My favorite rant.....I had several calls after my last column that informed me that former acting superintendent and head of Human Resources Dr. Manuela Pedraza was forced to retire. She didn’t exactly leave because she was ready to retire. It was pointed out that a year ago certain members of the FBISD school board, among them Lisa Rickert and Ken Bryant, who are running for reelection, thought so much of her they forced Superintendent Betty Baitland, who was willing to stay until the board found a replacement, to retire.

So, less than a year later, they don’t consider Dr. Pedraza able to run the HR department.

You remember Lisa Rickert. She is the one who at the meeting where she was elected president, she ordered Superintendent Betty Baitland to the foot of the table. Not only did Rickert not know how to run a school district, she didn’t even have good manners.

I’m sorry for continuing to harp on this, but the election is coming up and you need to pay attention. A bunch of us didn’t and our school district was in turmoil for more than a year.

Rickert has a very qualified opponent, Bob Broxson. Bob has run before and has children in the district, volunteers in his children’s schools and attends school board meetings.

You know what I think about his opponent.

In the other race, one candidate dropped out after hearing David Reitz at a forum and deciding they shared the same views. Two other people are running in that race--Noel Pinnock and Ann Hopkins, both of whom are guilty of the very thing I absolutely cannot support in a school board candidate--they are both in education. Pinnock is an administrator in Houston ISD and Hopkins is an administrator in Fort Bend ISD. I just don’t think teachers or administrators make good board members. They usually have an agenda.

Pinnock ran last time and didn’t make a timely filing of his campaign finance report, plus he used Fort Bend Commissioner Grady Prestage’s phone tree and called everybody at 3 a.m., even people who did not live in Fort Bend ISD. Boy, were there some hot responses to that!

Additionally, I’m not sure how smart Pinnock is. When he ran before, he wanted to know what gave me authorization to editorialize about the school board race. Uh, the Constitution, Mr. Pinnock.

Mr. Pinnock uses $10 words to describe educational stuff, and I’m not sure even he knows what they mean.

Ms. Hopkins, on the other hand, is an assistant principal at Hodges Bend. I can only assume she has a grievance against the district because I don’t believe a happy administrator would run for the school board.

I called John Healey last week to inquire about the status of the investigation into all the accusations the attorney hired at the behest of Rickert, Bryant, Magee, and Caldwell-- Lloyd Kelley--made about the former administration. That investigation has been on the books about a year. Healey needs to either close the book or indict someone. Healey, as usual, had a lame excuse about manpower. Whine, Excuse, Whine. Excuse. Whine. Whine.

Fort Bend Independent School District will host a District Town Hall Meeting at 7 p.m. this Thursday at the FBISD Administration Annex, 3119 Sweetwater in Sugar Land. Note: this is the annex, which used to be a church. Now is your chance to see what they have made of that building they bought from the former superintendent’s church.

At least he admits something.....Former Congressman Tom DeLay in his book admits that he deserved the nickname “Hot Tub Tom,” It’s about the only thing he admits as he criticizes the Republican leadership of Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, and even Dennis Hastert, his hand-picked assistant whip and eventual House Speaker.

He likens those who disagree with him to Hitler and calls them Communists on the one hand and Nazis on the other hand.

Now ol’ Tom made a mistake when he said I coined the “Hot Tub Tom” moniker. It was really Susan Duquesnay Bankston who used to write a column for this newspaper. However, I will admit to printing it. I think Tom hates Susan so much because she ran a daily blog about him before his demise that he can’t even give her credit to a nickname he now says he deserved.

In his book, Tom admits to drinking and womanizing. He even has a listing under the index-“DeLay, Tom, as womanizer.”

So to all the Fort Bend Republicans who have spent years excoriating me for criticizing DeLay--nanny, nanny, booboo. You’ve probably been drinking the DeLay koolaide and believe to this day that he is innocent. Take the word of a women who even Tom admits told you the truth--Tom DeLay’s actions are largely responsible for the loss of the House to the Democrats. DeLay was the poster child for everything the Republicans did to incur the wrath of the electorate.

Even the conservatives have found issue with DeLay’s credentials. Four members of the board of the American Conservative Union resigned when DeLay was asked to join the board.

The subtitle to Tom’s book is “One American’s Fight.” Maybe it should be “One American’s Lie.”

Other political news.....Congressman Nick Lampson had a quadruple coronary bypass surgery on Sunday to treat blockages of the arteries on the surface of his heart. He is expected to make a full recovery and will be out of the office for three weeks.

One blogger said we could expect to get a press release from Shelley Sekula Gibbs about Lampson’s absence and her perfect attendance record for the few days she served during the Christmas holidays.

Sekula Gibbs is running hard for congress two years from now, but she is about to hack off a lot of people in Fort Bend. It seems at every event she attends she asks to be recognized from the podium or to sit as someone’s table. Hey, Shelley, you are the “former.”