Free Republic

The last of the Clinton-era independent counsels, David Barrett, was finally allowed to release his report this week. And while the revelations aren't earth-shattering, the report reminds us why we don't miss the 1990s. The Barrett probe began because former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros lied to the FBI during a background check about alleged hush payments to a mistress. Mr. Cisneros pleaded guilty to that offense in 1999, and President Clinton eventually pardoned him. But Mr. Barrett also gathered evidence that Mr. Cisneros didn't report the money for those payments as taxable income. Mr. Barrett alleges that his attempts to...

Lost in the tumult over Islamic port deals and Katrina video capers is the recently released -- and willfully ignored -- Barrett Report. David Barrett, you'll recall, is the independent counsel appointed in 1995 to investigate allegations of impropriety against President Clinton's Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros. Mr. Barrett found his path mined by the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service and President Clinton's attorneys, even after Mr. Clinton departed the White House. He prepared 18 felony indictments against Mr. Cisneros but had to settle for a guilty plea on a misdemeanor charge (lying to the...

The similarities between the two politicians are absolutely eerie. Both are Mexican Americans from San Antonio who at age 27 became the youngest city councilmen in their city's history at the time of their elections. They both went on to serve as mayors of that city. While mayor  both were prominent speakers at the Democrat national convention and were touted as future vice-presidential nominees. Later both were appointed as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development amid much media hype as "rising stars."  One would be hard pressed to find two political figures so similar as Julian Castro and Henry Cisneros...with...

WASHINGTON — President Obama is preparing to nominate Mayor Julián Castro of San Antonio as his new secretary of housing and urban development, elevating one of his party’s Hispanic rising stars as part of a cabinet shuffle that has possible implications for the 2016 presidential race, Democrats informed about the plans said on Saturday. [snip] Some of Mr. Castro’s allies also believe that with income inequality becoming a focal point for Democrats, the HUD job offers the mayor an opportunity to burnish his credentials on issues of poverty and to raise his appeal among those on the party’s left. The...

That’s the question that keeps dogging the South Texas oil and gas field. Even as thousands of workers and major oil and gas companies flood into the region, investors have been reluctant to invest in houses, apartments and other permanent infrastructure. A when-will-it-bust mentality hangs over the region. But participants in the San Antonio Clean Technology Forum’s Eagle Ford Forum II event Tuesday said the oil and gas development appears to be here to stay, and that it’s time for the region to figure out how to manage everything from water issues to roads. Lance Robertson, vice president of Eagle...

Bicycles instead of cars? Dense apartment clusters instead of single homes? Community rituals instead of churches? "Human rights" instead of religious freedom? The UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) which met June 3-14 [1996]in Istanbul, painted an alarming picture of the 21st century community. The American ways-free speech, individualism, travel, and Christianity-are out. A new set of economic, environmental, and social guidelines are in. Citizenship, democracy, and education have been redefined. Handpicked civil leaders will implement UN "laws", bypassing state and national representatives to work directly with the UN. And politically correct "tolerance"-meaning "the rejection of dogmatism and absolutism"...

( Surprise: ACORN audit to be conducted by panel full of leftists and cronies.) From this profoundly warped announcement (via ABC who engages in daily, early-morning information huddles with the Obama “White House”) from ACORN itself, it’s announced that ACORN is, uhh, going to “investigate” ACORN, with this group of Lefties-at-hire to go onto the media-stage and do the “Let’s Investigate” routine: In a press release, ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis says, that as “a result of the indefensible action of a handful of our employees,” the group will immediately stop accepting anyone into ACORN office for service programs, will conduct...

Amid a firestorm of criticism from both sides of the political divide, the community organizing group known as ACORN announced Wednesday that it would launch an independent review into "the indefensible action of a handful of our employees" who were secretly videotaped while giving advice to actors posing as a pimp and prostitute on how to buy a home and start a brothel.

UPDATED: ACORN, calling the actions of some of its employees "indefensible," has suspended advising new clients as part of its service programs and is setting up an independent review to see what happened.

A former college classmate, friend and financial account manager who handled money for former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday to stealing $473,000 from Cisneros’ accounts over a three-year period. Cisneros’ former friend, Fred L. May III, appeared before Judge Orlando Garcia in U.S. District Court to plead guilty to a felony charge of fraud. The judge set May’s sentencing hearing for June 25. May was arrested on March 4, a day after the U.S. Attorney filed a federal lawsuit naming May as a financial account manager in San Antonio who had defrauded an unnamed...

