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Phoenix, Arizona (CNN) — Parts of an Arizona immigration law go into effect Thursday as it was passed — after a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction that blocked the most controversial aspects of it.

The injunction, issued Wednesday, means that, at least for now, police are prevented from questioning people’s immigration status if there is reason to believe they are in the country illegally.

U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton also blocked provisions of the law making it a crime to fail to apply for or carry alien registration papers or “for an unauthorized alien to solicit, apply for, or perform work,” and a provision “authorizing the warrantless arrest of a person” if there is reason to believe that person might be subject to deportation.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said the state would file an expedited appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, signaling a legal escalation that some expect will end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The parts of the law that go into effect include a ban on so-called sanctuary cities, and the criminalization of hiring day laborers who are in the country illegally. The parts of the law dealing with sanctions for employers who hire illegal immigrants also withstood the first legal test.

CNN senior analyst Jeffrey Toobin said the ruling reflects the government’s argument that immigration enforcement should be dealt with at the federal level.

“Arizona may have good intentions, they may be trying to make up for where the U.S. government has failed, but what the judge is saying is, this is not the way to do it,” he said.

Video: Immigration law showdown

Video: Arizona’s new police force training

Video: Sheriff Arpaio talks immigration

Video: Immigrant laborer for a day

“I think this [is] a case very much destined for the Supreme Court,” as other states pass similar laws, Toobin said.

Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, author of the law, said he foresaw a protracted legal fight from the beginning.

“I wrote it to go to the Supreme Court,” he said before the ruling came down. “I’m begging for that fistfight at the Supreme Court. We will win in a 5-4 decision and finally settle this problem.”

He added, “My message to the judge is uphold the Constitution. Uphold state’s rights. This is a battle of epic proportions. This is the states versus the central government.”

The Court of Appeals could take up the case in a matter of days, but the earliest the Supreme Court could look at it would be October, because the high court is in summer recess.

Brewer said that she was disappointed by the ruling.

“This fight is far from over. In fact, it is just the beginning, and at the end of what is certain to be a long legal struggle, Arizona will prevail in its right to protect our citizens,” she said in a statement. “I am deeply grateful for the overwhelming support we have received from across our nation in our efforts to defend against the failures of the federal government.”

Another supporter of the law, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, said that he and his crusade against illegal immigration will not be deterred.

“I am not really disappointed about the judge’s decision,” Arpaio said. “I know what my policies are, and we are going to continue doing what we have been doing.”

The Justice Department issued a statement saying the court “ruled correctly.”

“While we understand the frustration of Arizonans with the broken immigration system, a patchwork of state and local policies would seriously disrupt federal immigration enforcement and would ultimately be counterproductive,” the statement said. “States can and do play a role in cooperating with the federal government in its enforcement of the immigration laws, but they must do so within our constitutional framework.”

While officials and their staff issued statements, a small group of activists in Phoenix, Arizona, expressed how they felt about the state’s law in a traffic-stopping way.

Four protesters wearing hard hats and work boots climbed a crane high above the streets of downtown Phoenix on Wednesday night and unfurled a banner that read “Stop Hate.”

The banner also had a black mark through the number 1070. That was the number assigned to the immigration measure when it was introduced in Arizona’s legislature as a bill.

Capt. Scott Walker with the Phoenix Fire Department called the four protesters “experienced climbers” and said they would be arrested when they came down.

CNN’s Catherine Shoichet, Phil Gast, Adam Blank, Holly Yan and Arthur Brice contributed to this report.

Ariz. immigration law partly goes into effect

(CNN) — Longtime Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel of New York will be the subject of the House ethics committee’s first corruption trial in almost a decade unless his attorneys reach an agreement to settle his charges.

The House ethics committee on Thursday will make public a report of Rangel’s alleged violations. After a nearly two-year investigation of Rangel, the committee’s report could bring a trial by a panel subcommittee in September.

A formal hearing would be a trial-like session involving formal charges with lawyers for the House acting as prosecutors and Rangel’s attorneys defending him, but some experts don’t foresee Rangel making it to the trial stage.

