That's the unintended message California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters delivered last week as she defended Mr. Rangel's failure to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in income and assets. Mrs. Waters has to defend such collegial corruption because if Mr. Rangel loses his lofty perch, the congresswoman won't be far behind.

"I want to tell you, there are many members who, if you go back over all of their records, over all of the years, you're going to find that there were disclosures that were not made," Mrs. Waters told MSNBC. The "we all do it defense" isn't sufficient for one of the nation's chief tax writers.

When Mrs. Waters invokes the "we all do it" defense, she really means: I do it. She has been named one of the most corrupt members of Congress by the liberal-minded ethics group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and faces her own ethics investigation.