This is exactly what the Democrat-controlled House did last February when it held White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers in contempt for refusing to testify about the U.S. Attorney firings.

The difference is, that happened in the seventh year of the Bush Presidency; this is happening even before Obama takes office.

Reality check: The chances of House Democrats opening an ethics investigation into either Jackson's or Emanuel's involvement is exactly zero.

Ethics. Democrats. Say that three times fast.

Speaking of ethics, the Washington Post had a piece in yesterday's Metro section about how city officials in the People's Republic of Alexandria, Virginia (which the Mullings clan calls home) have "taken the unusual step of paying a professional ethicist to help them grapple with the moral issues involved" in making cuts to city services.

First of all, we are already paying city officials to make those kinds of choices and having an ethicist on the payroll to give them political cover will not get them a chapter in the next edition of "Profiles in Courage."

Second, if you are an ethicist how do you reconcile the fact that you have been hired - in a time of budget cuts - to help figure out which other city employees should lose their jobs?

Third, the ethicist is being paid $9,000 per year. Once you've gotten beyond the ethical problem posed above, you should ask for way more than $750 per month. I want to be the ethicist's agent.

And take 20 percent of the action.