Congresswoman denies misusing office to aid bank partly owned by husband.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., plans to go through a House trial to contest charges of misusing her office, NBC News confirmed Friday night.

A House ethics subcommittee says Waters, 71, improperly intervened in 2008 with federal regulators to help get bailout funds for a bank that her husband owned stock in and on whose board he once served, said NBC and other media reports. Waters also once held stock in the bank.

Formal charges are not expected to be announced until next week, according to several congressional officials who spoke to The New York Times on condition of anonymity because the proceedings remained confidential. Details of the specific accusations of wrongdoing were not available Friday evening, the Times said.

Politico suggested the panel's charging document was delayed because Waters said she would go through with the trial instead of accepting and settling the panel's charges.

The House began its six-week summer recess Friday.

Modern-day precedent
The expected trial, coming just after the start of a similar proceeding on Thursday for Rep. Charles B. Rangel, D-N.Y., would be a modern-day precedent for the House, congressional officials told the Times.

At no time in at least the last two decades have two sitting House members faced a public hearing detailing allegations against them, the Times said.

Waters and Rangel are longstanding members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Waters would not comment publicly Friday night but has denied any wrongdoing. "I am confident that as the investigation moves forward the panel will discover that there are no facts to support allegations that I have acted improperly," Waters said in a prior statement.

She has been under investigation by the House ethics panel since last fall.

The Times and The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that Waters called Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. in 2008, as the economy was in a free fall, to ask him to host a special meeting with executives from black-owned banks.

As a Financial Services Committee member, Waters often called Paulson. He agreed to arrange the requested meeting, the Times reported last year.

Paulson did not know at the time that Waters’ husband, Sidney Williams, owned stock at least $250,000 worth of stock in and had served on the board of Boston-based OneUnited, whose chief executive turned the Treasury headquarters meeting into a special appeal for bailout assistance, the Times said.

OneUnited also had branches in Miami and Los Angeles. Waters' district includes part of Los Angeles.
The executive from OneUnited, one of the nation’s largest black-owned banks, asked for $50 million in federal aid, the Times reported.

OneUnited got $12.1 million in TARP money soon after a second meeting, The Washington Post reported Friday.

Waters has said she called Paulson on behalf of the National Bankers Association, a Washington-based organization of minority-owned banks, to help minority-owned banks get their fair share from the government.

Its incoming chairman, Robert Cooper, was a OneUnited executive.
After articles about the meeting appeared in the Times and the Journal, the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent watchdog agency, began an inquiry, the Times said. The office referred the matter to the ethics committee.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have complained that the OCE has unfairly and disproportionately targeted them, and many have signed onto a legislative effort to de-fang the office, Politico reported.

Gunman killed wrong kid, police sources say.

The killer stood over 13-year-old Robert Freeman’s bleeding body and pulled the trigger again, again and again.

But though he was just feet from the 8th grader’s face on the Far South Side Wednesday night, the gunman got the wrong kid, police sources said.

Bloodstained pavement and a makeshift memorial of teddy bears Thursday morning marked the spot on the 11500 block of South Perry where the latest Chicago schoolboy murder victim fell, in an apparent case of mistaken identity.

“The doctor told me he found 22 bullet holes in my baby. Twenty-two,” said his devastated mother, Theresa Lumpkin, who ran from her home moments after the shooting to find Robert dying in the street outside.

“That’s too many to...give a 13-year-old child,” she told ABC7. “You’re not supposed to kill a baby, not a kid. Period.”

Dozens of youths were hanging out in the street at 8 p.m. Wednesday when the killers snuck through a thicket of overgrown weeds in an empty lot and opened fire, relatives said.

Robert, who moved to West Pullman a few months earlier, had quickly established himself as a friendly face on the block, mowing lawns for pocket money and riding his bicycle with an infectious smile, neighbors said.

He attended Oglesby Elementary School, but when his family moved he transferred him out of the Chicago school system in May.

Wednesday night wasn’t his first brush with trouble, a police source said. Earlier this summer he was arrested for allegedly throwing bricks at car windows.

But Lumpkin said she told her son all the time to stay out of trouble. And she said he always told her, “ ‘Momma, I ain’t like that.’ ”

“He loved fishing, and he was always begging me to send him to his grandma’s in Saginaw, Michigan, so he could go fish there,” she said. “I wish I’d listened to him. . . . He might still be alive.”

Lumpkin said Robert was still conscious when she rushed out to him Wednesday night.

