When pushing immigration reform, the Book of Deuteronomy 10:19 came in handy for Obama, who said, “Love ye therefore the stranger; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.”  At the Tucson Memorial, the President cited the Book of Job. For the National Prayer Breakfast, how about a little misquoted Isaiah 40:31?

Jumping into the debt-ceiling fray, Charlie Rangel is also calling upon Scripture.  The Congressman is emulating Barack Obama, who at an Easter Breakfast praised “God for the gift of our son — his Son and our Savior” Jesus, who hung on the cross – a symbol that Obama asked be covered up for his Georgetown University speech.

Nonetheless, Charlie must have gotten religion since his ethics conviction in 2010 for financial impropriety, understating his assets, shady campaign office shenanigans, and tax evasion.   Seems when asked where the religious leaders are on “all of this” debt-ceiling stuff, a spokesperson for the pious Charlie Rangel said that the “silence of the clergy, of all faiths, has been ‘deafening’ as they consider cutting social programs designed for the poor and elderly.” Which, by the way, are paid for with tax dollars Charlie conveniently forgot to pay.

Preaching the Gospel of social justice, Reverend Rangel said that debt-ceiling questions “are not political,” but rather “moral.” He would know.  Rangel is certainly a qualified judge of morality with his 100% support for pro-choice organizations, as well as conveniently avoiding “rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.”

Exhorting the faithful to shun cutting social programs, Rangel said “Let’s do the Lord’s work.” In Democrat-speak, “the Lord’s work” is anything liberals do.  “And,” Charlie said, “they,” (whoever ‘they’ are), “will realize this is not justice.”

Seeking “a moral answer,” Rangel said, “Why don’t you call your pastor, your rabbi, your imam. Forget Medicare, CPI and the debt and go back to the Scriptures.”

Charlie, crying out as a voice in the wilderness, asked: “Where is the Good Samaritan?”

Why Charlie, the Good Samaritan is not involved in the debt-ceiling debate, because it’s likely he or she is at an abortion clinic reaching out to women and imploring them not to go through with the abortion you hope government funding will pay for.

So as Reverend Rangel throws Bible verses around and attempts to pose the question “What would Jesus do?” maybe someone should ask him to expound further upon what he thinks Jesus would do if Charlie and his friend Obama asked Him how He felt about government-funded abortion.

So, since I’m the stranger in a strange land here on the Bigs, maybe you nice conservatives can explain something to me — why hasn’t the right wing blogosphere picked up on Pigford?

Don’t get me wrong. The mainstream media hasn’t picked up on it either and I’m willing to grant that most of the MSM leans left. The left wing blogosphere has totally ignored the Pigford reporting I and others here have done. But I UNDERSTAND that. This story isn’t good for Democrats.

But where are your guys?

I mean, we have a congressman, Sanford Bishop — a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, for goshsake — admitting he knew about fraud. Admitting it to newspapers. Where’s Rush or Fox News or Malkin or Red State or Coulter or Beck, or…anyone? Instapundit has covered it. Derbyshire did a piece on Pigford a few weeks back but didn’t mention the stuff on this site. And that’s about it.

Again. Democratic Congress. Fraud. Scandal. Billions. And — crickets on the right.

Is it the race thing? They mentioned Van Jones and Charlie Rangel, right? A Breitbart thing? They sure seem to use material he breaks, if memory serves.

Seriously, I don’t get it. Help me out here.

While I was conducting a video interview with a Georgia farmer named Eddie Slaughter a couple of weeks ago, he made a surprising and stunning allegation: that he had told his congressman about fraud in the multibillion dollar Pigford v. Glickman settlement and that the congressman responded by telling him that an investigation into Pigford would “shut it down.” Mr. Slaughter’s congressman — a man you may not have heard much about despite his nearly two decades as a Blue Dog Democrat and Congressional Black Caucus member — is Sanford Bishop.

