Thu Apr 28, 6:17 AM ET
USA Today

It's not easy to embarrass a member of Congress into admitting a mistake, much less doing something about it. With most House members confident of re-election in their overwhelmingly safe districts, they aren't used to being called to account for arrogance or self-serving behavior.

But one of those rare moments may be at hand. On Wednesday, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., began leading a Republican retreat from a change in ethics rules engineered in January. The change made it easier to bury an ethics complaint against a member of the House. Either party could kill an investigation in the House ethics committee.

At the time, this was seen as protection for Majority Leader Tom DeLay. The Texas Republican, under fire on multiple fronts, had already been admonished by the ethics committee for repeated abuses of power, three times last year alone.

But instead of going away, DeLay's woes and the handling of them have grown to threaten not just DeLay's image but the GOP's. DeLay was among those asking the House to find a way to get the ethics committee, stymied by a Republican-Democratic standoff over the new rules, back in business. DeLay said he needs the panel to clear his name in the latest controversies involving his links to a lobbyist under criminal investigation and his acceptance of foreign trips financed by special interests.

Other House members were complaining that, with the committee not functioning, they lacked a place to turn for advice on ethical gray areas.

But the rules retreat doesn't guarantee tough investigations. The committee itself is a nest of conflicts of interest. Four of the five GOP members - including the likely chairman of any probe of DeLay - have taken campaign contributions from his political action committee. Two have also made substantial contributions to DeLay's defense fund.

This comes in the wake of a housecleaning in which most of the Republicans who joined with Democrats on the committee to admonish DeLay last year were removed, including the chairman, Rep. Joel Hefley (news, bio, voting record), R-Colo. Committee staff members involved in that investigation have also been purged.

Creating the notion that the House takes seriously the question of policing its own members is going to take a lot more than reversing one particularly outrageous procedural rule. But Wednesday was a start.

we may as well say goodbye to a lot of congressmen, not just Delay, and not just republicans.

The only Congressmen who have something to fear from the ethics committee are those who have engaged in unethical behavior. Perhaps tougher ethics enforcement will result in less junkets to warm weather resorts in the winter, and less golf outings to Scotland, all paid for by lobbyists. Perhaps those who take the favors will be exposed. Perhaps the voters will remove those Congressmen who represent lobbies instead of the voters who elected them.
This retreat from the emasculation of the ethics committee was brought about by the reaction of the public to it. In this country the voters are still ultimately in charge. We get to choose what standards we hold our elected officials to. We get the government that we will tolerate. I think the patience of the American people is growing thin. I think we should wave goodbye to some Congressmen from both parties. If we do, the rest might pay more attention for a while.

TERM LIMITS. I am 100% against career politicians. Some of these guys have been in the senate since before I was born (1954).