Good. This was a distraction we don't need. He'll be replaced by Pete Stark:

WASHINGTON - After being admonished by an ethics panel for accepting corporate-sponsored trips to the Caribbean, Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., said Wednesday that he will take a leave of absence from his chairmanship of the powerful House Ways and Means committee.

Rangel made the announcement to reporters on Capitol Hill, saying he would not answer any questions.

"I hope you don't mind. I don't take questions," he said.

He added that "from the very, very beginning, I had offered" to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to step down from the post. He said he was leaving now "to avoid my colleagues having to defend me" during the campaign season.

Pharyngula:

Did someone declare this National Flaming Racist Idiot week, and I just didn't notice until now? You have got to read Michael Medved's latest foray into pseudoscience: he has declared American superiority to be genetic, encoded in our good old American DNA. Because our ancestors were immigrants, who were risk-takers, who were selected for their energy and aggressiveness. Oh, except for those who are descended from slaves.

The idea of a distinctive, unifying, risk-taking American DNA might also help to explain our most persistent and painful racial divide - between the progeny of every immigrant nationality that chose to come here, and the one significant group that exercised no choice in making their journey to the U.S. Nothing in the horrific ordeal of African slaves, seized from their homes against their will, reflected a genetic predisposition to risk-taking, or any sort of self-selection based on personality traits.

But, he hastens to add, modern African-American genetics have been leavened with the genes of recent, self-selected immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa, so their unfortunate stay-at-home genes have a "less decisive influence".

Okay, I realize that being a conservative pundit means never having to say anything factual, but how can anyone be so unafraid to show his utterly bigoted ignorance? Does any brave soul want to listen to his program and get a list of sponsors so we can ask them if this is the kind of idiocy that they want their businesses associated with?

I have a clip of Chris exposing Newt Gingrich from the other day that I was going to put up, but I have to take a time out on that one.

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT

Judd:

Chris: "You have one guy Tom DeLay who lives in some sort of 20th floor apartment way down on Route 95, nothing special at all--I mean really lives basically, like a regular middle class person. He doesn't live well at all."

As Tom DeLay became a king of campaign fund-raising, he lived like one, too. He visited cliff-top Caribbean resorts, golf courses designed by PGA champions and four-star restaurants, all courtesy of donors who bankrolled his political money empire. ...read on"

Words can't describe the major sucking sounds that Matthews is making as he removes Delay's foot from his mouth. Even Dick Morris would be proud of the technique that Matthews applies.