That being said, they also encouraged us to fully develop and to explore clubs and groups and to participate in a wide variety of extracirricular activities (with the caveat being, that if the grades suffered, the activities went bye-bye).

And that author clearly never met my parents.

Blue Dog Democrats remain deeply frustrated with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's leadership and are signaling they are ready to break ranks and cut deals with Republicans.

In an interview with Roll Call last week, the leadership team of the fiscally conservative group talked about its vision for the 112th Congress -- and its frustration over how Pelosi ran the 111th.

SNIP

Blue Dogs have already started having informal discussions with Republicans in the hope that they can help forge bipartisan deals like they did between President Bill Clinton and the GOP after the 1994 Republican takeover.

"We have an opportunity that's the same opportunity the Blue Dogs did with welfare reform," said Rep. Jim Matheson (Utah), who co-chairs the Blue Dog Coalition's political action committee and replaced retired Rep. John Tanner (Tenn.) as one of the Democratic Caucus' chief deputy whips. "They were the bridge and they were the group that held that together in a bipartisan way to make it happen."

Matheson said it is too early to say which issue will be this Congress' equivalent of welfare reform, but he noted that creating jobs, helping small businesses and reining in the deficit are areas on which the Blue Dogs intend to focus.

Blue Dog Co-Chairman Mike Ross said the group can be the bridge between the parties in a grand deficit-cutting compromise.

"We would welcome an opportunity to work with this new majority and the White House on developing a responsible plan to put us on a path toward restoring fiscal discipline and accountability to our government," the Arkansas Democrat said. "We think we're the perfect group to do that."