The St. Petersburg Times already reported that former Gov. Jeb Bush likes Amendment 5. But The Gradebook forgot to mention the swipe he took along the way at Sen. Mike Haridopolos, R-Melbourne, who's set to become Senate president in 2010 and got a lot of ink today (see here and here) as Amendment 5's top opponent.

During a discussion with reporters at his education summit last week, Bush said of Amendment 5: "Unfortunately, I think some of the emerging leaders of the Legislature who'd have to deal with this don't want to deal with it … I don't know what they would rather do. To me, it'd be a lot of fun to deal with a big issue rather than worrying about the new state song or something."

Bush went on to say he liked Amendment 5 because it was a "big idea," then took another swipe: "We need to deal with the challenges we face in bigger ways, rather than small ways where we play like we're solving a problem but moving on to the next thing and playing like we're solving that one."

Sound like anyone we know?

- Ron Matus, state education reporter