“He was saying, ‘Go get my momma,’ ” she said. “I’m hurt — it hurts real bad.”

Detectives spent Thursday interviewing witnesses but had no suspects in custody. They appealed for the public’s help.

The neighborhood has been plagued by crime. In the past two years, there have been two other killings within a block of where Robert was killed. In July alone, there were two armed robberies with a handgun and six batteries within a block, police records show, while 16-year-old Jeremiah Sterling was shot dead in a gang dispute a mile away on July 15.

Elonda Jackson, whose 15-year-old nephew Percy Rounds was gunned down in an unsolved July 2008 killing less than 100 yards from Wednesday’s murder scene, said, “what can you do when there are all these random killings?”

“It grips you to the depths of your soul.... You just want to know why, but we still don’t.”

And Riccardo Pittman, whose niece Elaine Brown was shot in the face in 2008 a block from where Robert was killed, and whose daughter, Leslie Brown, was strangled to death a half mile away, police say, by alleged serial killer Michael Johnson, added “The killing is totally senseless out here. It never stops.”

Neighbor Cola Townsend, 80, said that after he heard the gunshots Wednesday, he looked outside and saw “the boy was lying there in the street and 10 little kids in white T-shirts were running away as the cops arrived, like they always do.

“I’ve lived on this block 35 years, and it’s never been this bad.”

An Albany, NY mother says she was scared out of her mind believing her 7-year-old son was being threatened by someone with the Ku Klux Klan.

The Benitez family first started receiving the calls a few weeks ago.

"They said they were going to kidnap the little black boy," Maria Benitez said.

Caller ID showed the first as coming from Albany bar, and the others from a number belonging to a white power organization in Arkansas.

But police do not believe Maria's son is being threatened by the Klan, but rather someone who is doing something called "telespoofing."

Telespoofing works by disguising a caller ID when you make a call. Certain websites offer the service for a small fee. The call can also disguise the voice.

Albany police believe the culprit is likely a nasty and cowardly neighbor.

The bar owner has been cleared by police.

Police plan to prosecute the case for harassment.

Two officers in the troubled New Orleans Police Department have been indicted in connection with the beating death of a civilian in 2005, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

The federal indictment alleges that Officer Melvin Williams kicked the victim and struck him with a baton, fracturing his ribs and rupturing his spleen. The victim, Raymond Robair, was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Williams and Officer Matthew Moore were also charged with obstructing justice when they submitted a false incident report and failed to tell hospital personnel Williams had beaten Robair, according to the indictment in the Eastern District of Louisiana. Details of the indictment were released by the U.S. Justice Department in Washington.

Moore also allegedly lied about the incident in an FBI investigation in March of this year according to the indictment. Moore is accused of telling federal agents Williams had not kicked or beaten Robair.

Robair's death occurred in July 2005, two months before the city was slammed by Hurricane Katrina.

The indictment of the two officers comes only weeks after five current and former members of the police department were indicted in connection with two deaths at the Danziger Bridge in New Orleans in the immediate aftermath of Katrina.

All of the charges come as the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division continues a separate broad investigation into the "patterns or practices" of alleged misconduct within the New Orleans police department.

On May 17, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez told New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu that the Justice Department will investigate "allegations of excessive force, unconstitutional searches and seizures, racial profiling, failures to provide adequate police services to particular neighborhoods and related misconduct."

On July 13, in a visit to New Orleans to announce the Danziger Bridge indictments, Attorney General Eric Holder vowed the Justice Department "will not tolerate wrongdoing by those who have sworn to protect the public."

"Making sure that this city's police department is the best that it can be is our sacred obligation," Holder told a crowd in the city.

Mary Jean Price Walls Receives Honorary Degree From Missouri College .

Few know the value of a college education -- or the lack of one -- more than Mary Jean Price Walls.

77-year-old Mary Price Walls was denied entrance in 1950 because she was black. The salutatorian of her high school class during the times of racial segregation, Walls said she studied hard and had a passion for learning. But, when opportunity knocked on her door to attend college, she was denied the chance even to open it.

In 1950, Walls applied to Southwest Missouri State College, now Missouri State University, in her hometown of Springfield. But instead of receiving a rejection letter, she heard nothing at all.

New Segregation Standards in Public Schools"I was sad, I was hurt," Walls admitted. "Say that you had been a good girl and your parents had promised you a special treat or something. Then, when you thought that you had been the best girl that you could, and then when you got ready to sit down to eat that cake, it was gone. How would you feel?"

