Was high time,
Rep. Charles Rangel broke ethics rules, House panel finds (emphasis added)
A House ethics subcommittee announced Thursday that it found that Rep. Charles B. Rangel violated congressional ethics rules and that it will prepare for a trial, probably beginning in September. The panel is expected to make the details of his alleged violations public next Thursday.
Rangel’s one of the most deeply corrupt Dems in office,
Rangel (D-N.Y.) has been under the House ethics committee’s microscope since early 2008 after it was reported that he may have used his House position to benefit his financial interests. Two of the most serious inquiries have focused on Rangel’s failure to declare $239,000 to $831,000 in assets on his disclosure forms, and on his effort to raise money for a private center named after him at City College of New York using his congressional letterhead.
In March, Rangel reluctantly stepped down as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee — a week after the ethics panel ruled in a separate case that he had broken congressional gift rules by accepting trips to conferences in the Caribbean that were financed by corporate interests. The panel said that, at a minimum, Rangel’s staff knew about the corporate backing for the 2007 and 2008 trips — and that the congressman was therefore responsible.
Meanwhile, young Luke Russert dared question Rangel on this issue and was patronized and told not to ask dumb questions:
You gotta love Russert’s expression: he knows he’s got good stuff right there,
Can you imagine if Rangel had realized that was Tim Russert’s kid? I would have loved to have heard him say, “you’re dad would be ashamed of you”.
The WaPo blog report starts with “Embattled Rep. Charlie Rangel”, embattled, as if Rangel was in the middle of a natural disaster,
Embattled Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) had a few choice words for MSNBC’s Luke Russert Thursday afternoon. Russert asked the 80 year-old House veteran if he might lose his job over the House panel finding that he violated ethics rules.
“Well, you’re young, I guess you do need to make a name for yourself,” Rangel told the reporter. ‘Basically you know it’s a dumb question and I’m not going to respond to it … It doesn’t really sound like NBC — asking these dumb questions. It just shows what happened to a channel that did have some respect.”
“It doesn’t really sound like NBC”?
It doesn’t really sound like the House ethics committee, either.
But they do.
