GOP to Reverse Ethics Rule

WaPo reports House Republican leaders, acknowledging that ethics disputes are taking a heavy toll on the party's image, decided yesterday to rescind a controversial rule change that led to the three-month shutdown of the ethics committee, according to officials who participated in the talks.

Republicans touched off a political uproar in January by changing a rule that had required the ethics committee to continue considering a complaint against a House member if there was a deadlock between the committee's five Republicans and five Democrats. The January change reversed this, calling for automatic dismissal of an ethics complaint when a deadlock occurs.

Democrats rebelled against that and other changes -- saying Republicans were trying to protect House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) from further ethics investigations -- and blocked the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, as the ethics panel is officially known, from organizing for the new Congress.

Republicans on the committee say they will launch an investigation of DeLay's handling of overseas trips and gifts as soon as the impasse over the rules is broken.

They are idiots. Backing down like this will just show the Dems that if they refuse to do something, Republicans will back down eventually, and the Dems on the committee will refuse to clear DeLay, and without a rule saying that a deadlock will mean the charge will be dismissed after 45 days they will just leave the charges standing, which will mean that the MSM will be able to claim that DeLay is still being investigated by the Ethics Committee.