When it comes to tolerating [tag]unethical[/tag], and probably [tag]illegal[/tag], conduct, congressional [tag]Republicans[/tag] will talk the talk, but Dems walk the walk.
House Democrats voted on Thursday night to strip a Louisiana congressman [William J. [tag]Jefferson[/tag]] of a key committee position as they tried to avoid any taint of scandal in a year when they want to ride accusations of Republican corruption to election victories. […]
Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus have supported Mr. Jefferson, who is black, arguing it was premature to remove him before he was found guilty of any crime. But the minority leader, [tag]Nancy Pelosi[/tag], of California, said Mr. Jefferson had been afforded due process. “This is not a court of law,” Ms. Pelosi said. “This is about a higher ethical standard, and you know it when it isn’t being met.”
Pelosi added, “I told all of my colleagues, ‘Anybody with $90,000 in your freezer, you have a problem with this caucus.’ ”
Note to the [tag]GOP[/tag]: this is how you deal with alleged [tag]corruption[/tag]. You don’t try and change the rules to protect the corrupt (DeLay); you don’t make excuses for the corrupt (Cunningham); and you don’t ignore problems while hoping no one notices all the corruption (Lewis, Ney, Hastert, etc.).
When Dem leaders heard about Rep. Allan Mollohan’s (D-W.Va.) suspicious earmarks, they forced him to give up his seat on the Ethics Committee. When Dem leaders learned about Jefferson’s alleged corruption through the House Ways and Means Committee, they voted to take away his committee seat.
As Mark Kleiman put it, there’s “no moral equivalence here.” When news outlets try to portray the culture of corruption in DC as some kind of bi-partisan problem, they’re embarrassingly wrong.