“I think all sides are going to be motivated to reach some kind of resolution short of the public hearings,” said Robert Walker, former chief counsel and staff director of both the Senate and House ethics committees.

Rangel said he welcomes the trial. He has said that “sunshine will pierce the cloud of serious allegations.”

The outcome of the hearing could range from dropping all charges to reprimand to expulsion from the House of Representatives.

Video: Rep. Rangel addresses ethics charges

Video: Rangel: ‘I look forward to responding’

As a result of his 2002 corruption trial, former Rep. James Traficant, an Ohio Democrat, became the second member of Congress to be kicked out since the Civil War.

Charles Tiefer, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, said Traficant’s case “hardly even counts as a serious precedent.”

At the time of his ethics hearing, Traficant already had been convicted of taking bribes and other charges in a court of law. He spent seven years in prison and was released last year.

“A trial, particularly of a senior congressman, on charges that have been headline news, would be one of the most striking committee proceedings the House can have,” said Tiefer, who was solicitor and deputy general counsel of the House for 11 years.

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

The congressman has also admitted a failure to report several hundred thousand dollars in assets on federal disclosure forms. In addition, he is under scrutiny for the purported misuse of a rent-controlled apartment for political purposes, as well as for allegedly preserving tax benefits for an oil-drilling company in exchange for donations to a project he supported at the City College of New York.

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.

Should Rangel face a trial, it would play out in what Walker described as a cross between a courtroom trial and a congressional hearing.

Both sides would deliver opening statements and present their cases. They could also call witnesses, who could be cross-examined by the other side.

In a public hearing, there is more leeway given to the committee in terms of admissibility of evidence, Walker said.

Following the evidentiary part of the process, there would be closing arguments, and the case would go back to the jury.

In a House ethics trial, the “jury” is made up of an eight-member adjudicatory subcommittee whose members are allowed to question witnesses.

The subcommittee that would consider Rangel’s case comprises four Democrats and four Republicans, according to the ethics committee document.

It said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-California, is the panel’s chair. Other Democratic members are Reps. G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina, Kathy Castor of Florida and Peter Welch of Vermont. The four Republicans are Reps. Michael McCaul of Texas, Mike Conaway of Texas, Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania and Gregg Harper of Mississippi.

The jury then would have to determine whether each charge was proven by the standard of “clear and convincing evidence.”

“That is less than ‘proof beyond a reasonable a doubt,’ which would be the standard at a criminal trial, but it’s more than the standard of just ‘preponderance of the evidence, which would be the standard at a civil trial,” Walker said.

Despite the outcome, the trial phase could be detrimental to Rangel, Tiefer said.

“It hurts his public image to parade a sequence of witnesses who testify that he is guilty of receiving favors and so forth, and it also arguably hurts the image of those connected with him in his party delegation,” he said.

If he adequately disputes the facts, he could persuade the committee to moderate or even drop all of the charges, Tiefer added.

The whole matter could be dismissed with no further action if the subcommittee decides that no wrongdoing was proven, but if members decide punishment is warranted, they would then have to decide whether to sanction Rangel.

“If they determine that it was a technical violation, the committee could then issue what’s called a letter of reproval, which is not an actual sanction,” Walker said.

If the committee decides more serious punishment is in order, such as reprimand, censure or expulsion, the full House must vote on the issue.

A simple majority vote is required to reprimand or censure a member of Congress, while a two-thirds majority is required for an expulsion.

The House has expelled only five members of Congress. A number of members, however, have resigned before the House took formal action, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Rangel has served 20 consecutive terms in the House. He’s facing a September 14 Democratic contest with Adam Clayton Powell IV, the son of the late scandal-plagued congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who was ousted by Rangel 40 years ago.

Rangel’s other primary challengers include banker Vince Morgan, liberal activist Jonathan Tasini and Joyce Johnson, a field director for President Obama’s 2008 campaign.

Rangel said last week that he hoped the matter could be concluded in time for the September contest.

CNN’s Deirdre Walsh contributed to this report.