Stemming home foreclosures in Hispanic communities is crucial to restoring financial stability and ending the nation's economic crisis, former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros said Tuesday. “It is critical for this country to grow the backbone of its economy, its middle class, and the future middle class in large measure is going to be Latino,” Cisneros said. Cisneros made the comments during a telephonic symposium on Latinos and the economy — “Back to Basics: Restoring Latino Financial Security” — sponsored by the National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest Hispanic rights organization, and the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning...

Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign manager, Maggie Williams, earned about $200,000 on the board of a Long Island subprime lender that charged prepayment penalties -- a practice that Clinton, a critic of the subprime industry, now seeks to eliminate. Williams, who took over the reins of Clinton's campaign in early February, served as a director on the board of the Woodbury-based Delta Financial Corp. from April 2000 until the firm declared bankruptcy in December, according to Securities and Exchange Commission records. She was recruited by former New York City Deputy Mayor Bill Lynch, a Delta consultant. Her assignments were to create...

MSM Ignores Higher Placed Clinton Officials' Conviction to Tout Libby's Posted by Warner Todd Huston on July 2, 2007 - 23:30. I keep seeing this talking point phrase in multiple MSM stories about the Libby conviction; "Libby was convicted in March, the highest-ranking White House official ordered to prison since the Iran-Contra affair roiled the Reagan administration in the 1980s."(emphasis, mine) This is a misleading statement that makes the reader imagine that no high-ranking Presidential appointee or advisor has been convicted of anything since Reagan's era. But, at least one past official's name should be placed above that of Libby's....

<p>FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON ON NOT CAPTURING BIN LADEN: 'At least I tried. That's the difference between me and some, including all the right wingers. They ridicule me for trying. They had eight months to try, they did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed'...</p>

Business should heed Cisneros on immigrationhttp://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA060306.1D.hendricks.271c546.html http://tinyurl.com/k8ln6 David Hendricks San Antonio Express-News Web Posted: 06/03/2006 12:00 AM CDT San Antonio businesses are eerily quiet about the pending immigration reform legislation in Washington. That doesn't make sense. Given San Antonio's comfortable blend of international cultures and its pro-business stance with Latin America, this should be the first city speaking out on immigration. Politician-turned-businessman Henry Cisneros did that for San Antonio businesses Friday in an impassioned speech. He articulated what many San Antonio businesses think but are not saying publicly, especially when it comes to the growing U.S. business reliance on immigrant...

SAN ANTONIO (AP) - Former San Antonio mayor Henry Cisneros says the United States has the right to secure and seal its borders, but he warned it should be done with "a sense of humanity and human rights." Cisneros, the former U.S. housing secretary under Democratic President Bill Clinton, made an impassioned speech on the subject Friday during the Bilateral Immigration Forum. "I believe in immigration," he said. "I have used religious words in this regard. It is the salvation of the American future." Cisneros cited personal reasons behind his stance. His grandfather came to Texas from Mexico to escape...

The last remaining U.S. independent counsel, David Barrett, after spending $21 million over 10 years, on Jan. 12 finally will close down his investigation of former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros' lying to FBI investigators about hush money paid to an ex-mistress. The political significance is that the Barrett report's shocking allegations of high-level corruption in the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department are likely to be concealed from the public and from Congress. A recently passed appropriations bill, intended to permit release of this report, was altered behind closed doors to ensure that its politically combustible elements never saw the...

Lost in the tumult over Islamic port deals and Katrina video capers is the recently released -- and willfully ignored -- Barrett Report. David Barrett, you'll recall, is the independent counsel appointed in 1995 to investigate allegations of impropriety against President Clinton's Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros. Mr. Barrett found his path mined by the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service and President Clinton's attorneys, even after Mr. Clinton departed the White House. He prepared 18 felony indictments against Mr. Cisneros but had to settle for a guilty plea on a misdemeanor charge (lying to the...

Here it is: Final Report

WASHINGTON - The independent counsel who investigated former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros charged in his final report Thursday that the Clinton administration thwarted his work, drawing the curtain on the longest-ever probe under a post-Watergate era reform law. Officials who worked in the Clinton administration flatly deny the allegations by prosecutor David M. Barrett, who closed a decade-long probe with a report detailing a behind-the-scenes battle inside the government as he tried to look into possible tax violations by Cisneros. Cisneros, who was housing secretary during the Clinton administration, pleaded guilty in 1999 to a misdemeanor of lying to the...