House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel predicted, on C-SPAN's Newsmakers program that aired Sunday, Feb. 1, 2009, that his multitude of ethics woes would soon disappear. "I think that next Tuesday you will see a break in this and as soon as the Ethics Committee organizes they ought to be able to dismiss this," National Journal's CongressDaily quoted the Rangel as saying.

If so, it's hard to imagine that the Select Committee on Ethics will have devoted anything more than a cursory glance at the various issues raised. Consider just one aspect, for which documents ...