Who's in charge, here? Politicians sometimes pretend it's the people, but that fine old republican notion gets lost in their actions. Consider the way so many politicians fight term limits. The voters put them into law and then their so-called representatives squirm to get out from under them.

Witness the recent writhings in Nebraska.

Actually, there's a long history of anti-term-limit squirm, there.

First time out, the term limits initiative won by 68 percent of the vote. But a challenge to the initial petition wound its way, long after the election, to the state's Supreme Court. The court accepted the opposition's whacko interpretation of the number of petition signatures required to place a measure on the ballot. Their constitutional augury determined the petition signature requirement to be nearly twice the requirement published by the Secretary of State and the Attorney General.

Though the function of petition requirements had been more than fulfilled by the overwhelming majority vote, and though the term limits petition contained far more than the number of signatures state government officials had said were required at the time, the judge threw out the whole term limit amendment. Why? Guess. (Hint: judges, too, are politicians.)

Now, with double the requirements for signature gathering, and a shorter deadline than before, term limit supporters rushed to qualify the initiative for the ballot again. All the mavens said it would take a miracle to get the signatures. The miracle happened, and the initiative went before the voters, who again supported it 68 to 32 percent.

This term limit law included limits not only on terms in the state's unicameral Senate but also on legislators sent to D.C. At that time, a case regarding that same subject was before the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided that only an amendment to the U.S. Constitution could limit by law the terms of U.S. Representatives and Senators. So the same Nebraska Supreme Court seized on the federal decision and threw out the entire term limit law rather than just the provisions to limit terms on federal representation.

Term limit activists got back at the judge who authored the opinions, campaigning against him in a retention vote. For the first time in the state's history, a sitting Supreme Court justice was not retained. Fittingly, the vote against the judge was 68 to 32 percent.

Then the activists put a revised term limit measure on the ballot to limit only state senators. Again a clear majority of Nebraskans imposed term limits on their legislators. But still the anti-term limiters kept their knives sharp.

Earlier this year, the unicameral appeared poised to place a measure on the ballot to either repeal or weaken the term limits. But after the fire storm that erupted when Nebraska voters caught wind of it, Speaker Kermit Brashear of Omaha told the committee considering the bills, "We have been told three times 'no,' and I think we should just give it up."

But the kings and queens of our professionalized politics don't give up power easily — no matter the law, no matter what the voters say. So now a number of termed-out reps are going to court: Ernie Chambers, Marian L. Price, and Dennis Byars. As if to prove beyond any doubt the need for term limits, these senior solons are suing to overturn yet another vote of the people that they are supposed to be serving.

And what a strange suit they've brought. Much of it hinges on the interpretation of one clause in the term limit law. They interpret it in a new and exciting way, a way that would force Senators out earlier than anyone would have expected. They are not arguing that their interpretation of the law should be enforced, however. They are arguing that the law should be thrown out "as a mess."

The fact that no one else has ever interpreted the wording in the way they insist it reads suggests that, just perhaps, they are willing to grab at anything, anything to tear down the term limits they don't like. The Secretary of State, for instance, never considered anything other than the common sense reading of the law.

Amusingly, their own suit is itself a mess, bringing up idiotic and irrelevant subjects like the state's "unique unicameral legislature."

The whole thing should be filed in the "what were they thinking?" file. You know, the round tubular file on the floor by the desk.

State rep Dennis Byars has so far got the most attention. To gain grounds for the suit, he threw his hat in the ring. The Secretary of State threw it right back at him. He metaphorically crumpled his hat under his arm and went to the courthouse.

"What this is about is the Constitution," Byars informs us. "It's not about me." Continued...