Quite possibly around the time Walls would have received her bachelor's degree, in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional to deny black children educational opportunities equal to those offered white students in the historic case of Brown v. Board of Education.

But for Walls, it was four years too late, and the rejection had already dashed her lifelong dream.

"I would have made a wonderful school teacher," Walls said.

Instead, she spent years as an elevator operator. And just last year, Walls retired from her job as a janitor at the age of 77, never having told her children about her past.

After 27 years behind bars, Michael Anthony Green is slated for release from a Texas prison today after an investigation revealed that he was innocent of a 1983 aggravated sexual assault for which he was sentenced to 75 years in prison.

Allen Wayne Porter, left, and Michael Anthony Green are both inmates who will be likely be exonerated after a group established by Texas' Harris County District Attorney's office reexamined their cases and found that they were both wrongly convicted.

Green and Allen Wayne Porter, who was released on bond last Friday after it was determined that he was not one of the three men who invaded a southwest Houston apartment in 1990 and raped two women, served a combined 46 years before a group comprised of local lawyers and investigators reviewed their cases and unearthed new facts.

In both cases, the men wrote letters from their cells for years to various lawyers and courts proclaiming their innocence. But they had never been able to get anyone to pay attention.

Now, lawyers for the two former inmates are lauding the Post Conviction Review Section, a small group of lawyers and investigators assembled in 2009 by Harris County District Attorney Patricia Lykos to focus on inmates' credible claims of innocence.

"In Green's case, this lingered for many, many years until the section developed," said Green's attorney Bob Wicoff, adding that Green had written letters since he was imprisoned at age 18 and had "clamored about the injustice" for years.

Porter's attorney, Casey Garrett, said that it wasn't until the Post Conviction Review Section took up her client's case that he actually began to be hopeful that he'd one day be free.

Texas' criminal justice system is notoriously harsh and the state sends more prisoners to death row than any other.

"I don't know if he ever believed he was going to get out," said Garrett. "After all these years and all of his letters falling on deaf ears for so long, he never really believed this would happen."

"[Last year] he became cautiously hopeful and he indicated to me that this was the first time he felt hopeful that something might be happening," she said.

"For 20 years he's been writing letters to people saying he's innocent and pleading with them to review his case," said Garrett. "And then in 2009 he wrote just another letter to the District Attorney's office and by then this team had been developed."

Garrett says Porter, who served 19 years of a life sentence, has expressed his gratitude to the D.A.'s office since his release last week and knows that their hard work was essential to his exoneration.

The House ethics committee on Thursday accused veteran Rep. Charles Rangel of 13 violations of House rules involving alleged financial wrongdoing and harming the credibility of Congress.

"Credibility is what's at stake here; the very credibility of the House itself before the American people," said Rep. Mike McCaul, the ranking Republican on a subcommittee that will hold a trial-like hearing on the charges against Rangel.

McCaul spoke at the subcommittee's first meeting, which heard the charges against Rangel, a 20-term Democrat from New York running for re-election this year. Rangel was not required to attend and did not show up.

According to committee documents, Rangel earlier filed a motion to dismiss the allegations against him that was denied.

Rangel said this week that his lawyers were in talks with committee lawyers on a possible deal to avoid the public hearing on his alleged violations. When Thursday's hearing was delayed for 55 minutes with no explanation, rumors of an imminent agreement quickly spread.

However, the panel gathered and held the hearing, which included the first public announcement of the specific committee charges against Rangel. It remained unclear whether a settlement avoiding the spectacle of a trial hearing was possible.

According to the charges, Rangel allegedly failed to report more than $600,000 on financial disclosure reports and improperly solicited funds for the construction of a center bearing his name at the City College of New York.

The committee also alleged that Rangel improperly used a rent-subsidized apartment as a campaign office for over a decade and failed to pay taxes on a home in the Dominican Republic.

Rangel "argues that errors on his personal taxes do not implicate discharge of his official responsibilities," committee investigators concluded in response to Rangel's request to have the charges dismissed. He "appears to be operating under the erroneous belief that the only conduct subject to discipline is conduct directly related to the discharge of his official responsibilities."

An investigative subcommittee report on Rangel's dealings, available on the committee's Web site, detailed a lengthy series of meetings the congressman held with business leaders to raise funds for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Policy at the City College. His repeated attempts to woo potential donors violated the House's solicitation and gift ban, the report said.