How Rangel’s ethics hearing could play out

By

Gail Russell Chaddock,

(CNN) — American officials from the president down tried Tuesday to downplay the leak of tens of thousands of documents about the war in Afghanistan, a disclosure experts are calling the biggest leak since the Pentagon Papers about Vietnam.

Pentagon officials have not found anything top-secret among the documents, a Defense Department spokesman said Tuesday.

“From what we have seen so far, the documents are at the ‘secret’ level,” Col. David Lapan said. That’s not a very high level of classification.

Lapan emphasized that the Pentagon has not looked at all of the more than 75,000 documents published on WikiLeaks.org on Sunday.

President Barack Obama said Tuesday that he is “concerned about the disclosure of sensitive information” about the U.S. mission in Afghanistan but asserted that the documents don’t shed much new light on the issue.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, said Tuesday that the importance of the leak should not be overstated.

“I think it’s important not to overhype or get excessively excited about the meaning of those documents,” Kerry told the committee.

But, he said, the leak “breaks the law, and equally importantly, it compromises the efforts of our troops, potentially, in the field and has the potential of putting people in harm’s way,” he said.

The top-ranking U.S. military officer, Adm. Michael Mullen, said he was “appalled” by the leak but questioned the current significance of the documents, which date from 2004 to 2009.

Video: Congressmen talk WikiLeaks and the war

Video: Pentagon responds to WikiLeaks

“Much has changed since 2009, particularly with respect to our focus, our new strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” said Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in Baghdad, Iraq. “A lot of it is focused on the past, and I am very focused on the future.”

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered the Foreign Ministry and National Security Council to study the vast cache of documents, Karzai’s office said Tuesday.

The documents are divided into more than 100 categories. Tens of thousands of pages of reports document attacks on U.S. troops and their responses, relations between Americans in the field and their Afghan allies, intramural squabbles among Afghan civilians and security forces, and concerns about neighboring Pakistan’s ties to the Taliban.

The “direct fire” category accounts for the largest number — at 16,293 reports — while “graffiti,” “mugging,” “narcotics” and “threat” each account for one. And WikiLeaks has another 15,000 documents that it plans to publish after editing out names to protect people, according to the website’s founder and editor in chief, Julian Assange.

He said on CNN’s “Larry King Live” that the firsthand accounts represent “the cut and thrust of the entire war over the past six years,” through the military’s own raw data: numbers of casualties, threat reports and notes from meetings between Afghan leaders and U.S. commanders.

“We see the who, the where, the what, the when and the how of each one of these attacks,” Assange said. That includes, he said, possible evidence of war crimes by both U.S. troops and the Taliban, the Islamic militia that has been battling U.S. troops since 2001.

Assange said some events listed in the reports are “very suspicious,” such as reports of skirmishes in which “a lot of people are killed, but no people taken prisoner and no people left wounded.”

“In the end, it will take a court to really look at the full range of evidence to decide if a crime has occurred,” he said. But earlier, he noted, “This material does not leave anyone smelling like roses, especially the Taliban.”

CNN has not independently confirmed the authenticity of the documents, but neither the White House nor the Pentagon has denied that they are what WikiLeaks claims they are.

On Monday, the White House condemned the release of the documents as “a breach of federal law” but simultaneously dismissed them as old news.

“I don’t think that what is being reported hasn’t in many ways been publicly discussed — whether by you or by representatives of the U.S. government — for quite some time,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters. But he said an investigation into the source of the leak had begun by last week.

“There is no doubt that this is a concerning development in operational security,” he said.

The reports tend to be filled with jargon, like this one that describes a border incident from September 4, 2005:

“The Pakistan LNO [liaison officer] reports that ANA [Afghan National Army] troops are massing and threatening the PAKMIL [Pakistani military] 12km NE of FB Lwara [Firebase Lwara, a U.S. military base] …”

And that’s not even the entire first sentence.

Assange said WikiLeaks withheld some documents that dealt with activity by U.S. Special Forces and the CIA, “and most of the activity of other non-U.S. groups.”

But he said the documents reveal the “squalor” of war, uncovering how a number of small incidents have added up to huge numbers of civilian deaths.

