More ethics violations by Charlie Rangel

The powerful head of the House Ways and Means Committee, Charlie Rangel has been in the news recently for his four rent-control apartments and for not paying taxes on his vacation home in the Caribbean. Now he's been caught ignoring the new regulations on lobbyist-paid trips.

Members must now seek written permission for any privately financed trip. If the committee sees any evidence of lobbyist financing, it will simply veto the trip, according to the new ethics rules.

But Rangel still accepted a trip worth thousands of dollars to the Sandals Grande Resort and Spa in Antigua and Barbuda last November, after the new rules had passed.

AT&T, HSBC, Sandals and Pfizer were listed as "sponsors" of the conference, which was organized by a group called NY Carib News Foundation. In his 2007 federal filing on the trip, Rangel listed the Carib News Foundation, but failed to disclose that the trip was financed by corporations.

And there are other Democrats who failed to disclose the trip.

Rangel is not alone in his failure to properly disclose the trips under the new rules. The Post found that other Democratic lawmakers who were wined and dined at the conference last November had yet to disclose the junket on their federal filings for 2007.

Perhaps there are Republicans who are also violating the new regulations. The article doesn't say.

I'm sure we'll soon see the media running story after story about Rangel's ethics violations and their intimations that he is emblematic of how the Democratic Party is corrupt through and through. Right?

H/t A Blot for All via InstapunditC