Among other things, the report stated that Rangel met with a lobbyist for insurance giant AIG in April 2008 with the objective to "close" a $10 million "gift for the Rangel Center."

At the meeting, "AIG raised concerns about a potential donation, including the potential headline risk," the report stated. But Rangel pushed ahead, asking "AIG, at least twice, what was necessary to get this done."

During the period of time that Rangel was seeking donations from AIG, according to committee investigators, the company was lobbying the House on several tax and trade issues -- matters over which Rangel exercised considerable influence.

It also noted that, in March 2007, he used congressional letterhead to send notes to business leaders such as Donald Trump, in which he requested meetings to discuss the Rangel Center.

The congressman's "acceptance of favors and benefits from donors to the Rangel Center ... might be construed by reasonable persons as influencing the performance of his governmental duties," the report concluded.

It stated that the "accumulation of (Rangel's) actions reflected poorly on the institution of the House and, thereby, brought discredit to the House."

McCaul said the allegations against Rangel, if proven, would violate "the most fundamental code of conduct" for House members.

Rep. Gene Green of Texas, a Democrat who led a two-year ethics subcommittee investigation of Rangel, said it was a difficult job.

"The task is even more difficult when the subject has befriended and mentored so many new members, and I'm one of them," Green said.

Another ethics committee member, Republican Rep. Jo Bonner of Alabama, said "this is truly a sad day where no one, regardless of their partisan stripes, should rejoice."

Rangel temporarily stepped down as Ways and Means Committee chairman earlier this year following the announcement of an ethics investigation of several allegations, including failure to pay taxes on the Dominican Republic residence.

The House ethics committee previously admonished Rangel for violating rules on receiving gifts. Specifically, the committee found that Rangel violated House gift rules by accepting reimbursement payments for travel to conferences in the Caribbean in 2007 and 2008.

Rangel, whose autobiography that discusses his Korean War experience is titled "And I Haven't Had a Bad Day Since," told reporters earlier Thursday that "I have to reassess that (statement)" in light of the pending hearing.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday -- in response to a question about Rangel -- that there must be "accountability" and "transparency" in cases of ethical transgressions.

"Holding a high ethical standard is a serious responsibility ... and a top priority" for the House Democratic leadership, she said. In terms of political fallout from cases such as Rangel's, "the chips will fall where they may," she said.

Congressional Democrats have reportedly expressed concern that an extended public airing of the charges against Rangel could damage the party's prospects in the November midterm elections.

There have been "credible sightings" recently of a California woman who vanished nearly a year ago after being released from a sheriff's station, authorities said Wednesday.

The Las Vegas, Nevada, Police Department will hold a news conference Thursday to update the search for Mitrice Richardson, police said.

"There's been some credible sightings," Steve Whitmore, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, told reporters. "It's not definite. We are going to ask the public's help in locating her."

"We want to let her know if she is listening that she is not in trouble and will not be subject to arrest. We just want her to know that it is ok to contact authorities and family, and to let us know that she is alive."

Richardson, who was 24 when she disappeared but would be 25 now, is a former beauty pageant contestant who was last seen leaving a Malibu, California, sheriff's station in the early morning hours of September 17, 2009.

She had been arrested the previous evening at an upscale restaurant after allgedly not paying for her meal. Patrons at the restaurant said Mitrice exhibited strange behavior.

Richardson's family has said the college honors graduate suffered from mental health issues and should have been kept at the sheriff's station until a relative arrived to pick her up.

A court has declared Richardson dead, although no body has been found.

Whitmore said the credible sightings were in the Las Vegas area.

Ronda Hampton, a close friend of Richardson's family, said an acquaintance of Richardson's told police he saw her at a casino last month. Hampton said that after observing her for about three hours, the acquaintance approached the woman who appeared to be Richardson and asked, "Where have you been?"

"The woman turned around and looked as if she didn't know him (the acquaintance) and then looked at him again, then she ran off with some woman," Hampton told reporters.

Latice Sutton, Richardson's mother, told reporters she doesn't consider the sighting credible. "I don't discount that he (the acquaintance) may have seen someone who he believed was Mitrice," Sutton said, "but I don't believe he is absolutely certain it was Mitrice."

At the same time, Sutton was hopeful it could have been her. "I think anything is possible," she said, "and I pray that it is Mitrice."

Last month, Sutton sued the county of Los Angeles and several sheriff's officials for wrongful death and negligence in her daughter's disappearance, according to court documents.

