Accountability

Good news, America: one side of the aisle takes their job seriously:

House Democrats voted on Thursday night to strip a Louisiana congressman of a key committee position as they tried to avoid any taint of scandal in a year when they want to ride accusations of Republican corruption to election victories.

The congressman, William J. Jefferson, is the subject of a federal bribery investigation and has insisted he has done nothing wrong. He has rebuffed efforts to get him to step aside voluntarily.

After a meeting stretching more than three hours, the Democrats voted to remove him from the House Ways and Means Committee until his case is resolved. The action, on a 99-to-58 vote, is subject to the approval by the full House.

And the full House approved that today.

Josh Marshall is dead right in noticing the interesting pattern at work. When Democrats fall into trouble with ethical lapses or possible violations of the law, in the case of Jefferson and Allan Mollohan, they step down or are stripped of their committee assignments. Democrats believe in the appearance of impropriety and will not let one man be bigger than the party or above the law. Republicans, which have at least a dozen members under investigation right now, feel no such compulsion. They tried to get the DeLay rule passed where a Majority Leader could be under indictment. They have Jerry Lewis, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, under investigation along with two of his staffers. He's not stepping down. Lewis is the guy who deals with federal earmarks for local projects, he's accused of extorting lobbyists in exchange for earmarks, and he's still in charge of that committee. Similarly, Bob Ney is running for re-election after being all but named in the Abramoff indictment and the Scanlon indictment.

I can only conclude that when it comes to wayward members, Democrats seek to hold them accountable while Republicans have an instinct for protection. Maybe that's because that if Republicans cut loose all of their corrupt members, they wouldn't be able to hold a quorum call.