"This Is A Trainwreck"

I'd make more of that anonymous Democrat's disgusted observation, but I already used the Clayton Ravine metaphor today.

So why did Good-Time Charlie go to the House floor and suffer another prolonged bout of projectile filibusterrhea? He collected ethics charge #14:

Embattled Representative Charles Rangel was hit yesterday with another ethics complaint, accusing him of steering millions of taxpayer dollars to his "cronies" at a politically connected nonprofit - as first reported by the Post.

The complaint by the National Legal and Policy Center asked for an investigation of the "questionable taxpayer funding" Rangel helped secure for financially unstable Alianza Dominicana to build its new $19 million headquarters.

The complaint also pointed to apparent political payoffs Rangel got from the group's supporters -- including Executive Director Moises Perez, who publicly defended Rangel against ethics complaints in November 2009, just a month after the House passed a Rangel-sponsored $250,000 earmark for the nonprofit.

"Beneath the favoritism which is shown in Representative Rangel's support of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to the group . . . there is a mosaic of cronyism which includes tens of thousands of dollars in political donations to Rangel's political committees by the nonprofit's major supporters, officers, and individuals whose firms are directly involved in building and financing of the group's new headquarters," the complaint said.

Rangel, who last month was charged with thirteen ethics violations, said he shouldn't have to defend the nonprofit's community-development work.

After half a lifetime of aristocratic untouchability, Rangel's racist teflon has dropped like Bill Clinton's pants at a Victoria's Secret show. A man who has NEVER had to be accountable and has basically done whatever he wanted without regard to ethics rules or the law is suddenly having hordes of pipers showing up for their metaphorical payments, and he simply doesn't know how to handle it, even though the chances of his suffering any real consequences for his ocean of corruption and graft is functionally non-existent.

Don't you see? It's the PRINCIPLE of the thing. And he lives by one principle, and one principle only: "I'M CHARLES RANGEL, ~!#$%^& IT!"

He just took twenty-seven (more) minutes to say it.