“What we haven’t seen previously is all those individual deaths,” he said. “We’ve seen just the number. And like Stalin said, ‘One man’s death is a tragedy; a million dead is a statistic.’ So, we’ve seen the statistic.”

The release of the documents is being called the biggest intelligence leak in history, drawing comparisons to the disclosure of the Vietnam-era Pentagon Papers.

“There hasn’t been an unauthorized disclosure of this magnitude in 39 years,” said Daniel Ellsberg, the onetime Pentagon official who leaked that multiple-volume secret history of the conflict.

Others disagreed with the comparison. Bruce Riedel, an analyst at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, noted that the Pentagon Papers were part of a document prepared for U.S. leaders that analyzed how the United States got into Vietnam, “which assessed successes and failures in a comprehensive way.”

“This is really the raw material of the war — unassessed, raw, fragmentary data that I think in each case, you have to be very careful how much of a larger picture you can conclude from these fragments and snippets,” Riedel said.

And CNN Terrorism Analyst Peter Bergen said the Pentagon Papers revealed “a huge disconnect between what the American government was saying officially and internally.”

“Here, all sorts of American government officials are saying the war is not going very well. No one is disagreeing with that,” Bergen said.

But Ellsberg said the documents, “low-level as they are,” raise the question of whether the United States has a winning strategy in Afghanistan and whether it should continue to pursue the war.

“They do give us the sense of the pattern of failure, of stalemate, and why we’re stalemated — civilian casualties that recruit for the Taliban … and raise the question of what we’re doing there,” he said.

The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001 after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. The attacks were carried out by the Islamic terrorist network al Qaeda, which operated from bases in Afghanistan with the approval of the Taliban, the fundamentalist movement that ruled most of the country at the time.

The invasion swiftly toppled the Taliban, but al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar escaped and remain at large. Meanwhile, the Taliban regrouped along the rugged border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which is now battling its own Taliban insurgency as well.

Gary Berntsen, who led a CIA commando team in Afghanistan in the hunt for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, said on CNN’s “Rick’s List” that the documents “probably are accurate.” But Berntsen, now a Republican candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in New York, said the reports are likely to be a propaganda coup for the Taliban and “sap morale in the United States.”

“It does paint a bleak picture on this,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean this fight is less worth fighting and trying to make progress on.”

And Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said the information should be put “in context” and that journalists should avoid publishing anything that could harm U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Assange, he said, “is an anti-war activist who has repeatedly cast a very unfair light on the American military and on the American population in general.”

“There are American troops in harm’s way getting shot and killed,” Rieckhoff said. “If WikiLeaks is endangering them, we need to push back, and the American public needs to push back.”

Once the jargon of the report is pierced, the stories can be eye-opening.

In a February 5, 2008, incident, Task Force Helmand reported that an Afghan National Police officer — referred to as ANP — was in a public shower smoking hashish when two members of the Afghan National Army walked in.

“ANP felt threatened and a fire fight occurred,” the report says. “The ANP fled the scene and was later shot. ANP and ANA commanders held meetings to contain the incident.”

An October 15, 2007, incident describes an Afghan National Police highway officer’s shooting of another Afghan National Police officer in the shoulder and leg, not seriously. “The shooting was not accidental the policeman had been arguing with each other for a few days,” the report said.

In a March 19, 2005, incident, “FOB [Forward Operating Base] Cobra received a local national boy who had received a gunshot wound to his stomach,” another report said.

“He had been shot during a green-on-green [Afghans attacking Afghans] firefight in Jangalak Village. The boy and his older brother had heard shooting outside of their compound and went outside to check it out, at which point the boy was shot in the stomach. Another brother had also been shot and died at the compound. No adult males had accompanied the brothers, and only the older brother of the injured boy could provide information on the incident. The older brother explained that men in the village were having personal disputes with each other and had then began shooting at each ones’ compounds.”

Assange said the documents were “legitimate” but said it was important not to take their contents at face value.

“We publish CIA reports all the time that are legitimate CIA reports. That doesn’t mean the CIA is telling the truth,” he said.

He said his website is not campaigning against the war.

“WikiLeaks does not have an opinion whether the war in Afghanistan should continue or not continue. … It should continue in a just way if its to continue at all,” he said.

