Let the investigation begin!

MSNBC:

The chairman of the House ethics committee has conceded that his Republican colleagues must reverse partisan changes to investigative rules if they hope to break a deadlock that has virtually shut the panel down, a senior GOP aide said Tuesday.

The conclusion reached by Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., may be unpopular with Republicans who muscled the changes through the House in January. Since then, GOP lawmakers have had to defend their votes against accusations by Democrats — and media editorials — that the changes were designed to protect Majority Leader Tom DeLay from further investigation.

LA Times:

Sometime this week, the most powerful man in the House of Representatives is expected to take the rare and politically painful step of acknowledging he made a mistake.

According to his aides, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., is convinced he must act quickly to end a messy impasse with House Democrats that has paralyzed the chamber's ethics committee. Intensifying the standoff's political fallout is that it has continued as questions have mounted about the conduct of the House's second most powerful man -- Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

Hastert is expected to move to limit the damage. Aides say he will probably allow a floor vote to rescind rule changes for the ethics committee that he pushed through the chamber on a party-line vote in January, and may offer a new package of rules to replace them.

Democrats have argued that the rule changes made it virtually impossible for the committee to open and conduct investigations.