From The Washington Post
Editorial

What, one has to wonder, would it take for the House ethics committee to hold a lawmaker or a staff member accountable?

A special investigative subcommittee convened to examine responses to Mark Foley’s inappropriate contacts with congressional pages found “a significant number of instances where Members, officers or employees failed to exercise appropriate diligence and oversight.” It found “a disconcerting unwillingness to take responsibility for resolving issues regarding Rep. Foley’s conduct.” And it found “a pattern of conduct . . . among many individuals to remain willfully ignorant of the potential consequences of former Representative Foley’s conduct with respect to House pages.”

The sum total of disciplinary actions the panel is recommending as a result? Zero.

In a report released yesterday, the panel did a good job laying out the disturbing facts of the case: how the Florida Republican’s inappropriate interest in pages manifested itself from his first days on the job and how lawmakers and staff failed to do nearly enough to find out about or fix the problem. It ably described the stakes involved: “The failure to exhaust all reasonable efforts to call attention to potential misconduct involving a Member and House page 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.” Then, all too characteristically, the committee declined to hold even a single individual responsible for any misstep.

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