Looks like the death panel has rendered a verdict on Charlie Rangel

Swallow the blue retirement pill Charlie:

"I think Charlie Rangel served a very long time and served-- his constituents very well. But these-- allegations are very troubling," Obama told Harry Smith in an interview to be aired on the "Early Show." and first broadcast on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.

"And he'll-- he's somebody who's at the end of his career. Eighty years old. I'm sure that-- what he wants is to be able to-- end his career with dignity. And my hope is that-- it happens. "

Frankly my dear, Charlie doesn't give a damn what the death panel says, he prefers the harshly-worded reprimand instead:

A House investigator says the panel handling Rep. Charlie Rangel's ethics case has recommended a reprimand by the full House — but that decision could be months away.
Rep. Gene Green, who's on the subcommittee that investigated the New York Democrat, says that's the recommended penalty for the 20-term New York Democrat. Rangel is facing 13 charges of wrongdoing.

Uh oh, maybe he wasn't supposed to know  13 separate charges of wrongdoing would only get him a reprimand:

Green explained that the four-person investigative panel's recommended punishment “wasn’t supposed to be included” in the 13-count ethics indictment.

“It’s not an option that is typically published, I screwed up. And I’m going to call Zoe and apologize,” Green told The Hill on Friday afternoon.

Green explained that though the subcommittee had the “authority to recommend” a punishment, “it’s up to the full committee to make that decision.”

Later, Green told reporters that he had made the call to Lofgren to apologize. He also said a final decision on a punishment for Rangel could be made by the entire House.

Hey swamp cleaning is hard work folks.  Hei Ho - Hei Ho - it's under the bus he goes sang the eight little Democratic dwarfs in dire straits back in their districts.

 Perhaps they'll sing another chorus for Maxine Waters while they're at it.

More at Memeorandum

Turning Up the Volume on Those Mainstream Tea Party Activists

Nothing like a little Maxine Waters complete hypocrisy to get your juices flowing this Monday after a holiday. Naked Emperor News put one if their great montages together showing Maxine Waters' changing views over the years with respect to protests and dissent. Language warning applies here for one lovely chant led by the left during the Bush years.  See video at the bottom of the post for Maxine's hypocrisy.

A few related items: First Doug Ross has done some great investigative reporting on the alleged hurling of racial epithets mentioned in a previous post Agitprop. Doug has really fleshed out the timeline of the reporting to show how reports from a few members of the CBC were picked up and reprinted in the media within an amazingly short time frame. An interview with Lauren Victoria Burke, who is likely the first to spread the news via Twitter is quite revealing:

Q: As I see it, a lot of the Tea Party activists are worried about the encroachment of the very kind of authoritarian, centralized government that our country's founders broke away from. The federal government has become this omnipresent force, far beyond what the states that formed it had ever envisioned. I mean, the size of your toilet tank is now regulated by federal bureaucrats...

A: Yes, I would agree that most of the teabaggers [Ed: sic!] are focused most on taxes, on financial issues. I mean, the liberal stereotype was reinforced when the first thing Obama does when he took office is to spend $787 billion on a stimulus package!

And the latest bailout of people that have been foreclosed on, I totally disagree with. If you're dumb enough to spend too much on your house, my tax dollars should not be borrowed against for that.

I understand the Tea Party sentiment and also understand you can't control everything everyone says.

Note to Lauren and others who seem to be willing to concede "teabaggers" may have valid issues you might  want to skip calling them "teabaggers." Two recent polls find the teabaggers are pretty mainstream. In fact more identify with tea party principles then they do with Obama.  Legal Insurrection isn't seriously worried about the suicide watch at DNC headquarters upon receipt of the news the tea party protesters aren't the extremists after all.  Didn't they already commit suicide - at least politically - when they cast their votes for health care?  Potluck and Pundette have more on this.

Donald Douglas at American Power had a great report on a NYT hatchet piece comparing the Tea Party to Bill Ayers violent radical group The Weatherman.  Seriously,  it gets stranger all the time doesn't it?  Here is a bit of Donald's analysis:

The caption reads, “VARYING DEGREES OF RAGE: The Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, second from right, during the Days of Rage in 1969, and anti-health reform protesters in Washington on Sunday.”

No doubt the editors included that “varying degrees” qualifier will get them off the hook. But there’s no escaping the truly bankrupt moral equivalence NYT’s claiming between a genuine domestic terrorist organization and a grassroots movement of conservatives, middle-class anti-tax activists, and an army of frustrated geriatrics. In contrast to a year’s worth of tea parties and town halls, the Moscow-backed Weatherman launched a series of bombings starting in 1969, totalling 25 attacks in all, as part of its war against “Amerikkka.” To this day, unrepentant terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn are venerated as social justice messiahs while today’s citizen tea party activists wind up on DHS intelligence reports as “right wing extremists.”

 Maybe some of the media should have considered investigating Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers instead of repeating the mantra "Obama was only 8 years old."  I am only a week older than Obama so we were both roughly 8 years old when Ayers launched a string of attacks on America, so what?   I never served on  boards with him afterwards nor would I have been willing to have Ayers host a coffee to launch my political career  no matter how desperate I was to get into politics.  Now Obama is President, Ayers is probably writing another book somewhere and the quietly remarkable tea partiers amongst us are the villains.  Go figure.

Donald has a round up of the coverage following his report here as well.