House ethics committee doesn't live up to its name

It should not be that difficult for a body of professional men and women making executive wages to arrive at a system of policing themselves. But, apparently in the U.S. House of Representatives, it is impossible.
It seems that writing the rules is easy enough. The House ethics committee has this clear-enough rule: Members and staff are to conduct themselves "at all times in a manner which shall reflect creditably on the House of Representatives."
But the ethics committee seems to have a problem enforcing the rules.
Take this example.
A congressman established a reputation among at least some members of the House and their staffs as a man who showed an unhealthy interest in the teenage pages who are brought to Washington to serve in the Capitol and to get a sense of how government works.
If evidence of this man's behavior is brought to the attention of House members, even House members in the very highest leadership positions, and nothing is done until the story breaks in the newspapers, a violation of the public trust would seem clear. Those who didn't act to protect pages who were sent to the nation's capital by their parents with every expectation that they would be reasonably safe, did not act in a manner that "reflects creditably on the House."
The Foley case
We're referring, of course, to the case of Florida Republican Mark Foley, who, it now turns out, first started raising eyebrows on Capital Hill in 1995 with his unseemly interest in young male pages.
Foley is gone, but his enablers remain, without so much as a formal reprimand from the ethics committee.
The committee criticized Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., saying the evidence showed he was told of the problem months before he acknowledged learning of Foley's questionable e-mails to a former Louisiana page. But it found that neither he nor any staff member broke House rules and said no one should be punished. That was enough for Hastert to pronounce himself pleased with the proceedings and to claim a kind of moral victory.
The committee concluded that Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, was told about Foley's inappropriate conduct in 2002 or 2003. And the committee found "a disconcerting unwillingness to take responsibility for resolving issues regarding Foley's conduct."
The committee said one witness, former House chief clerk Jeff Trandahl, testified he warned the head of the supervisory page board, Rep. John Shimkus, that Foley was a "ticking time bomb" who had been confronted repeatedly.
The committee also believed that Hastert was told, at least in passing, about Foley's e-mails to pages or former pages by both Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-N.Y., months before the scandal broke.
The committee was clearly convinced that Hastert was less than candid in his testimony, yet it found no wrong-doing.
Ironic, but not amusing
The ethics committee did find another case that it could get excited about. A decade ago, about the same time Foley started raising eyebrows, Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., was given a tape recording of fellow members discussing how they could pull the wool over the eyes of the American people.
The tape caught then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., telling House Republicans in a conference cell call how to react to ethics charges that had been brought against him.
As it turns out, the tape was given to McDermott by a Florida couple who recorded it using a police scanner, which is illegal. McDermott leaked the tape to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The New York Times, which published stories on the case in January 1997.
The leak, the committee ruled, was a violation of the House ethics standards.
So, the congressmen who didn't talk about a member's salacious e-mails to young pages did not violate the House's ethics, but the congressman who exposed a former speaker's efforts to subvert an ethics investigation, was in violation.
The House goes beyond being ethically challenged.