Would The Last Politician Standing in New York… Please Close the Door?

Dayam! ANOTHER New York Democrat goes down –

Facing Misconduct Allegations, Massa to Resign

Facing “allegations of misconduct” that reportedly involve sexual harassment against a male staffer, freshman Rep. Eric Massa is resigning Monday.

“I own his reality,” the New York Democrat said in a statement, admitting to using language that “might make a chief petty officer feel uncomfortable.”

Massa went on to call Washington an “incredibly toxic atmosphere” and said the ethics committee probe “would tear my family and my staff apart.”

“In that investigators would be free to ask anything about me going back to my birth, I simply cannot rise to that level of perfection,” he said. “God knows that I am a deeply flawed and imperfect person.”

The House ethics panel is reviewing a complaint by a male staffer who reportedly felt uncomfortable in a situation with Massa that had sexual overtones.

Massa said he is resigning with a “profound sense of failure and a deep apology to all those whom, for the past year, I tried to represent as our nation struggles with problems far greater than anyone can possibly imagine.”

Massa announced Wednesday he would retire at the end of his term because of a recurrence of non-Hodgkins lymphoma, first diagnosed in 1996. He also addressed head-on the harassment allegations.

“The allegations are totally false. I am a salty old sailor,” Massa, a former Navy officer, said at a news conference. “These are blogs that are saying that I am leaving because of charges of harassing my staff. Do and have I used salty language? Yes, and I have tried to do better.”

He called the blogs “a symptom of the problem in this city.”