Common Sense with Paul Jacob

A daughter sues her father for grounding her. A court agrees that the punishment was too severe. The court overrules father, overturns punishment. What?

This is happening in Canada. So it’s not anything we in the States need worry about. Yet.

I didn’t quite believe this story at first. But it’s true. The unnamed 12-year-old was forbidden to go on a field trip because she disobeyed rules about her use of the Internet. She chatted on websites that her father had tried to block. And she posted pictures of herself that he regarded as inappropriate. He says this is simply her latest misconduct.

Justice Suzanne Tessier of the Quebec Superior Court acts as if grounding your child were tantamount to child abuse. And how dare Dad be concerned about online predators and such!

The lawyer for the father, Kim Beaudoin, says it’s the job of parents to set boundaries. Er, yes. Of course it’s the job of parents to raise their own children, not the state’s job. Or does Judge Tessier believe that a bureaucrat should be installed in every home, lugging a hefty manual stipulating exactly when a parent may send Timmy to his room?

Should a judge who would make such a ludicrous, totalitarian decision even be allowed to remain on the bench? At the very least, Tessier should be spanked. And no TV for the rest of the week.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

When Tim Russert died, many journalists had many good things to say about the Meet the Press host. Russert did his homework. He asked tough but fair questions. He was a decent man, a family man, who never lost sight of the important things. He had a zest for life.

But in all the praise for Russert’s virtues, was something being overlooked?

Former CBS journalist Bernard Goldberg thinks so. When Goldberg’s book Bias, a critical examination of the media, was published in 2001, only one person on the network news shows would touch it with a ten-foot pole — even though the book was a bestseller and many Americans obviously thought the topic important.

The exception was Tim Russert, who spent an hour interviewing Goldberg on CNBC. Russert declared that “if there’s a liberal bias or a cultural bias [in the newsroom], we have to sit up and tackle it and discuss it. We have got to be open to these things.”

Peggy Noonan, the former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush, now writes commentary for the Wall Street Journal. There, she agreed with Goldberg: Russert was eager to give non-liberal points of view a hearing when other broadcast journalists turned a deaf ear.

Wouldn’t it be a good thing, Noonan reflects, if many of the journalists generically praising Russert for his open-mindedness and fairness paid more attention to the implications of their own words?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Choices. Gotta love ’em. But they can be a kick in the pants, too.

A few weeks ago I chose to criticize Subway for a kids’ essay contest that didn’t allow homeschoolers to participate. And I pointed out two misspellings in its printed rules. And, wouldn’t you know it, my readers detected several typos in the email version of my rant.

Radio listeners missed out on this bit of hilarity.

Subway had spelled “United States” as “Untied States,” and added an extra “t” to another word. I had used the wrong kind of “bear,” and left out a “c” in another word. Once an email’s out, it’s out . . . but right away I made sure the website had it right.

Since Subway’s instructions were printed, they had a harder time of it. But they were quick to correct the chief error I had chastised them for: Not allowing homeschoolers to participate in their contest.

When Subway realized that customers were angry, the company did more than confess to the lapse. With remarkable speed, Subway found a way to allow homeschoolers to compete.

This was a far more important problem than any typo. My proofreaders may have fallen a bit short in the homonym department, and someone at Subway got his or her fingers tangled. But leaving a contest open to everyone is very, very basic.

Thankfully, unlike in government, such mistakes tend to get fixed fast in the private sector. Why? Customers can choose to go elsewhere, taking their money.

That’s the kick in the pants.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Experience counts.

For years I’ve been saying that a person can bring applicable experience to a new job, including a legislative job, and be effective right away. An accountant might get elected and still, as a freshman legislator, look at a state budget and say, “Uh, folks, the government is spending more than it takes in.”

Maybe even a pilot or belly dancer could figure that out.

Incumbent lawmakers also say experience is important. But they’ll add that the only way to get experience relevant to legislation is by accumulating years in a single seat of power. They explain that they can’t learn the job until they’ve been around eight, ten, twenty years or so.

Such confession of incompetence might seem, to most people, more an argument for resigning than for being awarded permanent tenure. Or an argument for term limits. But the self-serving assertions of American incumbents now receive a powerful boost from overseas. From Cuba. From a son of the sainted communist soldier and mass murderer Che Guevera, head of the revolution.

Seems Camilo Guevera has endorsed Raul Castro’s ascendancy to the presidency of Cuba. Fidel, dictator for decades, has been ill. Earlier this year his brother Raul, one of Fidel’s most important flunkies for almost 50 years, took over. Camilo says “it would stupid not to take advantage of all that experience.”

Hey, that’s just what our “experienced” politicians say! Maybe we can send them to help Raul?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.