Dishonest politicians, partisan excuses….where’s the change?

So Tim Geithner beat the rap that he didn’t pay income taxes….unintentionally, mind you…and has finessed his way to confirmation to head the Treasury Department and the IRS, tasked with collecting taxes from Americans and taking no excuses for failing to do so.

The benefit of having a lame opposition party and a complicit media.

Then late today, on a Friday evening when most people were off work with attention distracted, the news comes out that Secretary-designate for Health and Human Services, Tom Daschle, scurried to pay $100,000 in back taxes for benefits he did not report….until he was being vetted for the Cabinet position.

Mr. Daschle made the payments to cover a luxury car and driver provided to him by an investment firm where he was an adviser after leaving the U.S. Senate in 2005, but which he didn’t report as income, people familiar with the report said. The payments also covered unreported consulting income and unwarranted charitable deductions. The tax period covered 2005 through 2007.

Mr. Daschle told committee staff that he had grown used to having a car and driver as Senate majority leader and didn’t think to report the perquisite on his taxes, according to staff members.

Oh…didn’t think to report the perqs. How convenient. What a minor slip of the mind, just like Geithner. An “unintentional” mistake, a “hiccup”, ‘scuse me.

And these nominations sail through? What double standards.

Obama has been excusing his nominees, one by one (including Attorney General nominee Eric Holder’s inexcusable pardon of financier Marc Rich, which even Holder admits was a big mistake) and touting them as great nominees nonetheless.

Politicians, even the administration, acting as if the rules don’t apply to them. Where’s the change?