The calls from fellow Democrats for New York Rep. Charles Rangel to resign could quickly turn from a trickle to a flood unless he can quickly negotiate a plea bargain to prevent a congressional trial on allegations of ethical misconduct.
With elections nearing, fellow Democrats don't relish the spectacle of that trial.
The intelligence failures that led to the attacks of 9/11 were blamed on government agencies hoarding information instead of sharing it, missing crucial clues that could have headed off al-Qaida's strikes. The changes that reduced this kind of information "stovepiping" have produced the opposite problem — amassing so much data that officials complain it's hard to make sense of it, and as the WikiLeaks incident shows, keep it secret.
Thursday is a deadline of sorts. An ethics committee panel of four Democrats and four Republicans has scheduled a public hearing where the charges against Rangel would be aired in public for the first time. The subcommittee's task is to decide whether the charges can be proved by clear and convincing evidence. Just spelling them out would be bad enough, Democrats running for re-election feel.
For his part, Rangel remained noncommittal Wednesday on whether he's still open to a deal to avoid all that.
"Depends on what the settlement is," he said of the lawyer-to-lawyer talks.
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