Charlie Rangel Assailed By Luke Russert

Last week, or thereabouts, ethically-challenged New York Democratic House power Charlie Rangel was assailed by MSNBC's Luke Russert. Here's the video.





I never liked Tim Russert. He was a liberal media lapdog. But his kid has potential. Note Rangel hoping to diss Luke Russert by alleging smarmy motives. I guess Charlie was projecting, eh?

Still, it's a priceless piece of raw evidence illustrating the contempt for and low regard in which Rangel holds voters, whom he allegedly serves. Basically ignoring media questions, impugning only base motives to what Jefferson held as a more valuable, necessary service than government- a free press' inquiry into government's actions.

Here's just one of many articles on Rangel's situation which you can find by Googling the topic 'Charlie Rangel ethics.'

What I find sad, yet predictable, is Rangel's continued insistence that his stark violations of tax law be seen as 'honest mistakes' or 'oversights.'

There's the abuse of a rent-controlled apartment as an office. The failure to pay taxes on the Dominican vacation home.

For these, Rangels pleads confusion and inadvertent, unintended non-payment of taxes, for which he should be forgiven and not penalized.

What Rangel fails to realize, as have his party's Congressional leaders for the several years that this travesty has been unfolding, is that this attitude infuriates voters everywhere.

Try Charlie's defense for yourself with the IRS, and you, or I, would be in jail. Charlie, on the other hand, is brazenly showing the contempt that so many in Congress feel for the rest of us.

They are different. They deserve exemption and blanket pardons for violations of the law.

First Geithner. Then Daschell. Now Rangel. They all plead 'honest mistakes.'

They all should be in jail. Now.

It's also a measure of the cynicism of Congressional Democrats that they now believe merely tossing Rangel to the wolves of public opinion will help them stave off defeat in November.

His transgressions were affordable until the Democrats' poll numbers became to awful. Now, he's got to go, because his sacrifice will, they calculate, have value.

Forget right and wrong. Forget being answerable to the law, like everyone else. Congressional members seem to have rejected these concepts long ago.

Thus the years-long fumbling by the so-called House Ethics Committee over Rangel's obvious law-breaking.