Every criminal operation has its code of silence.The Mafia enforces omerta.
Bad cops erect their blue wall of silence.
And Democrats running Congress have their "motion to refer."
That was the slimy tool Speaker Nancy Pelosi wielded on the floor of the House of Representatives yesterday to cover up for her tax-dodging top committee chairman, Charlie Rangel.
In a convoluted parliamentary charade, Democrats voted in nearly lockstep to thwart a resolution to remove Rangel from the powerful chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee, where he sits as the nation's top tax-writer -- at least until his numerous ethical and legal woes have been resolved.
For as long as he remains in power under this odious cloud, Rangel makes a mockery of the "People's House." Among the wall of 243 House Democrats who voted to quash the resolution was, not surprisingly, Rangel himself.
"It's unfair," Rangel told a reporter before the vote. "I think the Ethics Committee should get a chance to work its will."
Whenever Rangel speaks, it brings to mind the epic scene in "The Godfather II" when Frank Pentangeli remembers his omerta and, from the stand in the Senate hearing room, recants all his testimony against Michael Corleone.
"I never knew no Godfather. I got my own family, Senator," Pentangeli says in a strangled voice eerily similar to Rangel's.
In Sicilian, Pentangeli means "five angels," as in the five angels watching over in the famous Botticelli painting "The Virgin with the Child and Five Angels."
But in this sordid world of politics where the fallen reign supreme, Charlie Rangel has 243 "angels" watching over him.