I followed up with Mr. Slaughter and I asked him if others were in the meeting with Congressman Bishop. I’ve since interviewed two of those farmers — one on the phone and one, farmer Willie Head, on video. Both confirmed Mr. Slaughter’s story.

Here’s a a segment of my interview with Mr. Slaughter where he says:

We went to him [Sanford Bishop] several times about this fraud. [We asked] ‘why don’t you have them tell you how many of these people that are getting this money have an actual farm ID number and are actual farmers?’ [Bishop responded] ‘no, no, no — man, they’ll shut this thing down.’

And here is Willie Head:

I posted these videos to my YouTube account and then wrote pieces for Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com site. The controversial Mr. Breitbart is funding the documentary I’m working on but has given me complete journalistic freedom and has had no direct involvement in shooting any of the more than 12 hours of video interviews I’ve done so far. As a liberal, I disagree with Breitbart on most issues, but I also found him to be a very different person than he’s been portrayed as in the media, and working with him has been a great experience, just like my previous work for MoveOn.org and Brave New Films. I also don’t believe he’s a racist. If he were, I wouldn’t be working with him.

Within a couple of days, Congressman Bishop had responded to three different newspapers. His story was different each time.

• Rep. Bishop told the Albany Herald that he was aware of the fraud but it wasn’t his job to police it. This admission is significant because USDA Sec. Tom Vilsack has claimed that there was almost no fraud in Pigford.
• When speaking to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Rep. Bishop was suddenly stunned and perplexed and suggested that the farmers had been drinking. The AJC also played up the Breitbart angle and made no mention of me or my background as the sole reporter/videographer.
• Most recently, Rep. Bishop told the Columbus Ledger-Inquirer that he remembered the meeting, repeated that he wasn’t responsible for monitoring fraud, suggested that there were anti-fraud provisions in the second Pigford bill and again insulted the farmers calling them disgruntled and irresponsible.

Full article here.

Let’s reiterate what Rangel actually did, and then we’ll discuss the horrendous penalty.

To summarize briefly, we have blatant and recurring Federal and State tax fraud, illegal use of four rent-controlled apartments in New York City, using his Congressional letterhead to illegally solicit funds for his private foundation from lobbyists for companies he was writing tax regs on, outrageous conflict of interest, failure to declare over $600,000 in income..the sort of stuff that would get you or I locked up for a long time.

Charlie Rangel’s penalty? He’ll be required to stand in the well before his colleagues in the House while a censure resolution is read, which will then become part of the Congressional Record. That’s it. Boo-freaking hoo.And he will stay in Congress.

Rangel lobbied to the end for a ‘reprimand’, a lesser punishment based on the idea that he did not commit the violations for personal gains.

According to Rangel there was “no evidence of corruption, no evidence of self-enrichment found, no evidence there was an intention on my part to evade my responsibility, whether in taxes or whether in financial disclosures.”

As I revealed earlier, that’s exactly what the Rangel Center he solicited corporate and lobbyist donations for was all about.

What Rangel was doing with the Center was setting up a tax free source of funding and employment for himself and his heirs after he left Congress. Think of it as Charlie Rangel’s ‘Presidential library’, funded by the corporations and lobbyists he put the bite on and the American tax payer, from whom he obtained $2.1 million via his fellow Democrats in Congress. And the Rangel Center is still going to be there, without having to give back a cent.

Much is being made of the fact that censure has only been used 23 times in history. In fact Rangel and his allies used that in lobbying for a lesser punishment, saying that censure should be reserved for ‘criminal or despicable conduct’.

They used as examples the last time a member of Congress was censured back in 1983, when Rep. Dan Crane, R-Ill., and Rep. Gerry Studds, D-Mass. were censured for having improper sexual relationships with Congressional pages.

But if we base it on that, Rangel should have received a lot more than just censure.

After all, when you come down to it, Crane and Studds were only screwing one other person.

Charlie Rangel was trying to screw the whole country.

And, yet, once, again, Rangel is violating House Rules for his own benefit.

