Rangel To Give Up Ways & Means Chairmanship?

Just breaking on Twitter, Chuck Todd of MSNBC claims:

NBC News has learned Charlie Rangel will voluntarily give up his Ways and Means chairmanship, possibly as early as tonight.

MI Dem Rep. Sander Levin will temporarily take over the Ways and Means cmte; Unclear if Rangel can get the gavel back.

Tune in tomorrow to see if those reports pan out.

Update 5:34 PM PST: More in a later post — Rangel’s apparently not going quietly.

Earlier today on NRO’s Corner, Daniel Foster quoted a senior Democratic aide who said, “The dam broke today,” increasing the bipartisan pressure for Rangel to step down.

For some background, here is the the rest of the post on Rangel that we wrote yesterday.

Leftwing journalist Peter Beinart dubs the shot at left (appropriately enough), “The Photo That Could Doom the Democrats”, and compares Charlie Rangel’s woes in 2010 with Dan Rostenkowski in ’94.

Conservative blogger “the Rhetorican” disagrees with Beinart about the power of its iconography.

But in a sense, they’re both right. I don’t think Rangel’s ethics woes in and of themselves risk Democrats’ congressional control in November. But they certainly will be part of the story.

And fair is fair. Democrats played up GOP ethics woes in 2006, a time of economic prosperity. Nancy Pelosi famously promised the most ethical congress ever. So they should be surprised to see their own Culture of Corruption (to coin a phrase) pointed out, particularly when it continues to drag down the economy.

(“Unexpectedly,” of course!)

And speaking of Rangel, we should probably flash back to…

[youtube UksfV5V7R20]

Update: Jim Geraghty writes, “Congressional job approval is averaging 14.3 percent. How can these party pollsters isolate the anger at Rangel?”