Maxine Waters Wrests Spotlight From Rangel, Faces Ethics Trial

Rep. Charlie Rangel's ethics trial is officially old news, now. Why? Because we might just be getting a second House Democrat's ethics trial soon, for longtime congresswoman Maxine Waters. Why can't these busybody ethics investigators just play it cool?

The House Ethics Committee is set to announce its creation of another subcommittee to try Waters, who, along with Charlie Rangel, would be the first members of Congress to stand trial for ethics violations since Jim Traficant, who was expelled in 2002.

Waters has been under investigation since last year for this bad thing:

In 2008, Waters organized a meeting between Treasury officials and executives from OneUnited Bank, where her husband was once a board member and had large investments. The bank received $12 million from the federal government's Troubled Asset Relief Program. Waters, who serves on the House Financial Services Committee, has defended her request for the meeting as part of her efforts to advocate on behalf of minority-owned businesses.

This is the conflict-of-interest they're investigating most thoroughly, for the bailouts? Maybe next they'll go after "Treasury, Congress and the Fed gave hundreds of billions of dollars to their best friends, the biggest bankers," but don't count on it. It would be a much bigger pain in the ass.