Advocates of campaign finance regulation, what George Will calls “speech rationing,” say letting corporations — including non-profit corporations — spend unlimited money on political speech corrupts democracy.

Actually, muzzling speech is what corrupts democracy and the point of it: i.e., to protect our freedoms, including freedom of speech.

Protecting these freedoms is a vital political good, even if some speech is deplorable.

The recent Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. FEC, dramatically strikes down unconstitutional limits on electioneering by businesses and non-profits. But it leaves intact unconstitutional limits on their direct contributions to campaigns.

It also doesn’t touch requirements forcing campaign donors to disclose personal information. In his partial dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas pointed to how California donors giving more than $100 must reveal their names and addresses, info then publicized on the Internet. Supporters of a recent controversial ballot proposition were subjected to intimidation and property damage as a result.

The disclosure laws have spawned what Justice Thomas calls “a cottage industry that uses forcibly disclosed donor information to pre-empt citizens’ exercise of their First Amendment rights.”

Thomas is right. And campaign finance regulation should be tossed out root and branch.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Last week, two major speeches caught our attention.

Barack Obama wagged his finger at the Supreme Court and orated in front of Congress. He said the state of the union is sound.

Apple’s Steve Jobs gave the other big speech, presenting the new iPad, a portable device that accesses the Web, allows users niftily to buy and read e-books, and much more.

Which speech will usher in real change?

Both have their critics. Many people no longer trust Obama, whether he’s pushing more government or a freeze. And many folks second-guess Apple’s newest project, despite Jobs’s spectacular success record.

For my part, I don’t buy Obama’s agenda. But I probably won’t buy an iPad, either. I tend to regard even the best new tech breakthroughs as just more vacuum cleaners. They really do suck . . . one’s time, anyway.

But to succeed, Apple doesn’t need my excitement. Just enough from others.

Early in each of Apple’s revolutions, it was hard to prophesy success, with certainty.

The neat thing about a possible neo-Gutenberg Age of tablets, e-books and virtual libraries is that I will still be able to read a normal book. One the other hand, if Obama gets his way, his policies will, willy nilly, crowd out better ones.

Still, it’s heartening to realize that to most of us the eloquence of a revolutionary thing means more, now, than the eloquence of any politician.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The age of the glittery mirror ball and loud, simple dance music is over.

According to Ian Schrager, as recorded in Vanity Fair’s recent oral history of disco, it “wasn’t AIDS that made the nightclub business difficult. Government regulations did it in.”

Schrager and his partner set up their first nightclub, in Queens, for $27,000. The more famous Studio 54 — or is that “infamous”? — went up for $400,000.

“Now,” says Schrager, a major real estate developer, “with all the regulations, fire codes, sprinkler requirements, neighborhood issues, community planning boards . . . before you even put on the first coat of paint, you’re into it for over a million dollars. What it’s done is disenfranchise young people.”

And it’s not just disco that’s suffered. It’s worth remembering one sad side effect of all the red tape cities and states put up to new enterprises. It leaves the private sector desperate to focus on the surest forms of wealth generation, less able to serve niche markets. Like discos.

Nowadays, to establish and run non-school,  non-work activities for young people, volunteers organize community events, write grant applications and hold out their hats. This crowds out funding for needier, worthier charities, and litters our towns with poorly run government-funded efforts.

Personally, I don’t like disco — but could it be that things were better when entrepreneurs like Schrager set the stage?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Television theologian Pat Robertson attributes Haiti’s current woes to a two-century-old pact:

[S]omething happened a long time ago in Haiti. . . . They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, “We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.” True story. And so, the devil said, “OK, it’s a deal.” . . . Ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other. . . .

Pact with the devil? True story??

The Haitians threw off the French long before the rule of Napoleon III . . . but, whatever. It is doubtful that any amount of thumbing through an encyclopedia before going on air would have saved Pat.

Soon after the Robertson clip we got the clip from actor Danny Glover. Glover says climate change caused the earthquake. Apparently, he was mad about the failed summit. “They’re all in peril because of global warming . . . because of climate change. . . . When we did what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens. . . .”

Hey, why not? “Global warming” causes everything! Maybe even the heated hectoring of Pat and Danny.

Where’s the common sense?

Oh, here: This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

If you can’t pay your bill at a restaurant, management may set you to washing dishes to cover the cost of your meal.

Or so it’s said — I’ve never heard of it actually happening. Clean dishes are a must for serving food to paying customers; restaurants simply can’t wait around to press non-paying customers into service. Instead, they hire folks to do the dishes.

This came to mind when our president and congressional leaders began pushing to raise the federal government’s debt ceiling by $1.9 trillion.

The raise would allow the federal debt to increase to $14.3 trillion, about the size of our country’s entire yearly economic output.

Senator Max Baucus of Montana is all for raising the limit. He says it simply must be done: “We have gone to the restaurant,” he explained. “We have eaten the meal. Now the only question is whether we will pay the check.”

No dishwashing for Baucus.

Most of us avoid Congress’s unseemly situation by looking in our wallets for cash or ready credit before we order the filet mignon, not after we’ve consumed it.

I’m no wizard of high finance, but hey: If we want to stop piling debts onto our children, at some point we will have to prevent our so-called representatives from borrowing more trillions.

Oh, and if a congressman enters your diner, better make him pay cash up front.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.