In a rare ritual of public humiliation, House lawmakers Thursday will begin considering censure of Rep. Charles Rangel, a legendary New York politician found to have broken 11 different ethics rules.

The 80-year-old Harlem Democrat was found to have misused congressional perks, failed to pay taxes on some income for 17 years, failed to report assets properly for a decade, and misused a rent-stabilized apartment as a campaign office.

It isn’t that it’s somehow wrong to honor our fallen American heroes, despite a rule clearly prohibiting it, it’s that on the one day his offices are likely to see a larger than ever press presence, Rangel would so brazenly interject them into the news on the very day when the focus of his office should be on Rangel’s own shameful conduct and abuse.

3.4.1 Furnishings of any kind, including but not limited to furniture items (including sign-in/registration tables, pedestals, easels, carpets, rugs and mats); shades, drapes and screens; artwork, exhibits or posters; and trees, flowers and other plans may not be placed in a hallway or exit access.

The source has also informed me that Rangel’s staff appears to have developed the habit of only putting up the display on days when his office is assumed to be coming underseige by the press and it is taken down as soon as the cameras go away. No doubt many patriotic members of the House would like to honor their own home state, or town’s fallen in such a manner, were it not prohibited by House rules.

Clearly the disgraced Rangel has not learned the lesson of playing by the rules, when ignoring them might offer him some potential benefit. Have you no sense of decency, Charlie Rangel, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency at all? Evidently the poster only makes an appearance on bad news days for Rangel, perhaps otherwise being left in some closet somewhere to collect dust.

If we are to look at what happened to Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) last week as a guide, the answer is “yes” and “no.”

At the beginning of last week, it looked like Rangel might finally get his comeuppance. On Tuesday, the House Committee on Standards and Official Conduct (commonly known as the House Ethics Committee) convicted Rangel on a series of corruption charges that “brought discredit to the House.” As reported in The Hill and many other press outlets, Rangel was convicted by a House Ethics panel on 11 counts of violating ethics rules.

The convictions are serious and demonstrate a serial tendency on the part of Rangel to abuse his congressional office for personal gain.

You can read the official report from the House Ethics Committee here. The following is a summary of what the committee said Rangel did wrong:

• Rangel, who you may recall was formerly in charge of writing our nation’s tax policies, “forgot” to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income he earned from his off-shore rental property.
• Rangel misused his congressional office, staff and resources to raise money for his private Rangel Center for Public Service to be housed the City College of New York. (He also put the squeeze on donors with business before his House Ways and Means Committee and used the congressional “free mail” privilege to solicit funds.)
• Rangel misused his residentially-zoned Harlem apartment as a campaign headquarters.
• Rangel failed to report $600,000 in income on his official congressional financial disclosure reports, which contained “numerous errors and omissions.”

It is worth noting that the Committee did not consider other serious corruption charges against Rangel. For example, it has been alleged that Rangel preserved a tax loophole for an oil company in exchange for a Rangel Center donation. The Committee also did not consider the charge that Rangel used improper influence to maintain ownership of his highly coveted rent-controlled apartment – the same apartment he improperly used for campaign activities. The list goes on and on.

And so, what do you do with a congressman who so flagrantly violated ethics rules – 11 times over? Expel him from Congress? Well that’s what Judicial Watch pushed for in a statement issued to the press last Wednesday.

Following a sanctions hearing, the full Ethics Committee, by vote of 9-1 recommended “censure” for Rangel, not expulsion. According to The Washington Post: “Censure, which is just below expulsion, is the second most serious punishment the House can impose on a member. The recommendation will next go to the full chamber, which will probably vote the week after Thanksgiving and is expected to endorse the committee’s decision.”

Some will try to play up the seriousness of the censure resolution, but it carries with it no tangible consequence for Rangel. I’ll put it this way. Censure was the punishment Bill Clinton was hoping to get from the House for the Monica Lewinsky [obstruction of justice and perjury] scandal. Instead the House voted to impeach. And if the Senate had the courage to follow suit, he would have been tossed from office.

