By Paul Jacob

Give me a D! What does it stand for? Dumb.

The world's most famous cheerleader group, the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, calls Texas home. The state's voters twice sent a former cheerleader (our current president) to the governor's mansion. With all this experience with cheerleading, you'd expect less . . . jeerleading.

And yet the lower house of Texas's legislature recently passed a bill banning "sexually suggestive" routines by pep squads at high school events.

Now, I'm certainly not advocating suggestive routines, but this may be in the eye of the beholder. For starters, stuff hundreds of adolescent males into a stadium or field house, parade adolescent girls in short skirts past them, and, well, you get the idea.

But I have a different suggestion. Is this really a matter for any legislature?

In my day, when teen behavior went too far, it was up to the parents and school administrators to supervise. Did we have to lobby the legislature to tell the kids to tone it down a bit?

Give me an N! For No.

The Republic has somehow survived years of fight songs, human pyramids, and raging hormones. Since high school girls picked up pom-poms in the early 1930s, we've weathered the Great Depression, two world wars, disco, and reality TV.

The law is overkill, to boot. State law already prohibits public lewdness by students. Perhaps that's why no member of Texas's upper house has signed on.

So why did Texas reps pile onto this law? Peer pressure?

This is Common Sense. I'm Paul Jacob.

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