CREW has talked a lot about the mysterious C Street House in Washington, D.C., the house's connection to the shadowy group called "the Fellowship," and its list of ethically tainted ex-residents. In this Sunday editorial, the New York Times reminds us of some of those former residents:

The $1.8 million townhouse came to public notice last year when three recent tenants — Senator John Ensign; Mark Sanford, the South Carolina governor and former congressman; and former Representative Charles Pickering Jr. — were embroiled in marital infidelity scandals. Mr. Pickering was accused by his estranged wife of entertaining a mistress at the house.

Of course, the ethical concerns swirling around Ensign and Sanford go well beyond infidelity itself.

In this TV report last week, CREW's Melanie Sloan was interviewed about C Street House. The Times editorial agrees with CREW and with a group of Ohio clergy that has filed a lawsuit challenging the C Street House's right to have a tax exemption:

The C Street Center does not offer the public services, religious teachings and ecclesiastical structure of a church. It also does not have to reveal its source of income to the I.R.S., including what individuals, corporations or political groups might subsidize the place.

Family values, human frailty and forgiveness are the stuff of spiritual counseling that evangelical tenants claim goes on privately inside the C Street Center. All well and good, but that does not make a church of a boarding house nor require a tithing of taxpayers.