Sutton argued in the lawsuit that the sheriff's department failure to administer psychiatric or medical evaluations and the fact that Richardson was released "alone in an unfamiliar area without money, a cellular phone or means of transportation amounts to negligence." The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages.

Whitmore told reporters in September that the decision to release Richardson was made because "she was not intoxicated, she didn't exhibit any mental issues, so when we were done running her fingerprints and criminal history, then we are obligated by law to release her from custody."

He also has said that a female jailer "offered to her to stay the night. She could have stayed, but she wanted to leave."

The editor of Essence Magazine defended Wednesday her recent hiring of a white fashion director -- a first for the 40-year-old publication that celebrates black women.

The hiring of Elliana Placas first sparked outrage when a former Essence employee posted a note on her Facebook page decrying the decision.

"It's with a heavy heart I've learned Essence Magazine has engaged a white Fashion Director," former Essence staffer Michaela Angela Davis wrote. "I love Essence and I love fashion. I hate this news and this feeling. It hurts, literally."

Essence editor-in-chief Angela Burt-Murray wrote in an opinion piece posted Wednesday on African-American news site theGrio.com that Placas initially joined the magazine six months ago to run the fashion section on a freelance basis before being hired permanently as fashion director.

"I got to see firsthand her creativity, her vision, the positive reader response to her work, and her enthusiasm and respect for the audience and our brand," Burt-Murray said. "As such, I thought she'd make an excellent addition to our team. And I still do. This decision in no way diminishes my commitment to black women, our issues, our fights."

Critics of the decision raised concerns over the lack of African-American women in fashion as part of their outcry over the hiring of Placas.

"The fashion industry is not diverse -- it is an elite, closed world and there is very little place for black women," Davis told reporters. "At Fashion Week, there was one seat for Essence. One. Black women's image and beauty has either been ignored or defiled and that one seat should be filled by someone who can represent the style, history and body type of black women."

Davis is adamant that she is not a racist, but instead concerned that a position where an African-American woman might be able to start and build her career has been lost.

"Essence was the first magazine that says in their brand that it is for black women and their motto when I worked there was 'where black women come first,'" Davis told reporters on Wednesday.

"This is not about being racist, this is about wanting a place where black women can grow and flourish and go out and help diversify," she said.

Burt-Murray said in her opinion piece that she shared concerns "about the lack of visibility of African-American women throughout the ranks of the fashion industry, which is overwhelmingly white."

"I, too, want to see more of us on the mastheads of all the magazines, seated in the front rows of the shows, designing our own fashion lines, and contributing our special flavor and flyness to the world of style," she wrote.

Burt-Murray also wrote that she has seen strong reactions in the past from readers when it comes to matters of race and the magazine. Recent examples of reader outrage included a profile of rapper P. Diddy and his longtime girlfriend Kim Porter, which some readers found promoted having children out of wedlock and a negative image of black couples, and guest columnist Jill Scott voicing her opinion about black men who date outside of their race, which some readers felt was reverse racism.

Likewise, the decision to hire Placas has not escaped scrutiny.

However, despite the outrage, Davis insists that readers not drop their support of the magazine yet, writing in a second Facebook post, "We need Essence today as we did 40 years ago. I don't believe this is the time for a boycott."

Burt-Murray noted that past issues that should have sparked such outrage were often overlooked. She cites several in-depth reports the magazine conducted on issues plaguing the African-American community, including black children falling through the cracks in under-performing schools, the increase in sex trafficking of young black girls in urban communities, inequities in the health care services for black women or how HIV is the leading cause of death for black women ages 18-34.

"The things that really are the end of our world apparently aren't," she wrote. "While the response to these important stories may not always be as strong as we would like or lead to immediate change, Essence remains committed to telling these stories.

"Forty years ago Essence was founded to empower, celebrate, and inspire black women to climb higher, go further and break down barriers. Our commitment to black women remains unchanged as we continue to stay laser-focused on those principles -- no matter who works with us."

Davis said she feels readers should still support Essence, but says there's no reason why the magazine should be immune to criticism.

"I hate that I'm even having this conversation because I love Essence -- it was my home," Davis said. "But I spoke out for all the black girls who called me crying because what does this say to them?"

Meanwhile, Burt-Murray is standing by her decision to hire Placas.

"We remain committed to celebrating the unique beauty and style of African-American women in Essence magazine and online at Essence.com," she wrote.