Times, Inquirer Call For Rangel To Drop Gavel

The pressure's building on Charlie Rangel.

The New York Times edit board wants him step aside pending completion of the ethics probe into his Dominican tax problem and the Philly Inquirer wants him out -- period. 

The Times: "Mr. Rangel has hurt his case with clumsy, combative pleas of ignorance of the facts and law involving his Dominican villa. “We do make errors, even though we consider ourselves experts in terms of tax policy for the nation,” said the lawmaker, who has three decades’ experience on Ways and Means."

The Inquirer: "Voters in Rangel's district can decide in November whether they still want him as their congressman. But somebody who owes back taxes shouldn't be chairman of the House committee in charge of tax laws."

Curiously, the Wall St. Journal, didn't join the dump-Charlie bandwagon, blaming the tax code for the mix-up, not the tax chairman:

"Plenty of Americans know how he feels since the IRS tax form might as well be in Spanish. The tax code now runs to some 67,000 pages, and Mr. Rangel has probably written a few thousand himself in his 38 years on Capitol Hill. If even the nation's top tax writer can't figure out what to declare as income, and what not to declare, how can the rest of us be expected to get it right?"

Of course, the GOP is trying to make "Rangel" a bad brand -- like "Delay" was in '06.The Minnesota state party, for instance, is calling on Al Franken to give back $10,000 he took from the Harlem Demorat's leadership PAC.