EDITORIAL: Rangel’s Problems Roll On

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is heading into the new Congress without the quick resolution she dearly hoped for on Representative Charles Rangel’s mushrooming and deeply embarrassing ethics problems.

The normally mute and far-too-passive House ethics committee has done the right thing in announcing that it is broadening its inquiry to look into the recent report that Mr. Rangel — chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee — helped preserve a lucrative off-shore tax loophole for an oil drilling executive.

While Mr. Rangel and the executive deny any link, the businessman conveniently pledged $1 million for a planned Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York. (Now that’s what we call service from the public.)

Read more: (Editorial, “Mr. Rangel’s Problems Roll On,” The New York Times, 12/11/08)