By Jerry Burke
If you ever have a chance to talk to a teacher outside the context of their important work, the top job-related issue they complain about isn't the kids. Teachers generally love the kids; that's the reason they got involved in such a very challenging calling.
No, there are two other things that none of my teacher friends can stand. No. 1, regardless of party
affiliation or political viewpoint, is administrations' giving them the business over the unfunded mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act. Get the standards up, they are told. Using what? the teachers ask. Ten percent less than you had last year is the response.
Hug the next teacher you see, folks. It ain't easy.
The other complaint I hear constantly, for hours on end, concerns students' parents. Not all of them, to be sure. But just enough of them - those who think the child they've raised, sacrificed for, and instilled with a firm work ethic is the second coming of Albert Einstein.
Why can't Johnny read? Because he's so smart. He beat Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in less than a week. He worked so hard on that report about W.C. Fields and his role in saving England from the Nazis. Why did you only give him a C?
Folks, allow me to be the first to tell you something you might not like to hear. Not every kid is suited to be the president of the United States (the office's present occupant is a bad example of this rule; blame the vast family fortune). It happens. It's OK.
But when it comes to your kid, it's hard to take those blinders off. Of course he or she is special. To you. Most people couldn't care less. I think my niece is the smartest 7-year-old on the planet. She's not really, but she's my niece. So there. Jerk.
You see, grades and teacher comments allow you to see a side of your child you may not realize exists. Sure, I was shocked that my niece is "sometimes bossy," because I always found it quite normal when she started throwing Skee Balls at me when I wouldn't give her any more quarters at the arcade. Doesn't every sweet, innocent child do that?
The same rules apply in big-person world. You might not think your political leaders would nominate people to positions that they aren't emotionally or intellectually prepared for, let alone qualified for. But it happens all the time.
And what should also happen all the time is the minority party doing everything it can to stop such an idiot from becoming a federal appellate judge, or a Homeland Security director, or ambassador to the U.N. You may think it is unfair, but consider this: When New York's own Bernard Kerik was grilled in the press about shady dealings and profiting on the misery of others, aren't you glad, at least in hindsight, that the eminently more qualified Michael Chertoff took the reins?
Since 2001, President Bush has had 205 of his 215 judicial nominations confirmed by the Senate, a confirmation rate of 95 percent. Those 10 rejections are, quite frankly, freaky. In the 1990s, Republicans stymied President Clinton's judicial nominees by holding them in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and with good reason. Some of them were pretty freaky, too.
The point is that when you're living in a world that has Republican appointees outnumbering Democratic appointees on 10 of the country's 13 appeals courts and accounting for 94 of the 162 active appeals-court judges, maybe demolishing the system of checks and balances in an attempt to acquire even more control may not be the best option.
If the "nuclear option" on filibusters is pulled now for the sake of an appointee like Priscilla Owens, whom even Attorney General Alberto Gonzales once accused of advocating "unconscionable judicial activism" while attempting to rewrite Texas abortion law rather than interpret it, like a judge is supposed to do, we're all in trouble.
When the political winds shift back to Democratic control of Congress, I - and, I'm certain, a vast majority of conservatives - will be glad that the minority party has the ability to stop some rotten judges from sitting atop some very important courts. The other side should always have that power.
