Posted on 07/25/2010 8:32:11 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross
The House ethics committee announced on Thursday that it would bring charges against Charlie Rangel, and the Manhattan Democrat responded by telling reporters that "I look forward to airing this thing." Don't we all.
The ethics committee has been investigating Mr. Rangel since 2008 and its formal charges will remain sealed until a public hearing next week. However, the committee is not lost for choices:
Allegations include Mr. Rangel's failure to report assets and income totaling at least a half-million dollars that, when he "amended" his reporting last year, doubled his net worth; his use of four rent-stabilized apartments in New York's tony Lenox Terrace complex, including one that he used as a campaign office; concealing taxable rental income from his Dominican Republic beachfront villa at the Punta Cana Yacht Club; and using his official Congressional letterhead to solicit donations for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York.
Mr. Rangel has portrayed these charges as it-could-happen-to-anyone accounting errors, and he has vigorously denied any wrongdoing while declining to provide details until the ethics committee completed its inquiry. Still, in March he surrendered his gavel as Chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, not as the result of these accusations or any other pang of conscience, but because a separate investigation concluded that his participation in several corporate-sponsored Caribbean junkets violated House regulations. At the time, his work in raising taxes to pay for ObamaCare was nearly complete.
The ethics committee's step of proceeding to a public trial is the first since 2002, when Ohio Democrat James Traficant was removed from Congress after federal prosecutors indicted him for bribery, racketeering and other corruption. (snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I’m betting hearing won’t begin in September. There will be delay after delay until after the election, then it will quietly go away, either because voters chose someone other than Rangel to represent their district (fat chance), or because no one has to be accountable for another two years. This is sound and fury, signifying nothing, intended only to appear righteous just before the election.
Standards? We don’t need no stinking standards!
If Democrats had standards, this guy would have a primary challenger.
So Rangel defies Pelosi and dares her to follow through, gambling that she’ll back down in the face of an ugly public corruption hearing in the teeth of an election season.
Yeah. He just might play the race card successfully one more time.
Look to see him do a lot of events with Shirley Sherrod.
I believe he does have a primary challenger.
I believe he does have a primary challenger.
An able successor to Adam Clayton Powell. Came from the same mold.
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