Censure All but Certain for Rangel in House

Censure All but Certain for Rangel in House

Published December 02, 2010

| Associated Press

Nov. 18: Rep. Charles Rangel, D, N.Y., leaves after the House ethics committee recommended that he be censured and pay any unpaid taxes for financial and fundraising misconduct on Capitol Hill in Washington.

WASHINGTON -- Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel, a 40-year veteran of Congress, faces an almost certain censure by the House of Representatives, a devastating defeat for a man who insisted to the end that he never meant to violate House rules.

If the House votes for censure Thursday as expected, the New York Democrat will have to humbly walk to the front of the chamber to receive his punishment. He'll stand in front of his colleagues while Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- in one of her most solemn duties -- reads him a resolution condemning his ethical misbehavior.

The House ethics committee took a hard line toward Rangel, 80, the former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Most past censures involved congressmen who enriched themselves. Rangel was not charged with lining his pockets, although he did fail to pay taxes for 17 years on income from a vacation villa he owns in the Dominican Republic.

In Rangel's case, the House ethics committee said, his long pattern of fundraising and financial misdeeds justified the most severe penalty short of expulsion.

Fellow Democrats on the committee showed Rangel little more mercy than Republicans, as the committee of five members from each party voted 9-1 on Nov. 18 to recommend censure.

Rangel has had a difficult time accepting the punishment and planned to argue on the floor of the House for a lesser reprimand -- a vote disapproving his conduct but without the requirement that he stand before his colleagues to accept the discipline.

His argument is that censure is reserved for corrupt congressman, and he's not one of them.

In a last-ditch attempt to influence the House, Rangel e-mailed about 25,000 campaign supporters Wednesday. He asked them to call the Capitol switchboard to get connected to their congressmen and ask them to vote against censure.

Rangel was apologetic in his plea.

"I am truly sorry for mistakes and would like your help in seeing that I am treated fairly," he wrote.

Rangel said he posted arguments for a reprimand on his website, "which shows that the recommendation for censure is excessive and that my lapses do not rise to the level of transgressions of those censured in the past."

Rangel filed misleading financial disclosure reports for a decade, leaving out hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets he owned. He used congressional letterheads and staff to solicit donations for a center named after him at City College of New York.

The ethics committee found that he contacted businesses and their charitable foundations that had issues before Congress and, specifically, before the House Ways and Means Committee that Rangel formerly headed. He was not, however, charged with taking any action on the donors' behalf.

Rangel also set up a campaign office in the Harlem building where he lives, despite a lease specifying the unit was for residential use only.

Rangel has paid the Treasury $10,422 and New York state $4,501 to fulfill another ethics committee recommendation. The amounts were to cover taxes he would have owed on his villa income had the statute of limitations not run out on his tax bills.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/12/02/rangel-faces-censure-house-ethics-case/#ixzz16y04Omdp

It's hard to believe that this guy has been in office as long as I have been alive.

But you look so young RT, imagine my surprise!!!

rofllol

who knew!

I'll say this again... GOOD! Rangel is a sleazebag, and he should be punished for what he did. I'm surprised there aren't criminal charges instead of just a "censure"... But, then, we don't know but what the IRS might be planning on busting his chops as soon as the House finishes with him. He deserves everything he gets.

Now....Where is the right-wing outrage over slimebags like Enson? Vitter? etc....

I thought this was about rangel...oh, did someone say waters name..who knew!

We have to find you a new smiley Outdoor, so you don't have to type that/ We must conserve energy. Go Green!

rofllol

Rangel should be put under the jail instead of censured. Hopefully Tom DeLay (a republican LJ) could join him. Delay got what he deserved (and they said he would never be found guilty in Texas).

The heavy-handed style that made Tom DeLay one of the nation's most powerful and feared members of Congress also proved to be his downfall Wednesday when a jury determined he went too far in trying to influence elections, convicting the former House majority leader on two felonies that could send him to prison for decades.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/2 ... 88325.html
After years of inertia the people are getting fed up :thumbsup:

Yep... DeLay finally went down... It's about time... He got what he deserved. As I said, I can only hope than Ensign and Vitter will be next... (And, yes, William ($90,000 in cash in his freezer) Jefferson, too...)

Prediction:

After Rangel's censure 'ceremony', Al Sharpton and/or Jesse Jackson will be at his side to decry what a racist circus the whole thing was.