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Rarely has a newspaper article made me as angry as the story of a recent drug bust on Omaha. It reported the arrest of 33-year-old Jolene Cortez for possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver. Apparently, she had a scale and $2,775 in cash in her apartment, too. Sounds routine, doesn't it? Open and shut. Just like cases all over the country. Well, not quite.

According to the sympathetic portrayal of Cortez in the Omaha World-Herald, she was a loving, single mother and elementary school teacher who, though she shopped at thrift stores and ate leftovers, felt obligated to sell methamphetamine in order to make ends meet. Can't you just hear the violins playing?

Speaking about her alleged financial hardship, Cortez complained that she could not pay her rent, utilities, car payment, insurance, gas, food, student loans and the expenses of raising a child, including after-school day care, on her $30,841 a year teacher's salary.

"It's overwhelming," she told newspaper reporter Kristen Zagurski, who, based on the tone of her article, ate up this drivel with a spoon. "It's hard to make it on the salary that they gave us. I don't want to live lavishly, but I would like, if my son needs a haircut, to be able to get a haircut for him. I needed a little bit of help."

I think I feel a tear coming on.

There were the obligatory quotes from friends and acquaintances who said that Jolene Cortez was, in fact, a fine person who would never hurt anyone. One neighbor even said that although she doesn't condone drug activity, she doesn't blame Jolene if what she is accused of doing turns out to be true. "She was just trying to make ends meet," the neighbor said.

The article went on to inform us that Cortez denied doing anything illegal around her son or at school, and that she doesn't take drugs herself.

Isn't that nice? I feel all warm and fuzzy about her lawbreaking now. She has a set of rules she follows for her felonious conduct, and a sense of responsibility toward the people she loves. She would never do anything to hurt them. She's an ethical drug dealer. All she did was help others destroy their lives by selling them one of the most corrosive and addictive substances ever concocted.

Compounding Jolene Cortez's cavalier attitude toward her drug dealing is the viewpoint of the school officials, who have suspended her with pay, and the newspaper editors, whose pursuit of an agenda apparently justifies portraying a criminal in a sympathetic light in order to call attention to the issue of teacher pay.

I don't care about this woman's excuses for her criminal activity. I don't care about her financial hardships. Other people, including teachers, live on less than she is being paid. They take second and even third jobs to "make ends meet." They don't contribute to the addiction and the deaths of other people by selling drugs.

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