You'd think they would've learned it in high school civics, but the people who are sent to the Senate for confirmation to staff the executive branch are people who are expected to follow the directives of the President, not the priorities of Senators of an opposing party.

Today, former Rep. Jim Nussle was confirmed 69-24 to head the White House Office of Management and Budget, but not without a demonstration of ignorance from some Democrats.

But several Democrats in the three-hour debate sharply criticized the fiscal policies of the administration, and said a 16-year congressman who in his votes allied with Bush would do little to change the course.

“Mr. Nussle is the wrong man at the wrong time for this position,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who generally votes with Democrats.

Sanders is, of course, a Socialist, but then again, so are many Democrats -- only Sanders is honest enough to own up to it.

North Dakota’s two Democratic senators both said they were opposing Nussle to send a message to the administration about their opposition to the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which the president wants to see extended, and the size of the federal deficit and debt. The rich have benefited but not the middle class, they said.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., who had supported Nussle in a committee vote, said he and Nussle always have had a good personal relationship “but this goes beyond a personal relationship – he has been an architect of this fiscal policy.”

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., called the nomination an “outrage” and urged its rejection.

“I would not vote for a man who put a bag over his head in the House of Representatives” because it shows “hostility to this great democracy,” said Boxer. She was referring to an episode early in Nussle’s career in which he donned a bag to protest the House check-bouncing scandal.

Sen. Boxer isn't bright enough to understand what shame is, nor what the Constitution requires of people in her position. The political posturing in cases like this only serves to reinforce the politics-over-principle mentality that is the norm for too many in Washington.