He declined to tell CNN where he got the documents and said the identities of his sources are less important than the authenticity of the documents they provide. And he denied that WikiLeaks has put troops in danger and said the documents’ publication will help people make informed decisions about whether to support the war.

Assange, an Australian, said the site is coming under “significant pressure” from authorities, including several recent “surveillance events.” But he said that due to the response the latest release has received, “It is not politically feasible to interfere with us at a high level.”

CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr and CNN’s Atika Shubert, Richard Allen Greene, David DeSola, Adam S. Levine and Atia Abawi contributed to this report.

Pentagon: Leaked Afghan reports are not top-secret

By

Scott Bland,

(CNN) — A former Army lieutenant who was discharged from service last week for being openly gay said Sunday that he will continue to fight for a quick repeal of the controversial “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

“I know that there are a lot of people who are suffering, and my oath, my commitment to them, doesn’t end,” former Lt. Dan Choi told CNN’s Don Lemon.

Choi was arrested in March for handcuffing himself to a White House fence in protest of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which bars people who are openly gay or lesbian from serving in the military.

He admitted his sexual orientation publicly for the first time last year on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” prompting the Army to initiate proceedings to discharge him.

Video: Gay vet: Obama not doing enough

Choi said that while his honorable discharge hurts, he knows there is a “greater purpose for every single one of us, even if we’re stripped of all our wealth or our resources.”

“One thing about honor, one thing about dignity — it’s not dependent on what’s written on a document,” he said. “That comes from standing up and being truthful to who you are.”

He also vowed to “continue to speak up for those people who cannot.”

“I’m going to continue to pressure those who purport to be our friends — whether they’re congressmen, senators or the president himself. If they make a promise, I will hold them to it.”

President Barack Obama is pushing for a repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. A bill that would overturn the measure after a Pentagon review is completed in December is currently before Congress.

More than 12,500 gays have been booted from the military since “don’t ask, don’t tell” went into effect.

Choi, a 2003 West Point graduate who is fluent in Arabic, was an infantry platoon leader, serving with his unit in Iraq in 2006 and 2007.

Former soldier fights ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’

Washington (CNN) — The Obama administration will push for letting tax cuts for wealthy Americans expire while extending them for the rest of the nation, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said.

In interviews broadcast Sunday on ABC and NBC, Geithner called for a balanced approach as the economy recovers from the recession that started in 2008 while facing mounting federal debt.

That means pushing for measures designed to raise revenue, such as letting tax breaks from the Bush administration expire for families earning more than $250,000 a year while holding down spending and taking steps to encourage private sector job creation, Geithner said.

“We’re in a transition … from the extraordinary actions the government had to take to break the back of this financial crisis to a recovery led by private demand,” Geithner told the NBC program “Meet the Press”. “That transition is well under way. It’s going to continue and it’s going to strengthen.”

Along with letting the tax cuts for the wealthy expire, the administration also wants to “leave in place tax cuts that are very important to incent businesses to hire new employees and to invest and expand in output,” Geithner said on the ABC program “This Week.”

Republicans say letting tax cuts expire for wealther Americans will hurt economic growth as the nation recovers from the recession. In particular, GOP critics say the $250,000-a-year threshold means many small business owners would be included in the group seeing their tax burdens increase when the cuts expire at the end of 2010.

“The safest thing for America would be to have a provision passed this fall that said no tax increase of any kind in 2011,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2012, said on the “FOX News Sunday” program. “Everywhere I go — and I’ve been in 10 states in the last 14 days — business people say to me over and over again, ‘I will create no new jobs in this environment because the uncertainty is too frightening.’ “

Geithner said the plan is to extend the tax cuts for more than 95 percent of country while letting them expire for about 3 percent, which he called the “highest-earning Americans.”

Asked on the ABC show if letting any tax cuts expire would harm the recovery, Geithner said: “I do not believe it will have a negative effect on growth.”

“We think that’s the responsible thing to do,” Geithner said. “We need to make sure we can show the world that we’re willing as a country now to start to make some progress bringing down our long-term deficits.”

