EDITORIAL: Rangel’s Breakfast with Donor Seeking Tax Protection is Questioned

More questions are being raised about the doubtful ethics of Representative Charles Rangel of New York, the chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.

The latest sniff of scandal — a breakfast meeting with a donor seeking tax protection — provides more grist for the House ethics inquiry that’s supposed to be under way into Mr. Rangel’s tangled affairs.

According to a report in The Times on Tuesday, Mr. Rangel breakfasted last year with a major donor to his pet legacy: a school of public service at City College of New York that will bear Mr. Rangel’s name. The donor, an oil-drilling executive, says he then escorted the chairman across the dining room of the Carlyle Hotel to meet his company’s waiting lobbyist — a special pleader intent on protecting an off-shore tax loophole.

Read more: (Editorial, “So Who Picked Up the Tab?,” The New York Times, 11/26/08)