Bringing ethics back to the House

Bringing ethics back to the Ethics Committee was agreed to by almost all of the House today. One noteworthy exception was our own Joe Barton. This is the story:

A few months back, as Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s troubles began to multiply, the Republicans in the House battened down the hatches. First, they drove through a change in Ethics Committee rules so that if the evenly-divided committee was unable to agree on whether there was a violation, the charge of a violation would be automatically dismissed. Period. Used to be that in such case the matter would be referred to a subcommittee to investigate.

That wasn’t enough, of course, so the Speaker (whose rise to power is generally credited to Mr. DeLay) removed three of the five committee members (including its chairman), who had last year reprimanded Mr. DeLay for other abuses, and replaced them with people who had contributed to Mr. DeLay’s defense fund. Good friends.

Today, the Republicans, with the advice and consent of Speaker Dennis Hastert, finally gave in to enormous pressure from voters across the country and voted to restore the previous rules; only 20 Republicans, including Joe Barton, voted against.