THE DEMS' 'POLICE' NEED POLICING

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Harlem), as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, oversees US tax policy. But Rangel himself is a probable tax offender.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) simply can't tell the whole truth about his cut-rate, quid pro quo mortgage deals. Why would Dodd of all people, as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, receive preferential loan treatment from the now bankrupt Countrywide Financial Corporation
The taped exchanges between Rep. Barney Frank and Franklin Raines in the 2004 House financial-oversight hearings are metaphors for the entire subprime crisis. Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Raines, the erstwhile CEO of the now-insolvent Federal National Mortgage Association, sort of decided among themselves in public hearings that there was no need for Frank's additional regulation of the association.
It would take a genealogist to sort out all the tribal ties, family dynasties and pay-for-play deals involved in the proposed auctioning off of President-elect Barack Obama's Illinois Senate seat.

Democratic candidate for Senate in Minnesota Al Franken simply relied - correctly, as it seems - on the state's Democratic officials to keep counting until they came up with the proper result.

Democratic egalitarians will probably convince New York Gov. Paterson (who stepped up to the office after the moral implosion of former Democratic Gov. Eliot Spitzer) to anoint Caroline Kennedy as senator from New York.

Kennedy's inept public interviews, absence of political experience and reluctance to disclose her financial status don't bother critics who once swore that 16-year political veteran and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was too politically inexperienced,