House Ethics Committee: That's All Folks!

According to the House Ethics Committee, the Conyers probe is over--move on, nothing to see here.

The Republican-led House ethics committee -- in possibly its last action before Democrats take over Congress -- closed the three-year investigation of Rep. John Conyers Jr. after he agreed to stop using staffers for campaign work and personal errands.

...The case against Mr. Conyers was closed without punitive action or a letter of reproval from the Committee on Standards of Conduct, the ethics panel, which is comprised of five Democrats and five Republicans.

This slap on the wrist does not exactly inspire confidence. Then again--in Washington, the land of low expectations, some consider this an accomplishment:

"It's a slap on the wrist, but the fact that they did anything is a big deal for [the ethics committee]," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Conyers is not the only Democrat getting off easy--Rep. Jim McDermott was found to have broken ethics rules back in 1997 when he gave reporters taped phone calls of House leaders that had been illegally obtained, yet the committee did not take any action.

A Republican lawmaker familiar with both cases said Democrats on the committee blocked punitive action against their colleagues.

Promises of reform was a major theme sounded by the Democrats during the November election. But Rep. John Murtha is tainted by his involvement in the Abscam scandal of the early 1980s and Rep. Alan B. Mollohan, stepped down from the ethics committee last year when he became the target of a federal corruption probe--though he is slated to head the subcommittee that oversees the Justice Department budget.

But House Speaker Pelosi draws a distinction between the corruption of Republicans and the ethics problems of the Democrats.

"You're talking about two completely different things," Pelosi said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press. The Democratic ethics cases are "individual challenges that those people will have to deal with," she said, noting that she has called for the House ethics committee to investigate Jefferson. Republicans, she charged, have a system of "corruption, cronyism and incompetence" that goes beyond personal indiscretions.

How many corruption scandals make a system?

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