U. S. Rep Charlie Rangel . . . flaunting dishonesty.

Long-time, influential congressman Rangel of New York finally censured by House on 11 of 13 counts brought, including false financial statements (“misleading”) and failure to pay income tax on condominium in [somewhere foreign] country. How could he, long-time chair of the tax writing Ways & Means Committee not know his income from the condo (presumed) rentals was subject to tax? If he knowingly failed to report it, that’s criminal tax fraud. Commenting to the press, he had the unmitigated gall to say, “At no time has it ever entered my mind to enrich myself or to do violence to the honesty that’s expected of all of us in this House.” What an insult to the U. S. Congress!
Amazingly, New Yorkers just re-elected him by a wide margin. Assuming his Republican opponent wasn’t an absolute klutz there seem to be three explanations for this, each successively more damning than the one before: 1) A lot of New York voters just vote the Democrat party line, period; 2) a lot of black voters just vote for whomever is black; and 3) a lot of the voters reasoned “if he cheats on his tax return just like I do, he’s my kind of man.