Love or her politics, there was a moment, right when Nancy Pelosi ascended to the office of Speaker of the House, that it looked as though, she might actually do some “swamp draining.” Perhaps its a sexist thing, that women seem somehow more fair and decent, but it appeared that she might enforce a higher ethical standard. But, as always, politics is about alliances and it’s hard to toss a long standing ally out onto the street and, all position issues and ideology aside, Pelosi is no different from any of the rest of them.

The case of Charlie “Swampthing” Rangel, however, and despite is “leave of absence,” is absolutely beyond the pale. It’s probably a truism that anyone who stays in congress over ten years will accumulate things that can’t stand the light of day, from trips to golf rounds to plane tickets, etc. But the Swampthing Rangel case is so very far beyond that. He’s been around for forty years and is no less than the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which despite its boring name, is one of the most powerful committees in the whole congress. It oversees, ironically, the tax code, the very thing Rangel has apparently so egregiously trespassed. The New York Post reported that Rangel did not declare the income that he earned from an apartment building in the Caribbean that he and several major campaign contributors are investors in. The income that Rangel received from this investment could be as much as seventy five thousand dollars a year. Seventy five thousand dollars a year? Seriously? And that’s just the tip of the Rangel slimeberg.

The point that Pelosi and her fellow Democrats miss here is that people, and not just the Tea Party crowd, are FED UP with this kind of crap. Sure it happens, and we all know that congress is a slimy, corrupt institution, but when a slimy turd like Rangel floats to the visible surface, it has to be removed as fast as possible. If she wants to retain any…ANY…credibility, Pelosi needs to yank him out of his committee chair and NOW!