As the HouseTurns...yet again.

Sometimes the unexpected happens.

Yesterday morning, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert

urged fellow Republicans on Wednesday to abandon new rules that led to a shutdown of the ethics committee and political grief for the GOP.

"I'm willing to step back," Hastert said after a closed-door meeting with members of the GOP rank and file at which he stressed the need to end the controversy.

Wow! As I noted in my previous post, Hastert was willing to go even farther than my proposed compromise.

And then the truly unexpected happened. Last night, the House voted 406-20 to rescind the rules changes instituted in January and go back to the old rules.

That means that The Bug Man is going to be investigated.

It also means that the ethics committee can go forward with investigations of Democrats. Republican Chris Shays (Connecticut) led Republican opposition to the DeLay Rule and pushed for repeal of the new rules, and yet he told the New York Times

If the rules are all right for Tom DeLay, they are all right for everyone else. People feel that Democrats have piled on Tom DeLay and forgotten the inappropriate behavior of Nancy (Pelosi) and others.

Indeed, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Questions about Minority Leader Pelosi's travel expenses have been raised. As anyone who has read this blog knows, I have contempt for hypocrisy. Now that the old ethics committee rules are back in place, I do not want to see hypocrisy from the Democrats. If I do see it, I will criticize them as well.

I think it is highly probable that the Republicans are going to launch into an ethics frenzy against the Democrats (which could show more hypocrisy by them), but the Democrats got what they wanted, and they have to accept that the rules apply to them as well.

Stay tuned, boys and girls...