Ethics Panel Recommends Censure For Rangel

From The American Thinker:

November 19, 2010


Ethics panel recommends censure for Rangel

Rick Moran

The House Ethics Committee will recommend that Charlie Rangel be censured for the 11 violations of which he was convicted.



As Ed Morrissey points out, this was their only real choice. They wouldn't kick him out in a million years, and a "reprimand" would have been even more of a joke:





The House ethics committee has recommended censure for Representative Charles B. Rangel for ethics violations. The vote was 9 to 1.

The committee's decision marked a stunning rebuke to the 20-term congressman, diminishing his stature even as, in his final statement to the committee, he pleaded that it make clear in its final decision that he had not done anything to disgrace Congress or enrich himself, and had not been corrupt.



It was the committee's counsel, R. Blake Chisam, who acted as prosecutor in the case, who recommended that Mr. Rangel be censured, a stronger punishment than a reprimand but well short of expulsion. Shortly before the committee of five Democrats and five Republicans began deliberations, Mr. Rangel, his voice cracking, pleaded for his colleagues to keep in mind that whatever his misdeeds, he was not corrupt.



Not corrupt? Gee...I dunno



Mr. Rangel, 80, a Democrat who has represented Harlem since 1970, was found guilty on Tuesday of 11 breaches of ethics stemming from failing to pay taxes on rental income from a Dominican villa, failing to file financial disclosure forms, using a rent-stabilized residential apartment as a campaign office, and raising charitable donations from companies with business before the House Ways and Means Committee, of which he was the chairman.



How does Charlie, on a Congressman's salary, afford a Dominican villa in the first place? Not paying taxes on property he wouldn't own unless he was a corrupt SOB isn't corruption, I guess. At least not in the minds of our "ethics" watchdogs.



Pathetic.



Posted at 12:10 AM