Video: Bush tax cuts: Time to expire?

Video: Have Dems’ econ policies failed?

Video: Obama’s economic plan

Overall, he said, the government was “making progress” in restoring private sector job growth.

“I think the most likely thing is you see an economy that gradually strengthens over the next year or two,” Geithner said on NBC. “You see job growth start to come back again; and again, investment expanding, manufacturing is getting a little stronger, exports better. Those are very encouraging signs. But we’ve got a long way to go still.”

President Barack Obama’s poll numbers for his handling of the economy have dropped into unfavorable territory, and Republicans have hammered the administration over continuing high unemployment despite last year’s $787 billion economic stimulus bill. Last week, the administration said it expects unemployment to remain above 9 percent through 2011.

Geithner said the government is moving from the emergency steps enacted to deal with the recession — such as bailing out big banks and automakers — to more long-term approaches for helping the private sector create jobs.

On NBC, he called completing projects under the stimulus bill and enacting proposals to help small businesses and teachers “sensible, good steps,” adding that the main goal is to “make this transition to a recovery led by private companies.”

“We have to make some choices, too, and we have to make sure we can continue to earn confidence around the world that we’re going to have the will as a country to bring these large inherited deficits down over time to a much more manageable level,” Geithner said.

Geithner: Let tax cuts for rich expire

(CNN) — Congressman Charlie Rangel had a bad week.

Calls for the veteran Harlem politician’s resignation are increasing after the House Ethics Committee’s announcement Thursday that he will be the subject of its first corruption trial in nearly a decade. The last time the committee took such a step, in 2002, it led to a congressman’s expulsion.

Rangel says he welcomes the trial. He has said that “sunshine will pierce the cloud of serious allegations.”

But for the 80-year-old Rangel, the prospect of a trial by his peers threatens to overshadow an extraordinary career that led him from the poverty of the pre-war Bronx to the battlefields of Korea and ultimately the pinnacle of political power.

It’s also drawing more attention to what was already a marquee political fight: the September 14 Democratic primary between Rangel and the son of the late scandal-plagued congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., who was ousted by Rangel 40 years ago.

The notion that Rangel’s career could end in defeat or expulsion was once unthinkable.

The 20-term congressman had to claw his way to the top from the abyss of a rocky childhood. “My father was absolutely no good,” he wrote in his autobiography. “In my earliest memory of him … (he) was hitting my mother on the steps of some apartment-type building. I went and got a broom to hit my father. He started laughing at me.”

Rangel’s father eventually abandoned his family, and young Charlie moved in with an aunt and uncle.

In 1947, Rangel dropped out of high school — a step that led to his enlistment in an all-black battalion in the Army’s Second Infantry Division. Three years later, he found himself in the middle of the Korean War.

In November 1950, Rangel was wounded while helping to rescue 40 men behind Chinese lines in frigid temperatures near a place called Kunu-ri. For his efforts, Rangel received a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for valor. The battle “was a waking nightmare becoming a reality,” he later wrote. “I haven’t had a bad day since.”

Video: Rangel to face ethics hearing

When Rangel returned from the war, he was able to use the G.I. Bill to earn a college degree from New York University and a law degree from St. John’s. After a stint as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, he was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1966.

He became active in the civil rights movement, participating in the mid-1960s marches in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama.

Four years later, he turned his sights to Washington, entering Harlem’s Democratic primary to take on Powell, one of the most prominent African-American politicians at the time. Powell had been weakened by charges of corruption, and Rangel edged him out.

Once inside the Beltway, Rangel rose rapidly through the Democratic ranks. He helped establish the Congressional Black Caucus and served on the House Judiciary Committee during its hearings on the impeachment of President Richard Nixon. In 1974, he got a seat on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, responsible for oversight of the nation’s tax code.

Among other things, Rangel used his position in Congress to take a leading role in the fight against drug trafficking. He pushed for low-income housing tax credits, and authored a $5 billion Federal Empowerment Zone to support urban communities.

Rangel also became a leading voice against apartheid, authoring legislation in 1987 to strip certain tax deductions from U.S. companies invested in South Africa.

