Rangel Stays, The Swamp Remains Tainted

So much for the swamp-cleaning project, eh, Nancy? The House turned down a resolution by John Carter to remove Charlie Rangel from his position of leadership due to ethics violations, cheating on taxes, and so on.

Looks like Charlie Rangel is staying put, by a vote of 243-156. The interesting part of this is the moral contortions that Maxine Waters demonstrated in her justification of Rangel's victory:

“Many members” of Congress suffer from the same disclosure issues as Rep. Charles Rangel (D.N.Y.), one of his allies said Wednesday.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) downplayed the seriousness of allegations against Rangel that he failed to disclose sources of income and pay taxes on some properties, saying that many lawmakers suffer from innocent lapses in judgment when filing mandatory financial disclosure forms.

“I want to tell you, there are many members who, if you go back over all of their records, over all of the years, you’re going to find that there were disclosures that were not made,” Waters said during an appearance on MSNBC Wednesday morning.

Uh...okay. I'm not sure how this actually makes Rangel's offenses acceptable. Since when is "we're all crooks" a proper justification for excusing one crook? It's rather honest, though, isn't it?

All this from the 'most ethical Congress in history'. Nice.

There's my two cents.