Congress is coming back to “work” this week after their peaceful August sojourns and Nancy Pelosi has a tough decision waiting for her. How will she justify (assuming she does) allowing Congressman Charlie Rangel (D. NY) to continue on as Chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means committee? For those who missed it, Rangel has been facing one instance after another of large sums of money and property which he has mysteriously failed to report on required congressional forms or pay taxes on. (For those keeping score, he’s in charge of the committee charged with writing tax law. Oh, the irony.)

Some of Charlie’s highlights:
– more than a half-million-dollars worth of assets not reported on financial disclosure forms
– failure to report four mutual fund accounts, as well as the value of holdings in PepsiCo and Yum! Brands stocks, as well the value of three parcels of land
– failure to disclose at least $250,001 in a Congressional Federal Credit Union IRA and at least $365,004 in mutual funds
– a vacation property in the Dominican Republic where he failed to pay taxes on rental income which he blamed on his inability to speak and understand the Spanish language

And none of this even touches on the mountains of taxpayer dollars shoveled into the Charles Rangel Center for the Advancement of Charles Rangel.

There’s really nothing missing from this story except a few piddling questions about why Charlie couldn’t afford a bigger freezer and couldn’t somebody have loaned the guy a couple of rolls of aluminum foil? There’s no getting Rangel out of Congress at the ballot box, as the voters of his district will probably keep electing him even if he leaves the country and relinquishes his citizenship. But Pelosi is supposed to be leading the show over there, and if she can’t come forward and make a very public call for him to step down from his leadership positions, then she has forfeitted any and all high ground to talk about “the most open, ethical Congress ever.” EVAH!