New York Democrat congressman Eric Massa, whom Geraldo Rivera referred to as “the gay upstate guy” on Fox News over the weekend, has come out with guns blazing after last week stating that he would resign following allegations that he sexually harrassed a male staffer. Massa is now saying that he was railroaded and he’s being run out of the House of Representatives because he was one of some 38 Democrats voting against the Obamacare bill…

Massa also hinted in the above-referenced radio appearance (he does a weekly Sunday show on WKPQ Power 105.3 FM in Hornell, NY) that he might rescind his resignation set for today, but told a caller to the show that the longer he stays in office the worse the heat will get from the House ethics investigation launched into his conduct and the bigger the damage will be to his family…

“I’m not going to be a Congressman as of 5 o’clock [Monday] afternoon. The only way to stop that is for me to rescind my resignation. That’s the only way to stop it. And the only way that’s going to happen is if this becomes a national story.”

Responding to a caller to the program, Massa said there are consequences to his not resigning.

But Massa also repeatedly pointed out that the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, commonly referred to as the ethics panel, would continue its investigation if he remains in office.

“That’s very kind of you, but understand what that means for me,” Massa said in a response to a caller who suggested he not resign. “It means that a group of lawyers are going to try to rip me and my family limb from limb. And you’ve already seen it in the newspapers. … It’s a piranha feeding frenzy.”

Massa said on the show that the ethics investigation focused on sexually charged comments he made to an aide at a New Year’s Eve celebration, but charged he was unaware of an ethics committee investigation into the incident until after he had announced his retirement last week.

The House ethics committee confirmed Thursday that it is investigating unspecified allegations against Massa.

UPDATE No. 1: The Massa story is becoming national, as Fox News is all over it and it’s virtually everywhere on the internet. Meanwhile, a video from Massa’s 2006 race shows a negative interaction with current White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel from the former’s unsuccessful congressional bid (he lost in 2006 and then won in 2008)…

UPDATE No. 2: Five o’clock came and went today and Massa didn’t rescind his resignation despite the fact that his ordeal definitely fulfilled the “national story” criterion he established. This begs two questions – first, was Massa’s story that what he’s accused of essentially amounted to an off-color joke at a drunken wedding reception all the dirt the ethics committee investigators had on him? And second, if it wasn’t, how does Massa expect to be remembered when he allowed himself to be “unjustly” forced out of office rather than stay and fight the good fight after outing the “bad guys” at the top of the Democrat hierarchy?

The guess here is the first question is the one at hand here. Massa may not have just made a joke about hooking up with one of his male staffers after a bunch of drinks, and that’s why the efforts to destroy him that he’s whining about in such strident terms are successful.

Still, it would appear that at least some of what the ex-congressman says is legitimate. It just points out that the health-care battle is increasingly analogous to the knife-fight scene in Saving Private Ryan in its desperate and savage quality…