Frustrated by Jack Murtha’s ethical skeletons and stand on choice and guns? Angry about Steny Hoyer’s numerous ties to K Street corporate lobbyists?

Well, there should be a third option. Henry Waxman for House Majority Leader! The Los Angeles Congressman is one of the smartest and most progressive and reform-minded members of the House. That’s why blogger Nancy Scola launched this blog promoting him. It’s time for the “Democrats Eliot Ness,” as The Nation once called him, to clean up the House.

Waxman is supporting Hoyer and never had any intention of running. Yet one can always dream.

Luckily in January Waxman will take over the chairmanship of the House Committee on Government Reform and hopefully commence with long overdue investigations into the Bush Administration’s bungling of the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina, war profiteering by Halliburton, influence peddling by Jack Abramoff and numerous other neglected areas of Congressional inquiry.

So hurrah for that. The hearings couldn’t come a minute too soon. But it would be even better if somehow Waxman became Pelosi’s number two.