At a Monday rally for Scott Brown in North Andover, Mass., I met Bill Hudak, a first-time candidate for Congress running against Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.). He stayed as close to Brown as he could — pictures of the rally are now at the top of his campaign website. Hudak is the guy in the leather jacket and glasses.

What I didn’t know at the time: Hudak is a conservative activist with some extremely strange views of President Obama’s religion and citizenship. On November 3, 2008, the Tri-Town Transcript reported that Hudak, who lives in Boxford, Mass., had pulled down kooky anti-Obama signs from his property after getting too many complaints.

Down the road at 165 Herrick Road, William and Angela Hudak have more of the same anti-Obama signs lined along the front of their property. One large, roughly 6-foot-by-4-foot sign stands back from the road, up against their house, with words – such as socialist, Marxist, and lazy – surrounding the same picture of Obama dressed as Osama Bin Laden.

William Hudak said he received complaints over the weekend from the police about some of the larger signs placed near the roadside. But Hudak added he didn’t need to take the signs down but did so just because the police department was being flooded with phone calls. [...]

Hudak asserts that Obama was not born in the United States but in Kenya, according to affidavits that he made available to the Tri-Town Transcript. He said that Obama has ties to the Muslim faith through an extremist cousin that is from Kenya.

“There is a lot more going on here than anyone knows,” Hudak said.

Brown endorsed Hudak immediately after the election. Here’s video of Brown recognizing Hudak at that North Andover rally, the day before the election.

“[The repeal] was a recipe for disaster because these banks were empowered to make large bets with depositors’ money and money they didn’t really have,” Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.), who sponsored the new bill, said in a statement.

When many of those bets, particularly in the housing sector, didn’t pan out, the whole deck of cards came crumbling down and U.S. taxpayers had to come to the rescue. The absence of the protections in the Glass-Steagall Act essentially turned these financial giants into quasi-government entities because they were only able to survive the recent collapse with government assistance.

Hinchey’s proposal would force the giants of Wall Street to choose whether they wanted to be commercial banks or investment houses, but they couldn’t be both. (A simple lender, for example, couldn’t also be an underwriter.) Co-sponsors include Democratic Reps. John Conyers (Mich.), Peter DeFazio (Ore.), Jay Inslee (Wash.) and John Tierney (Mass.).

The House Rules Committee will meet Tuesday to consider the proposal before it can move to the chamber floor as part of a larger tax bill the Democrats have to pass by the end of the year.

On June 26, six seven Democrats on the committee — Anna Eshoo (Calif.), John Tierney (Mass.), Rush Holt (N.J.), Mike Thompson (Calif.), Alcee Hastings (Fla.) and Jan Schakowsky (Ill.) [Update: I received an early version of the letter. Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.) also signed it] — wrote to Panetta, “Recently you testified that you have determined that top CIA officials have concealed significant actions from all Members of Congress, and misled Members for a number of years from 2001 to this week.” The letter — which doesn’t explain what those “significant actions” concerned* — asks that Panetta “publicly correct” his May 15 statement that it isn’t CIA “policy or practice to mislead Congress.” TWI acquired a copy of the letter, which comes after CQ reported that committee chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) also nebulously stated that CIA “affirmatively lied” to the committee.

But CIA spokesman George Little says it’s “completely wrong” to say Panetta determined CIA misled Congress, as the six legislators charge. “Director Panetta stands by his May 15 statement,” Little said. “It is not the policy or practice of the CIA to mislead Congress. This Agency and this Director believe it is vital to keep the Congress fully and currently informed. Director Panetta’s actions back that up. As the letter from these six representatives notes, it was the CIA itself that took the initiative to notify the oversight committees.”

Little continued: “As for the Congress, as the Speaker has said, ‘We all share great respect for the dedicated men and women of the Intelligence Community who are deeply committed to the safety and security of the American people.’”

Here’s the full letter:

*
Late Update: HuffPost’s Sam Stein nails down that these, uh, “significant actions” are indeed torture-related.
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The sponsors of the proposal — Reps. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), John Tierney (D-Mass.) and Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) — will offer the measure as an amendment to the Credit Card Holders’ Bill of Rights, which is scheduled for a House vote as early as Thursday.

“This amendment will help end the credit card trap and provide Americans with the comfort of knowing their credit card rates won’t soar to eye-popping levels while still providing credit card companies with large enough margins to enjoy a profit,” Hinchey said in a statement.

But don’t expect the provision to get very far. Though the larger bill has wide bipartisan support in the House — where it passed by a vote of 312 to 112 last September (including support from 84 Republicans) — the addition of a rate cap would likely be a deal-breaker for many lawmakers. Indeed, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), the chief sponsor of the larger bill, has been quick to emphasize the absence of rate caps as a key selling point of her proposal. Critics of such caps maintain that they would prevent the card companies from setting their rates based on the risk posed by the borrower — a change that would result in rate hikes for all card users.

That argument, combined with industry opposition to most any reforms at all, makes the amendment a poison pill to the larger proposal. For that reason, even supporters of the cap might choose to vote against it.