The ethics charges against House Majority Leader Tom DeLay -- The charges are serious. They go way beyond being partisan.

House Democrats and four government watchdog groups, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Public Citizen, Common Cause, and Public Campaign, have called for DeLay to resign as majority leader.

Despite the understandable public backing of House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and other Republicans, the charges are serious, very serious in my opinion.

Hastert's said "[w]hen I first became Speaker, it was my hope that the days of the politicization of the ethics process were over. I am profoundly disappointed that the Ethics Committee has once again become a battleground for politics.”

(The ethics committee, consisting of five Republicans and five Democrats, voted unanimously on the findings. Partisan.)

But these charges go way beyond partisan politics, and given the nature of the charges, it matters not whether his actions represented matters in Delay believes are in "the best interests of the country" as explained by Speaker Hastert.

Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott's fall from his position of power in the U.S. Senate was rather rapid; Rep. DeLay's will not be as rapid, but I predict that his days as House Majority Leader are numbered.

Power has its limits, as evidenced by the fall of former Speaker Newt Gingrich who reaped what he had sown with Rep. Wright. It's the American and not the Machiavellian way.

(Background stories in The Washington Post and The Hill.)