After Democrats won control of the House in 2006, Rangel became the first African-American chairman of Ways and Means.

Now, however, at what should have been the peak of his power, Rangel is fighting for his political life.

Rangel was recently forced to temporarily step aside as Ways and Means chairman following the announcement of an investigation of several allegations, including failure to pay taxes on a home in the Dominican Republic.

He has also admitted a failure to report several hundred thousand dollars in assets on federal disclosure forms.

In addition, he is under scrutiny for the purported misuse of a rent-controlled apartment for political purposes, as well as for allegedly preserving tax benefits for an oil-drilling company in exchange for donations to a project he supported at the City College of New York.

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

In a document issued Thursday, the ethics panel appointed an eight-member adjudicatory subcommittee to determine if allegations against Rangel “have been proved by clear and convincing evidence.”

The subcommittee responsible for conducting the formal hearings on Rangel will have its first organizational meeting on July 29.

Charlie Rangel’s spectacular rise and fall

Washington (CNN) — A legislative win is a win — but not necessarily when it comes to swaying voters facing the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression.

High unemployment and fears over an ever-increasing federal debt are weighing heavily on Americans. That could drown out President Obama’s message as he heads out on the campaign trail to tout Democrats’ legislative wins: health care reform, financial regulatory reform and economic stimulus projects, among others.

“Right now he is facing an uphill battle,” said Vanderbilt University political scientist John Geer. “I don’t think there’s much that can be done about that. He’ll sharpen the message. But when economies are soft, incumbents have a tough time.”

And members of Congress, bracing for a tough election, got a frank assessment Wednesday of where the economy is headed.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned that the economic outlook remains “unusually uncertain.” But he said that while there are growing signs of weakness in the nation’s economic recovery, Bernanke and other top Federal Reserve officials still expect “continued moderate growth, a gradual decline in the unemployment rate, and subdued inflation over the next several years.”

Read more on Bernanke’s assessment

In addition to championing Democrats’ legislative wins, Obama is being urged to continue to go after Republicans — and lay out an argument that conditions in the country won’t improve if the opposition takes control of Congress after the midterm election.

So far, that strategy is being employed.

Video: Financial reform signed into law

Video: Obama urges Senate to act on jobs

Obama recently traveled to Missouri to help fellow Democrat Sen. Robin Carnahan in her crucial Senate race.

“The last thing we should do is go back to the very ideas that got us into this mess,” Obama said at the campaign event. “That’s the choice you are going to face in November. … a choice between falling backward or moving forward.”

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll would seem to support that strategy, according to CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

The poll, released in late June, found that Americans are angry at both the Republican and Democratic parties for the economy, but they continue to blame the GOP slightly more than the Democrats for the country’s current economic woes.

Fifty-three percent said they are angry at both parties; only 7 percent are angry only at the Democrats and 9 percent are angry only at Republicans.

But that’s not necessarily good news for the Democrats, since an anti-incumbent mood tends to hurt the party with more incumbents. Some argue, however, that it suggests 2010 may not be a precise replay of 1994 when Republicans grabbed control of both legislative chambers from Democrats.

“Democrats are saying ‘Look, let’s make this a referendum on Barack Obama as the future and the Republicans wanting to go back to the past — and Republicans wanting more of the same policies that got us into the economic mess in the first place,’ ” CNN Senior Political Analyst Gloria Borger said.

That strategy worked for Democrats in 2006 and 2008, she said, when they told voters change was needed.

“It’s a very good decision on [Democrats'] part obviously, because that’s the way they get some of those voters back — particularly, independent white men who are deserting them,” Borger added.

Another problem for Obama’s legislative campaign tour? That those policies will be portrayed as big-government.

“It’s difficult in the economic environment because people are nervous,” she said. “Polls show that people are more worried about the deficit than getting tax cuts. They’re worried about government spending and worried about too much government. … So he wins Wall Street reform but doesn’t get credit for it because we’re in a different political environment.”

But that is the environment right now. What if the economy were to improve?

“If the economy right now was showing tremendous growth and jobs were being created, he’d have no problem making the argument [for Democrats to be re-elected]. But we’re not there right now,” Geer said.

