House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fields tough questions on grading fellow Democrat Obama. She gives him an “A.” No reporter dares ask about Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill.; Rep. Charles Rangel, D-Manhattan; or Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa.

Pelosi doesn’t like nosy questions about House Democrats who operate under an ethical cloud, any more than Obama’s communications operators welcome such distractions. Both have bigger fish to fry. Besides, no matter what’s wrong, it’s going to be OK.

Rattner is Obama’s adviser on the auto industry retrofit. New York State Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo is probing an investment house, which Rattner founded and ran, for offering kickbacks to state officials who pick which bankers handle money for the state retirement system.

Rattner says he didn’t know anything about it. So it’s OK. Rattner is now in a scrum over a reported threat that he would bring down the full force of the White House press corps on investors who balked at going along with Obama’s arrangements on the Chrysler bankruptcy.

Why on earth would anybody think that Obama has influence over this press corps?

Carrion is Obama’s urban affairs director. As former Bronx Borough president, Carrion waited two years to pay an architect who did a private job for him. The architect needed permits influenced by Carrion’s office. Carrion says there’s nothing unusual about the delay. So move on.

Sims will be Obama’s deputy housing secretary. He was county executive in Seattle, Wash. His office was handed the largest fine in U. S. history, $124,000, for covering up records on the price of a new stadium for the Seahawks.

Sims says it was his office that was fined, not him. So that’s apparently OK with the Obama camp, which promised voters a new era of transparency. Hey! Turn the page.

Jackson is being scrutinized for possible involvement in former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s plan to sell Obama’s Senate seat.

Murtha is chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, and is an ever-flowing conduit of federal funds to firms linked to his relatives, but most of all his campaign contributors. Federal agents recently raided a Murtha-connected political consulting firm that played a role in

Murtha’s Earmarks. He is, however, a confidant of Pelosi, and directs defense appropriations handed out to his Republican colleagues. So there doesn’t seem to be any hurry about the Ethics Committee jostling him.

No more than with Rangel, chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. Because of newspaper articles alleging Rangel irregularities on taxes and misuse of House resources, Rangel last year threw himself on the mercy of the Ethics Committee.

It was a gamble that has so far paid off. Pelosi said the Rangel probe would be finished in 2008. It isn’t yet. The ethics panel could announce something as soon as next week. It could also wait until Labor Day, or later.

Over in the Senate, nobody’s looking at reports that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., backed legislation that would have funneled $25 million in taxpayer money to a real estate venture run by her husband. She called the accusations “nonsense,” and that was that.

After all, we have change you can believe in: From a Republican culture of corruption to a Democratic one.