by Paul Jacob

Defenders of political privilege and stasis argue against term limits. But sometimes you feel they're just pulling words out of a hat and stapling them together at random. Take a recent case in Florida.

A big battle raged this year in the Sunshine State over a ballot measure hatched by state legislators to weaken legislative term limits. Cowed by angry constituents, the lawmakers have withdrawn the measure.

Chalk up another win in the continuing battle to deflect power-hungry careerists. They'll be back, though, to try to subvert Florida's term limits again. Maybe not today, tomorrow, next year or the year after that. But too soon. Because that's what career politicians do.

Well, what do journalistic hacks do? Here's the lead of an editorial that appeared recently in the Tallahassee Democrat:

"In a blunt, bite-sized assessment of what's wrong with term limits, state Sen. Bill Posey last week offered this ugly truth: 'If you're a lobbyist, and you've got a lot of money invested in (a lawmaker), you want to keep him around for 12 years instead of eight.'"

Frank, yes. But the editorialist trudges on to say that limits thus clearly lead to "less representative" government . . . as if the ability of special interests to keep lawmakers in their hip pockets were the very pith and moment of democracy.

Maybe he aimed for satire. Too subtle for me . . . and no, I'm not placing his writings on my shelf along with Voltaire and Swift.

Common Sense is published by Americans for Limited Government. Their website can be visited at www.limitedgov.org.