I've long had a soft spot for Rep. Charlie Rangel. As a native New Yorker, I enjoy his slightly fey, gravelly-voiced regional accent. His pompadour is hilarious, and his impish smile, cheerful partisanship, and blunt-spoken political views have made him an avuncular character to political junkies, sort of an affable Barney Frank.

But how can you chair the congressional committee responsible for writing the nation's tax laws when you have some serious tax problems of your own? Democrats seem quick to forget, as Holly pointed out in our recent print edition, that Republican ethics scandals were a major reason for the Democrats' congressional takeover in 2006. Well, voters have not forgotten. Republicans are playing smart politics by, as Katie reports, pushing to strip Rangel of his chairmanship, and for Democrats to go on record on the issue. The Democrats have a reasonable counterargument that the Ethics Committee should be allowed to finish its investigation before rushing to judgment, but they ought to move it along quickly. And, unless the Ethics Committee can compellingly prove that Rangel had only the most minor of infractions and they were made in good faith—an unlikely scenario—the Democrats should dump him.

What, if anything, could possibly be the Democratic leadership's legitimate counterargument? When you are talking about muscular legislative tactics that Republicans pioneered, such as holding votes open to let the leadership strong-arm wavering members into voting a certain way, Democrats can credibly claim that passing the agenda they were elected to implement justifies the means. And "they [the Republicans] did it too!" is actually a legitimate argument when it comes to such procedural questions. If one party plays hardball when in power and the other doesn't, there is an imbalance in governance that does not reflect the will of the voters.

But the Democrats' apparent failure to see this distinction notwithstanding, none of that applies to ethical issues. The Democrats were not elected on a promise to return to the days of when the minority party had more power in policymaking, but they were elected on a promise to clean Congress's dirty laundry. Either Democrats prove that the days of Duke Cunningham-like behavior are over, or they will repeat the mistakes of the Tom DeLay-era Republicans, and voters may punish them at the polls for their hypocrisy.