Free Republic

The North American Animal Liberation press office says Briana Waters was released from prison Saturday. The 34-year-old Waters was connected to a cell of radical environmentalists based in Olympia and in Oregon who carried out attacks throughout the West from 1996-2001, causing more than $80 million in damage. Last month, an appeals court overturned Water's conviction of being guilty of helping an ecoterror attack that destroyed a University of Washington research center, concluding the judge made mistakes that cast doubt on the fairness of her trial.

A key Democrat accused banks of "fraud" in the emerging controversy over whether foreclosures have been properly administered. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, suggested the recent epidemic of foreclosures are a result of collusion in the banking industry. "This is massive collusion and fraud," she said during an appearance on CNBC. "It's proven by the fact that you have millions of people in foreclosure who should have never been in foreclosure," she added. "This just didn't happen because there were a lot of irresponsible people. Think about it, this is unprecedented that...

  It’s official. The House Ethics Committee will not conduct trials of Reps. Charles Rangel (D-NY) and Maxine Waters (D-NY) until safely after the November 2 election. Ethics Chair Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) announced yesterday that Rangel’s trial is scheduled to begin on November 15 and Waters’ on November 19.Politics have trumped ethics in the final days of this Congress. Notwithstanding her pledge to “drain the swamp” and preside over the most ethical Congress ever, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) simply will not allow high-profile ethics trials during the campaign season. This delay is sure to backfire. A new poll shows...

  In recent days, we have complained about the apparent delay of the House ethics trials of Reps. Charles Rangel (D-NY) and Maxine Waters (D-CA) until after the election. We also wondered aloud about why the Republicans on the Ethics Committee were letting it happen.Today, Rep. Jo Bonner (R-AL), the Committee's ranking Republican, said Democrats were “stalling” and accused Committee Chair Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) of having “repeatedly refused to set either the Rangel or Waters trial before the November election. “Bonner’s statement was unusually blunt and was signed by all five Republican members of the Committee.  It may have...

Ethics panel members meet to discuss schedule for Rangel, Waters trialsBy CHAD PERGRAM FOX NEWS / NEWSCORE Last Updated: 11:49 AM, September 23, 2010 Members of the House Ethics Committee and the various subcommittees which probed Reps. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) for alleged transgressions are meeting behind closed doors in the basement of the Capitol to discuss a trial schedule for the two lawmakers, Fox News Channel reported Thursday. Both Rangel and Waters declined to accept potential punishment that ethics investigators wanted to mete out back in July. Instead, the duo opted for separate trials in an...

  Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) is Chair of the House Ethics Committee, which is supposed to be conducting a trial of Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) on the 13 violations of House rules the Committee alleged on July 29.  There is also supposed to be a trial of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA).Instead, Lofgren played host on Friday to comedian Stephen Colbert who testified “in character” on the plight of migrant farm workers before a Judiciary Committee subcommittee that Lofgren also chairs. I thought Colbert was actually pretty funny but other reviews were mixed. Stephen Colbert Opening Statement 5:29 min. The...

Complete title: Ethics charges against Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., looking much worse and they were bad to begin with Things looked pretty bad when Congresswoman Maxine Waters was caught helping arrange a taxpayer bailout for a bank where her husband was a former board member and had a significant financial interest in. The House Ethics Committee report on the matter was pretty damning. Today, the Washington Post has a lengthy and terrific piece of reportage that shows the circumstances of the OneUnited Bank bailout are even more suspicious than previously thought: From the moment Boston-based OneUnited Bank began seeking a...

Three staffers working for embattled Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) were asked by security officers to leave an event in downtown Washington on Thursday after they tried to display large campaign signs just as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was about to speak. The aides were holding lawn signs that defended Waters from the ethics charges she is facing in the House. Three staffers working for embattled Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) were asked by security officers to leave an event in downtown Washington on Thursday after they tried to display large campaign signs just as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was...

Three staffers working for embattled Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) were asked by security officers to leave an event in downtown Washington on Thursday after they tried to display large campaign signs just as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was about to speak. The aides were holding lawn signs that defended Waters from the ethics charges she is facing in the House. Waters told The Hill afterward that the staffers had been displaying the signs at the annual legislative conference for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, which was held at the Washington convention center a few blocks away. “It ain’t about...

Complete title: New Waters/Frank Scandal Documents Uncovered by JW: OneUnited Bank Received “Less than Satisfactory” Assessment Prior to Bailout Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) Evaluation: OneUnited “Ineffective” “Needs to Improve” “Less than Satisfactory” “Has Done a Poor Job” Washington, DC -- September 15, 2010Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has received new documents from the U.S. Department of Treasury related to the controversial $12 million bailout grant provided to the Boston-based OneUnited Bank. The documents, obtained in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against Treasury, include internal...

