Trial Of The Century

As regards the the ethics "hearing" of Good-Time Charlie Rangel (D-Chutzpah), a few questions....

1) Do the soon to be no-longer ruling House Democrats give a frog's fat leg about GTC's raging corruption and entitlement-addled criminality?

2) Is there any chance - any at all - that this "committee," chaired by Zoe Lofgren (D-Unserious), will take this "ABSOLUTELY NOT A TRIAL!!!!!" seriously and throw the book at this crook?  Give him the bum's rush from Congress?  Slap him on the wrist?  "Please, Charlie, don't hurt us anymore!"?

3) Then what is the point of this mockery of justice?

Why, to reiterate the Dems' ironclad commitment to openness and honesty in government, of course!

Which yielded us a display this morning highlighted by....

1) Lofgren bending over backwards to protect Rangel's "dignity";

2) Rangel flouting that "dignity" for all to see by his "Oh, woe is me" spiel about how he was "denied" legal counsel when the actual reason he was his own client is because the legal defense fund he set up to grease up his shysters violated House ethics rules. (In the immortal words of Ron "Tater Salad" White, "I shit you not.")

3) So "unfair" and "unjust" was this unfair injustice imposed on him by this unfair, unjust "committee" that he threatened to boycott his own "hearing" (with ever-present camera in tow, of course) and offered up what Ensign Ed has dubbed "The Otter Defense" before storming out of the "hearing" room....

....leaving Zofgren to mutteringly deny all of Rangel's "theatrical" charges with the aura of somebody excruciatingly unaccustomed to speaking in any kind of substantive context about anything.

In other words, by the end of the "hearing," the point of it was Good-Time Charlie Rangel, a martyr once again.

Ace relays a theory that Rangel's throwing a fit now in order to delay his "NO, NOT A TRIAL, NO SIR!!!!!" into January after the GOP takes over so he can REALLY play the martyr ("partisan racist witchhunt").  But is that the way it would work?  Can ethics "procedures" flop over from one Congress to the next?  If so, wouldn't it be the shrewder course of action at that point be for the new House Ethics Committee to immediately drop all the "charges" and bid GTC a hail and hearty?  What could the Dems do?  Trundle out the "culture of corruption" rhetoric out of mothballs when it's one of their own in the crosshairs?  Far better to keep this capo around as another oh-so-"popular" face of the Democrat Party and all its amazing "openness" and "honesty".

Wow, I just had an epiphany: the fate of the Democrat Party for the next generation or more may rest in the hands of.....Zoe Lofgren.

Now THERE's a happy thought.