The difference between Democrats and Republicans on ethics

When Democrats have ethics problems in their midst, they address them immediately:

Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (W.Va.) stepped down temporarily from his post as ranking Democrat on the House ethics committee, amid accusations that he used his congressional position to funnel money to his own home-state foundations, possibly enriching himself in the process.

As recently as Thursday, Mollohan, a 12-term lawmaker, had said he would not step aside, but he bowed to pressure yesterday from House Democratic leaders eager to pursue their campaign against what they call a "culture of corruption" in the Republican Party.

It has become clear that the unprecedented campaign that has been launched against me will continue to be at least as relentless as it has been to date," he said in a letter to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), maintaining his innocence. "I do not want these baseless allegations to divert attention from the important work that the House Ethics Committee must undertake in the remainder of this Congress."

In a 500-page complaint filed with a U.S. attorney in February, the conservative National Legal and Policy Center in Falls Church challenged the accuracy of Mollohan's financial disclosure forms and detailed a remarkable change in the lawmaker's personal fortune.

Mollohan's real estate holdings and other assets jumped in value from $562,000 in 2000 to at least $6.3 million in 2004, said Ken Boehm, chairman of the legal center.

During the same period, Mollohan used his position on the House Appropriations Committee to secure more than $150 million in appropriations for five nonprofit entities that he helped establish in his congressional district. One of the groups is headed by a former appropriations aide, Laura Kurtz Kuhns, with whom Mollohan bought $2 million worth of property on Bald Head Island, N.C.

The Democrats' hurry to get Mollohan out of the way is no doubt motivated by the November elections and the party's desire to paint the Republicans as corrupt, as it is by a sense of what's right. It still differs from Republicans who hung onto Tom DeLay long after it was clear that he was a sleaze of nearly unparallelled proportions, shrieking that his ethical problems were the result of some kind of conspiracy by those who have no power.