Waters’, Rangel’s trials may be stalled till after Election DayBy Rachel Rose Hartman Mon Sep 13, 1:38 pm ET Critics and supporters alike have requested speedy House trials for Democratic Reps. Maxine Waters and Charlie Rangel, who each face multiple House ethics charges. Yet watchdog groups tell the Hill it's unlikely that either case will be resolved before the Nov. 2 general election. "Both of these pending trials should have been concluded months ago," Craig Holman of Public Citizen told the Hill's Susan Crabtree. "The House ethics committee stumbled miserably in these cases, allowing them to be delayed and delayed,...

The Boston bank that is at the center of controversy involving Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who intervened with regulators to protect and reward the bank (her husband had a financial interest in the bank), apparently lied about helping poor people, reports the Boston Globe: Five years ago this month, Mayor Thomas M. Menino stood with community leaders in Roxbury to hail plans for a new OneUnited branch in the neighborhood. The bank's president pledged to make loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars across Boston, with a special emphasis on low-income borrowers. OneUnited said it would partner with the city to...

Senate Prepares for Trial of Federal JudgeDavid Ingram, The National Law Journal Wednesday September 8, 2010, 3:02 am EDT One of the nation's least used courts is opening for business. Next week, a special U.S. Senate committee is scheduled to begin the impeachment trial of G. Thomas Porteous Jr. The rarely held proceeding will determine the future of the New Orleans federal district judge who is accused of decades of corruption, including an alleged kickback scheme with a law firm. The trial will be the Senate's first since 1999, when the presidency of Bill Clinton hung in the balance, and...

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) has established a legal defense fund to pay for any expenses associated with her full-throttled battle against ethics charges that she used her position to help a bank in which her husband owned stock. Waters filed paperwork with the ethics committee to form the fund in late August. Her office did not comment about whether she had already held fundraisers to help fill the fund’s coffers or has events planned. “I have made clear from the beginning that I have not violated any House rules and therefore will mount a vigorous defense against these baseless charges,”...

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) has established a legal defense fund to pay for any expenses associated with her full-throttled battle against ethics charges that she used her position to help a bank in which her husband owned stock. Waters filed paperwork with the Ethics Committee to form the fund in late August. Her office did not comment about whether she has already held fundraisers to help fill the fund’s coffers or has events planned. “I have made clear from the beginning that I have not violated any House rules and therefore will mount a vigorous defense against these baseless charges,”...

Rep. Maxine Waters has turned political endorsements into a family business, using federal election laws to charge California candidates and political causes to include their names as her personal picks on a sample ballot, or "slate mailer," she sends to as many as 200,000 South Central Los Angeles voters, records show. Some statewide candidates paid as much as $45,000 for their share of the costs to be included in the mailer, according to state and federal election records, and while it can be costly for the candidates, the mailer has proved profitable for Mrs. Waters' daughter, Karen. Karen Waters' public...

Just when it appears that no one could possibly get away with blaming former President George W. Bush for even one more thing, another crazed liberal Democrat exercises the right to do just that. The latest knee-jerk, Bush-bashing excuse came from none other than Rep. Maxine Waters, perhaps the second dumbest member of Congress, right after Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas. I know that it is terribly politically incorrect of me to notice their stupidity and race-baiting, since both of them are black and female—especially since they have so much competition in Congress from obtuse white men. But in 2010,...

VIDEO 6:27 min. ABC News, OCE part starts at 5:40 min. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), charged with violating House ethics rules, said today on ABC’s Good Morning America that the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) is "not very tight, they don't do very good work, rather sloppy work." Waters is accused of seeking federal funds to bail out a bank in which her husband was a stockholder.  She has denied breaking House rules. OCE should not be confused with the House Ethics Committee. OCE was established in 2008 in recognition of how poorly the Ethics Committee does its job. Comprised...

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U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, is still battling charges of ethics violations and financial self-dealing. She is alleged to have used her power as a Congresswoman to personally benefit by orchestrating a meeting between U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and a bank in which she and her husband had hundreds of thousands of dollars invested. But Waters insists that there was nothing wrong, illegal, or unethical about her actions, and- like Congressman Charles Rangel of New York, who faces 13 corruption charges- Waters is fighting the allegations against her, instead of cutting a deal with House Republicans. Furthermore,...