the quality of her teaching for certain without trekking to Dartmouth and sitting in. But from her course description and her email’s grammar and logic I’m willing to credit the students’ insights.

More I shan’t say, as I don’t wish to be named in Professor V’s lawsuit. My lawyer is overworked already.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.