Plenty of guilt, including some Democratic, on Mark Foley not getting reported sooner

We establish the Congressional equivalent of the Mendoza line — the Hammer line

The House Ethics Committee has wrapped up a slap-on-the-wrist report on why page-stalking former Florida Congressman Mark Foley wasn’t reported sooner.

The bottom line?

“Failure to exhaust all reasonable efforts to call attention to potential misconduct ... is not merely the exercise of poor judgment; it is a present danger to House pages and to the integrity of the institution of the House.”

But, while more Republicans, such as lame-duck Speaker of the House Denny Hastert, are more guilty, Democrats aren’t scot-free.

The panel said it found that many people on and off Capitol Hill knew about Foley's e-mails, including members of the media. It said the communications directors for the House Democratic caucus and campaign committee had copies of some of his electronic messages last year.

House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi said she knew nothing of this. Well, if she’s serious about ethics reform, here’s her first at-bat inside her own party. We’ll see how serious she is.

And, most ludicrous of all, the panel said it found no violation of House ethics rules. No wonder Congress’ approval rating now sits at 13 percent, and no wonder Public Citizen’s Joan Claybrook is hopping mad.

“While the committee's investigation makes clear that no one alerted either the (page) board or the ethics committee of concerns about Rep. Foley's advances to pages, the report lets all of those investigated off the hook for this utter abdication of their duty.”

Well, we’ll see if Pelosi is serious enough about ethics reform to boost the Congressional approval raiting above 20 percent, or .200 in baseball batting terms. In honor of that magic mark, in reference to baseball’s Mendoza line, and in honor of one of Texas’ most “illustrious” bug-killing Congressmen ever