Senate "Majority" Leader Rodney Tom insists that he supports the State Dream Act, a bill that would extend college financial to qualified undocumented immigrants. But he doesn't. He really doesn't. In fact, nobody is more responsible for crushing these dreams than Tom himself.

It was Tom who betrayed the voters who elected him to the Senate as a Democrat, allying himself with Republicans in a naked power grab that gave Tom the "Majority" Leader position, and left Republicans in control of all the top committees. It was Tom's treachery that gave Republican Senator Barbara Bailey the chair of the Senate Higher Education Committee. And now that Bailey is refusing to let the Dream Act come up for a vote (a vote it would win), it is Tom, as Majority Leader, who is allowing the bill to die by refusing to use the parliamentary powers at his disposal to force the bill to the floor.

Don't blame Bailey. This is what she does. Blaming Bailey for killing the Dream Act would be like blaming my dog for killing squirrels. No, this is all Tom's fault. Had he not double-crossed his Democratic colleagues—had he not deposed Senator Ed Murray as Majority Leader—then the Dream Act would surely have sailed through a Democratic-controlled Higher Education Committee (with Tom's support, he claims) on its way to a comfortable victory on the floor.

So when smart, hard-working children who had no say over being brought to this country without documentation are denied the college education that would allow them to rise up out of poverty and give back to the nation that has nurtured them, they should blame Tom.

Politics has consequences. Thousands of children will be denied a college education due to the personal ambitions of Rodney Tom. And don't let him tell you (or himself) otherwise.