As this is Washington, politicians of both parties will pretend that censure is a serious punishment. But it is a “punishment” that simply requires Rangel to come to the well of the House and hear a disapproving statement read by lame-duck Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the real world, you get fired or thrown in jail for abusing your office and not paying your taxes.

Let me give you further context: The last time the House censured anyone was in 1983, when two congressmen (a Republican and Democrat) were censured for having sexual relationships with teenaged House pages. It seems that unless one is convicted of a crime, one can do anything as a congressman and not be thrown out of the House!

The fact that the House has so rarely resorted to censure is more indicative of the lack of seriousness about ethics in Congress than of the so-called severity of the censure punishment.

The full House should reject the Ethics Committee’s recommendation and expel Rangel from the House of Representatives.

This is a test for the incoming Republican leadership on whether it understands voters’ concerns about corruption in Congress.

Please call your congressman to let them know how you feel about the punishment that Rangel ought to face. You can reach the Capitol Hill switchboard at 202-224-3121.

After 40 years representing these folks, you can’t conclude he was an unknown commodity.  Granted, the conviction occurred after the election, but the charges were well publicized.

Has Charlie Rangel’s leadership produced life so grand in Harlem that flagrant and persistent unethical behavior by their Congressman means nothing to its residents?

The national poverty rate is around 14%.  In the 15^th district of New York, Charlie Rangel’s district, it’s 24.3%.  The child poverty rate is 30.9%.

Whatever it is that Harlem voters find so attractive about Mr. Rangel, it’s hard to conclude that quality of life is something they feel they owe to him.

But let’s think about this in a broader context.

Charlie Rangel is a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

There are now 41 House members who belong to the Caucus.  In the most recent elections, 37 of them ran as incumbents and all regained their seats handily.  The four seats that were vacated were easily captured by new black Democrats.

That’s a 100% return rate.  These Black Caucus Democrats recaptured their seats getting an average 75% of their district’s vote.

In a year when 62 Democrats were defeated – a 25% reduction in the bloc of 252 Democrats in the current Congress – the reduction of the bloc of 41 black Democrats was zero.

The average poverty rate in the districts of Congressional Black Caucus members is 20.3% – six points higher than the national average.  The average child poverty rate in these districts is 28.8%.

So, as in Charlie Rangel’s case, it’s hard to conclude that these Black Caucus Democrats are being sent back to Washington by large voting margins, year after year, because they are delivering such fine lives to their constituents.

A problem here is that elections in Black Caucus districts are not exactly what might be described as free and open.

About three quarters of these districts are Majority Minority districts, hard wired to guarantee election of blacks.  The remaining districts are also gerrymandered through various schemes flowing from collusion of political parties and state legislatures.

The initial provision of the Voting Rights Act, passed in 1965, to deal with voting problems was structured to counter schemes going on in the South – literacy tests, etc – rigged to keep blacks from registering and voting.

But by the 1970’s, this provision morphed into district gerrymandering.  What was initially meant to protect the voting rights of blacks evolved into provisions to guarantee the election of blacks.

The result of this overall process is a bloc of politically manipulated districts which, coupled with other institutional biases protecting incumbents, virtually guarantees the election of black Democrats.

You might say that rigged elections might be justified if it meant better lives for black constituents.

But given that these districts are largely characterized by persistent poverty and some of the worst public schools in the country, this is a conclusion that’s hard to reach.

Earlier this year, the NY Times profiled the prodigious money raising prowess and dubious ethics of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.  The Times editorialized, “Of all the money machines shaving ethical corners, few rival the Congressional Black Caucus…..the caucus spends far more on gala entertainments and golf outings than on the scholarships that billboard its charity drives.”

Political markets are like commercial markets.  The absence of competition results in shoddy products.

When we send American soldiers into harm’s way abroad to fight for free elections, perhaps we should spend more time considering the quality of our own democracy at home.