It is called a Taylor Tomahawk Percussion Reflex Hammer. You know it as the tool your doctor uses to tap your knee, gently or not, to test your neuromuscular response.

Such a device was invented in the 1820s by German doctor Max Wintrich. After many iterations, American physician John Madison Taylor in 1888 refined it into something similar to the instrument that bears his name and is still used today.

In this technological age of MRIs, CT scans, IVF, organ transplants, gene therapy, and 3D joint replacements, the medical profession still relies on this preindustrial “hammer” as a part of almost every routine examination. Some things don’t change.

The tool’s essential function is to gauge one’s knee jerk. Perhaps some enterprising reporter will buy a supply (a set of four sells for $17 on Amazon) and show up at the next meeting of the Democratic caucus in the Colorado legislature.

I strongly suspect the reflex hammer test will confirm what is already supremely apparent. Namely, it will show that the knee-jerk reaction of majority Democrats at the State Capitol is well-developed, and easily detectable.

Both parties have reflexive twitches. But one party, the blue crew, controls all the levers at the Capitol, so it is their reflexive spasms that matter.

With that in mind, let’s examine the entirely predictable and essentially silly kinks of Democrats in the form of two bills about to come up for their first hearings.

We will start with education. Democrats seem born with an innate, inexplicable hostility to charter schools. It must be coded deep in their DNA. Whenever given the reins of power, the Democratic instinct is to whittle away or worse at charters and the ability of parents to exercise this choice.

This year’s assault comes in the form of HB24-1363, with the innocuous title “Charter Schools Accountability.” “Mom and apple pie” must have already been used on some other legislation.

In reality, this bill is a 55-page grab bag of ideas from the tired, usual suspects to limit and harass charters and ultimately deprive more and more families of that alternative.

There are multiple troublesome elements in the bill. Just think about a couple of them. It would cut back on appeals of charter denials to the State Board of Education. It would set as grounds for revocation of a charter the fact that a district has or is even projected in the future to have declining enrollment. Why should charter schools, even the highest-performing ones, be the first on the chopping block? It would remove the cap of 5% of pupil revenues that a district can keep for administrative overhead. And so on.

Charters are hardly some passing fancy. About 15% of public school students in Colorado now attend such a school, which represents over 135,000 kids. Were charters a district unto themselves, they would be half again bigger than Denver Public Schools, the state’s largest.

Moreover, charters serve a higher percentage of English language learners and students of color than traditional public schools. More than 50% of Colorado’s charter school attendees are students of color.

All of which leads to the crux of the issue. Democrats, especially ones who embrace the “progressive” label, fancy themselves champions of the downtrodden and those of darker skin tones. However, when put to the test, too many invariably side with the comfortable interests of those in the underperforming educational establishment.

“Choice” is a signature value of Democrats around reproductive rights. But when it comes to where little Johnny or Maria goes to school, “choice” is frowned upon and gutted.

Let’s be clear. Those economically well-off will always have school choice. Those of lesser circumstances are the actual beneficiaries of public charter schools.

How opposition to charters became part of the catechism of “equity” and “opportunity” minded Democrats is beyond me. It is time for “progressives” to resist the habitual and perform a gut check of their values.

The House Education Committee has seven Democratic members. Will just two of them step forward and join the four Republicans to spike this ill-willed mischief?

The instinctive impulse extends as well to issues of climate. There is no doubt, at least in these quarters, that man-made climate change is real and hugely consequential.

However, scientific evidence and profound impact hardly constitute sufficient rationale for extreme measures that have far more to do with showmanship than with any practical efficacy.

In that spirit, I give you SB24-159, sponsored, unsurprisingly, by Boulder County Sen. Sonja Jaquez Lewis and, more curiously, by Adams County Sen. Kevin Priola, newly affiliated with the Democratic Party and trying to win friends and establish bona fides.

In the simplest form, this bill proposes to stop the issuance of oil and gas drilling permits in Colorado by 2030, less than six years away, and dial back on those permits in the years leading up to that date.

You can leave aside, if you wish, the astounding economic impact of such a draconian decree-$1.9 billion annually in lost tax revenue, a $321 billion blow to the Colorado economy over 10 years, and thousands of lost jobs, mostly of a blue-collar nature.

If such a step could have a meaningful impact on climate change, it might be worth discussing. But that is anything but the case. The core frivolity of this bill is that it would devastate Colorado without remotely moving the meter on greenhouse gases.

Oil and gas markets are interstate and international. Colorado could shut down its supply without diminishing demand and usage within our borders. We would simply import such products from elsewhere, much of which is subject to less strict environmental controls at its point of origin.

California can laud itself for its environmental standards and green ethos while consuming half of the oil coming out of the Amazon rainforest. Colorado’s proposed legislation is of a similar feel-good, virtue-signaling impetus. The impact is nil but zealots and the knee-jerk legislators who serve them can swell with pride.

We can hope that wiser heads prevail in the form of some Democratic legislators who substitute judgment and backbone for knee flex. If either of these bills survive the legislative gauntlet, it is likely that Gov. Jared Polis’s veto pen awaits.

But what does it say about the state’s politics that a progressive-minded, Boulder-based governor has become the principal line of defense against impulsive, reflexive, extreme lunacy?

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. He writes regularly for ColoradoPolitics and the Gazette newspapers. Reach him at EWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann