Here’s an idea about how to help businesses survive in this troubled economic climate: Stop allowing an unaccountable regulatory board — unclad by even a fig leaf of constitutionality — to ride roughshod over public companies.

In the wake of the Enron scam and other financial scandals several years ago, Congress enacted a packet of onerous new regulations. This Sarbanes-Oxley legislation created a regulatory board, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, to issue arbitrary edicts, impose arbitrary penalties, etc.

One problem with this star chamber is that its officers are neither appointed by the executive branch nor approved by Congress, as required by the Constitution.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Free Enterprise Fund want this practice to end. CEI explains that if the president were obliged to appoint and dismiss members of this board, as required by the Constitution’s Appointments Clause, “he will be on the hook for their policy failures, and thus have an interest in making them develop sound policies. . . . He won’t be able to blame the red tape on an unaccountable agency. . . .”

But the two organizations are not merely publishing op-eds and issuing press releases. They have filed suit, taking their case against the oversight board to the courts. And now the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case.

At last, this oversight board gets some much-needed oversight.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Last week, former Congressman and presidential candidate Bob Barr sent out a simple admonishment to his Twitter list: “Let’s have a real debate on Judge Sotomayor, not hysterics. . . .”

Unlikely. Appellate Judge Sonia Sotomayor is precisely the kind of jurist to divide us. She’s said things that seem racist and sexist and absurd. But, then, if I criticize her for those things, her supporters will call what I say racist or sexist or absurd.

And none of us want racism, or sexism, much less absurdity.

Let’s try sympathy, instead. It’s not easy to promote a constitutional philosophy consistent and widely acceptable at a time when much of what the federal government does belies — abridges — repudiates! — the Constitution itself.

Take the First Amendment. It begins, “Congress shall make no law . . .” No ambiguity. And yet Congress makes all sorts of law regarding speech, including regulating speech about politics, negating the whole point of the First Amendment.

What part of “no law” don’t today’s jurists understand? In many cases it’s the part where the states have power to fashion their own solutions to problems. It’s called the Tenth Amendment. And it’ usually ignored by all mainstream legal experts, along with the Ninth.

I’d like to have a quiet debate on this. Sotto voce, you might say. The opposite of hysterically loud.

That would be more important, even, than a debate about Judge Sotomayor.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Supreme Court Justice David Souter is retiring. Apparently, Washington life doesn’t suit Souter, and, frankly, that’s the best thing I’ve heard in his favor.

A lot of people now speculate on whom our president will nominate, and how it will impact our country’s future. What will Congress do with the candidate? Will the ugly maw of politics sully the whole process . . . again?

One insight to glean from the second-guessing, speculation, and rumination is how sad it is that so much power rests on one selection.

When our leaders select a Supreme Court justice, they are selecting someone for life, really. Very few justices do as Souter has done, retire early, before their grasp on law and philosophy and politics might have dimmed a bit.

And that means that the job — already strategically important — becomes the Pearl of Great Price around which a lot of ugly politics scrambles.

How much better it would be were the Constitution amended to set terms for the justices, and limits to those terms!

Why not set terms to something like, say, eight years, and limit them to two? Sixteen years is plenty enough time in this office, way too much in most others.

Such a limit would make the position a little less crucial, and the turnover in the Court more evenly rotating.

And, thus, the appointment process a little less hysterical and ugly.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Americans living in the District of Columbia are taxed by the federal government, but not really represented. To address this, a bill now in Congress would grant DC’s single delegate the right to cast a vote. The Senate has approved the bill, but attached a provision on gun regulation to which many in the House object. So House leadership is still mulling over what to do.

Both chambers miss the bigger problem: DC is a territory and our Constitution clearly states that only states shall have full represention in Congress.

There are a number of ways around this. The residential areas of the District could become part of Maryland or Virginia, for instance. Or the Constitution could be amended.

But our current leaders prefer ignoring the Constitution entirely.

For example, Attorney General Eric Holder recently ignored and even refused to release a report from his own Office of Legal Counsel that found the legislation to be unconstitutional.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, DC’s non-voting delegate, also pooh-poohs the constitutional issue. “I don’t think members [of Congress] are in the least bit affected in their votes on the question of its constitutionality,” she says. “People vote their politics in the House and in the Senate.”

Sad but true. Our representatives take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, but their real allegiance is to their own petty politics.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Here’s a quiz. “[A] populist pep rally that’s constantly interrupted by applause.” This statement refers to

A. The shameful quadrennial nominating conventions of the Democratic and Republican Parties.
B. The constitutionally mandated State of the Union Address.
C. The Oscars.

It could be any of the three. There’s too much clapping in our society, not enough listening. This goes for your local PTA meeting as well as the annual presentation of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

But Gene Healy of the Cato Institute was talking about the State of the Union speeches. “In our constitutional system,” he recently explained in a Cato Weekly Video, “Congress is supposed to be the lead dog and the dominant branch. And they really shouldn’t be jumping up out of their seats to clap at every outsized promise like they’re members of the Supreme Soviet cheering a new grain quota.”

Healy says that next year, when Obama must offer up the annual State of the Union, he should begin the speech by saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, please hold your applause till the end.”

I say, go further. Do like Thomas Jefferson did: Write up the report and send it to Congress. A public speech is not required.

And if Barack Obama cannot stand giving up the chance to use his golden voice and silver tongue, then deliver the speech as a podcast, for Congress to watch on their iPods.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.