2010 has begun and we’re inundated with Top Ten Lists: Movies, Sports, Political Trends, What-Have-You. To be different, I thought about compiling a Top Ten List of the Decade’s Best Top Ten Lists, but then I realized . . .

This isn’t the first year of the decade, it’s the last.

A decade, proper, begins with the numeral 1 at the end, not the numeral 0. You see, our Gregorian Calendar does not figure the Current Era as starting with a Year Zero; it was constructed to start with a 1. And just as the first decade of the first millennium started with 1 and ended with 10, just so the first decade of the third millennium started with 2001 and will end with 2010.

Don’t jump the gun.

“Mere technicality”? Most ignore the true construction of the calendar. In the same way, even though Sunday is listed as the first day of the week, many working people think of Monday as the week’s first day.

But hey: “Mere” shmere. I don’t have a Best of the Decade list for you, and I’ll take what excuse I can find.

Besides, wouldn’t it be good to have another year to come up with something really great for our Top Ten Best of the Decade list?

For instance: Could 2010 be the year citizens themselves took control and corrected course?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

In recent years there’s been a spate of so-called “zero tolerance” policies — actually, zero common sense policies — in our schools, especially after Columbine and 9/11.

Last October in Delaware, six-year-old Zachary Christie faced 45 days of reform school for bringing a camping utensil to lunch. The gizmo combined a knife, fork and spoon. There was no evidence of evil intention. But the school thought their zero common sense policy against weapons had been violated. After a public outcry, the draconian punishment was dropped. The local school board modified some of its rules, though only for kindergartners and first-graders.

In Florida, lawmakers recently revised zero common sense policies statewide in hopes that only students who pose a genuine threat get expelled or arrested.

Hurray for any glimmer of a return to common sense. But why all these policies to begin with? Why instruct educators anywhere to respond maniacally to meaningless deviationism?

Maybe common sense and conscience are often the same thing.

Imagine if jay walking, littering and talking too loud in elevators were punished in comparably cruel and unusual fashion. Imagine judges and prosecutors always claiming they can’t distinguish between trivia and real crime — so better respond to both with equal force. Would we not accuse such meters-out of injustice of crimes of their own?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Paul Jacob says “Thank You”

What a difference a year makes. As I sit down to my Thanksgiving Day feast, that’s what I’m thinking.

And I certainly know I have a whole lot to be thankful for.

Let me start by thanking you. For caring about freedom and justice. For your critical support for this Common Sense program and for the Citizens in Charge Foundation — the nation’s only organization with the express purpose of defending the initiative and referendum rights of Americans.

Last year at this time, I still faced Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson’s politically-motivated persecution. I’ll never forget seeing the fear in the face of my then 9-year old daughter as I left for a trip to Oklahoma. That certainly wasn’t the America we know and love.

This year, as we enjoy Thanksgiving and prepare for the Christmas season, Lillie is wondering which Nintendo DS game she might score from Santa — not about her father being imprisoned 1,000 miles away from home.

As you know, the charges — that had threatened me with ten years in prison and a $25,000 fine —were dismissed many months ago. We won. The court even ordered that the indictment itself be expunged from the record.

Yet, without the good work of so many people, from across the country and across the political spectrum, folks who helped me pay for my legal defense and who roared their disapproval online, on the airwaves, in print and in person to raise public awareness to the story of the Oklahoma-3, the ugly cloud of an indictment would likely still be hanging over our heads.

Oh, sure, we would have ultimately prevailed in court. We were innocent. But with Oklahoma’s Attorney General delaying at every turn, it might have taken several more years to ever get our day in court.

What made the difference? The AG had felt the sting of public attention. Oklahomans — and Americans everywhere — successfully focused their revulsion on him, and against his attack on us and on initiative rights.

Thank you for coming to the rescue. Thanks for helping protect my rights, as well as the rights of Oklahomans — and yours.

This year saw more than freedom and vindication for the Oklahoma-3. We gained a bigger victory, too: Dramatic reform for Oklahoma’s petition process. First, the state’s residency law was struck down in federal court as a violation of the First Amendment. Then, three important bills were passed through the state legislature to open up the nation’s toughest petition process.

For the first time in decades, a legislature enacted real reforms to enable citizens to use the initiative process, instead of passing restrictions designed to cripple its use.

How did it happen?

The prosecution of the Oklahoma 3 certainly galvanized a number of activists. But had there not been aggressive efforts to organize and mobilize supporters, the energy and urgency created by such an outrageous prosecution would have dissipated.