Economic conditions are not just a product of policy — but also the natural economic cycle, he added.

“Ronald Reagan’s economy took off in part due to some policies he pursued but also because of natural business cycles just like for Clinton. So there’s a lot of it outside the control. Right now, I suspect Obama’s getting a little too much of the blame … we’ll see if he is successful.”

CNN Polling Director Keating Holland, along with CNNMoney.com’s Scott Spoerry and Chris Isidore, contributed to this report.

Can Obama sell Democrats’ legislative victories?

(CNN) — Shirley Sherrod got her wish Thursday: a conversation with President Barack Obama about her forced resignation from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The president and Sherrod spoke by telephone after Obama apparently had some trouble getting through to her. Afterward, Sherrod told CNN that the call was “very, very good.”

Obama offered his support and said the two had faced similar issues in their pasts, Sherrod said.

However, she said they didn’t discuss whether the White House had a role in her ouster by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, which came after misleading and incomplete video footage of a speech she gave was posted on the internet and picked up in media reports.

“He didn’t go into that,” Sherrod said. “He wanted to reassure me that Secretary Vilsack was truly sincere … with his efforts to rid the agency of discrimination.”

Asked how it felt to talk to the president, Sherrod said: “Oh, gosh, you know, it was great.

“He’s the president of the United States of America. I respect him as that. I appreciate him as that,” Sherrod said. “And it felt like talking to someone else just sitting in the front of the car here.”

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama personally apologized to Sherrod in the phone call but did not lobby for her to take another job at the Department of Agriculture, as offered by Vilsack.

“This was not, ‘Hey, Shirley, take this job,’ ” Gibbs said at the White House. “That was not the specific purpose of the call.”

The president’s office sent Sherrod a text message indicating that Obama had been trying to get in touch with her, Sherrod told CNN producer Julie O’Neill.

Sherrod said she called the White House and was given another number to call. She dialed that number a few minutes later and spoke with the president.

According to O’Neill, Sherrod declined to have the phone call videotaped by CNN.

A White House statement said the two spoke for seven minutes.

“The president expressed to Ms. Sherrod his regret about the events of the last several days,” the statement said. “He emphasized that Secretary Vilsack was sincere in his apology yesterday, and in his work to rid USDA of discrimination.”

According to the statement, Obama also told Sherrod “that this misfortune can present an opportunity for her to continue her hard work on behalf of those in need, and he hopes that she will do so.”

The flap began after conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart last week posted a portion of a speech Sherrod gave in which she spoke of not offering her full help to a white farmer. The original post by Breitbart indicated that the incident Sherrod mentioned occurred when she worked for the Agriculture Department, and news outlets quickly picked up on the story.

However, the incident took place decades before she joined the department, and her speech in its unedited form made the point that people should move beyond race. In addition, the white farmer who Sherrod mentioned has told reporters that she helped him save his farm.

Sherrod was forced to resign Monday, but when the full story came out Tuesday, the White House pressured Vilsack to reconsider. Both Vilsack and Gibbs issued apologies to Sherrod on Wednesday, and Vilsack said he offered her another job in the Agriculture Department.

At the same time, White House aides said Wednesday on condition of not being identified by name that Obama was unlikely to call Sherrod or personally interject himself in the race-tinged controversy.

One aide said there wouldn’t be any more “beer summits,” a reference to the White House meeting Obama held last year amid the controversy over the arrest of Harvard law professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Gates, who is African-American, was arrested at his home by police Sgt. James Crowley, who is white, in what amounted to a misunderstanding. After Obama criticized the arrest, an ensuing uproar led to the White House discussion over beer involving Obama, Gates, Crowley and Vice President Joe Biden.

Until Thursday’s phone discussion between Sherrod and Obama, the White House had tried to separate the president from the issue by emphasizing that Obama played no role in the decision to force Sherrod to resign.

None of that mattered to Sherrod on Thursday. She said Obama was so easy to talk to that she invited him to visit south Georgia, where she is from. There was no word on whether the president would accept her invitation.

Obama talks with USDA employee forced out of her job