“Alas” because I would have preferred “expelled and convicted.”  Alas, like a few other Congressmen, Charles Rangel will avoid the deserved consequences of his actions and simply retire at the end of this term.  Admittedly, Rangel had declared this after the 2014 election, but there was some speculation that he’d keep going.  Apparently not.

And if you think I’m being harsh on an eighty-five year old dude, I’m not: I expressed similar sentiments towards Charlie Rangel when he was a spry young man of seventy-nine.  Rangel was one of the more spectacularly personally corrupt Democrats of my lifetime, and he got away with it, too.  Mostly because he was protected by then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi at the absolutely most critical moment of his career, but in the end a win’s a win, and Charlie Rangel has won at the contest of Stealing People’s Money.

Ach, well. At least he’s going. Which means that, when January 2017 rolls around, the House of Representatives will possibly be just the least bit less corrupt than it was in December of 2016. You have to take what you can get in this business – particularly these days…

Moe Lane

PS: Sorry that this isn’t more cheerful, but the honest truth of it is: we never laid a glove on this dude.  He got away from us clean. That’s gonna disappoint.