In November of last year, Citizens in Charge Foundation helped Oklahomans for Initiative Rights put on a Saturday forum in Oklahoma City to discuss Oklahoma’s initiative process and ways to reform it. Hoping to fill a meeting room for 35 to 40 people, over 100 people overflowed the room.

We then worked with two legislators, Sen. Randy Brogdon (now running for governor) and Rep. Randy Terrill, to help them propose legislation to (a) increase the time citizens have to gather petitions, (b) reform the process so that challenges to petition language come before and not after all the signatures are collected, and (c) lower the state’s onerous petition requirement.

A number of great Oklahomans and super organizations, most notably Oklahomans for Responsible Government and Oklahomans for Initiative Rights, came together to push these bills. They lobbied day after day in the capitol as well as launching a 70-city tour of the state to mobilize grassroots support.

Not surprising, hard work leads to success. But best of all, our Citizens in Charge campaign has spread far beyond Oklahoma — it’s all across the country.

We helped pass legislation in Virginia to protect petitioners from arbitrary judicial abuse, we worked to form broad-based coalitions in 14 states that in turn were able to stop a number of anti-initiative bills and, just weeks ago, I traveled throughout California to begin organizing groups there. Across the country, we face concerted attacks against the right of citizens to be heard.

The old saying is true: All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. Thank you for being a good person doing so much to help put citizens in charge. Where we get organized, when we stand up to fight, we citizens are able to battle back and win against entrenched special interests and power politics.

At Citizens in Charge Foundation, we’re re-doubling our national efforts to organize and mobilize grassroots Americans to protect initiative rights and insure that citizens are in charge. To continue to protect and defend the freedom for which we are so thankful today.

Your support — your contributions and your activism — made this year’s victories possible. On behalf of my family and myself, please accept my deepest appreciation. Have a great Thanksgiving.

Sincerely,

Paul Jacob

President, Citizens in Charge Foundation

P.S. I can’t wait until next year. Let us at ‘em! Citizens in Charge Foundation has an aggressive campaign to defend the initiative process across the country and to turn the tide on the politicians and special interests in 2010. They seek to block us from checking government power. But we shall block them — through ballot initiatives and referendums and recalls.  With your continued support, we’ll take names and . . . put citizens back in charge.

Maybe it’s just me . . . and all other normal people. But I’m more worried about policemen who abuse authority than those too “culturally insensitive” in their cheerful greetings.

Yes, that’s the latest crisis: Bobbies who say “Good evenin’ all” as they walk the beat.

Or so says a police manual published in the English county of Warwickshire. The manual claims that this greeting is culturally confusing. Even if the beloved Dixon of Dixon of Dock Green, Britain’s long-running answer to The Andy Griffith Show, always opened with just those genial words.

A police spokesman explains that “‘afternoon’ and ‘evening’ are somewhat subjective in meaning. . . . In many cultures the term evening is linked to time of day when people have their main meal of the day.”

Someone’s gotta respond to this kind of concocted quandary, and a woman named Marie Clair of a group called the Plain English Campaign has taken on the chore. She asks: “Is anyone really going to be confused by [the word] ‘evening’? And if you can’t say what a lovely afternoon it is, what are you meant to say — what a lovely 3 PM?”

Other British agencies are targeting harmless words like “child” and “youngster.”

So, crime may be raging in the sceptered isle, but at least the bureaucratic monitors of politesse are bravely battling “insensitive” clarity and good will.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Words change over time, in meaning as well as sound. Since much of this comes from misuse, ignorance, laziness, and even wordplay, the more you know and the less fun-loving you are, the more a scold about words you will likely be.

Over the long run, though, for each loss in meaning we gain another. Might as well live with it.

In any case, the history of words can be fascinating. For example, did you know that “rob” and “robe” have the same ancestor?

Rob means to steal by force; robe means a loose flowing garment. Both hail from the same Old High German word, which I won’t try to pronounce. “Robe” comes close to the original meaning, of “clothes.” The original became synonymous with “stealing by force” because, in times long past, one of the most common items to grab from another was clothing. When one was robbed, one often had to disrobe. It was your robes you were being robbed of. Clothes were that valuable.

No wonder, then, when clothing was a robber’s favored booty, to become poor meant utter destitution. The destitute often wandered around with nary a scrap on them.

Not only have words changed, times have, too.

When next I catch a word in painful transition, I’ll remind myself that it’s more like a peaceful clothing change than a robbery.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.