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• Galt man wanted on murder warrant

• Holidays often add up to a full local animal shelter

• Germ warfare

• Director of Hutchins Street Square resigns

• Long lines at the post office as people rush to buy 2-cent stamps

• Regional Roundup

• Pombo defends his actions to scuttle a federal investigation

• Delta flooding, Medi-Cal, Stockton Airport top items for supervisors

February 8th, 2010

• Public Meetings

• Locals pick best, most memorable Super Bowl commercials

• Regional Roundup

February 6th, 2010

• The Home Depot hopes to join Costco at Reynolds Ranch

• Meet Larry, Curly and Moe

• Baboon business

• Regional Roundup

• Several Lodi venues let you watch the Super Bowl in style

• Lodi Library celebrates 100 years of serving the community

• Culinary craft

February 5th, 2010

• Kids, teachers help Haiti by collecting pennies for Learning Link

• Lodi, Galt students reach out to help Haiti earthquake survivors

• Tasered suspect claims he is Yosemite Sam

• Hours of sweat and work go into putting on crab feeds

• Things looking up for state's real estate

• Correction

• Regional Roundup

• Stray bullet strikes Lodi home; police suspect gang activity may be factor

February 4th, 2010

• Managers at Geweke Toyota answer questions about recall

• Lodi City Council votes to replace play structure at Century Park

• Lodi extends ban on pot shops for another year

• Mokelumne River triathlon set for June

• Family, friends to run half-marathon in memory of Galt family

February 3rd, 2010

• Correction

• Regional Roundup

• Delta College trustees again collide over stipend committee

• Lodi-area senators Dave Cox, Lois Wolk admit to gifts; Tom Berryhill case pending

• Lodi Unified School District president issues warning to speakers over cuts

• Galt City Council avoids budget cuts — for now

• New Lodi Memorial Hospital emergency room opens to the public without a hitch

• Bad bugs, weeds are hot topics at Grape Day

February 2nd, 2010

• Big rig plows 7 cars

• Local business leaders say tourism, Costco, Home Depot may play roles in city's future

• Former Lodian Erica Davis is first paraplegic woman to summit Kilimanjaro

• Jumpers across California

• Correction

• Regional Roundup

• No snow leopards, otters for Micke Grove

• McNerney leads in campaign cash

• Police: Train victim was a Lodi teen

February 1st, 2010

• Find cuddly alpacas not too far from Lodi

• Public Meetings

• Patients can expect faster, better service when Lodi Memorial Hospital's new emergency room opens

• Man killed by Amtrak train in Lodi

The following stories have received the most reader comments during the last 7 days.

• President Obama's first year (67)
• Lodi Unified School District president issues warning to speakers over cuts (64)
• Will terrorists be given Miranda warnings? (60)
• Local business leaders say tourism, Costco, Home Depot may play roles in city's future (58)
• Islamic symbol in mosaic — what is all the fuss? (49)
• Writer comments on Neely column (42)
• The Home Depot hopes to join Costco at Reynolds Ranch (39)
• Police: Train victim was a Lodi teen (32)
• We need to conduct respectful conversations (30)
• Tasered suspect claims he is Yosemite Sam (25)

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Pombo defends his actions to scuttle a federal investigation

Rep. Richard Pombo said Monday that his effort to scuttle a federal investigation of a Houston millionaire was meant to counteract environmentalists and officials in President Bill Clinton's administration who were trying to obtain thousands of acres of redwood trees the man's company owned.

In a conference call with reporters, Pombo R-Tracy, said the attempt by federal regulators to procure land owned by Charles Hurwitz was orchestrated by environmental groups bent on denying Hurwitz his private property rights.

Pombo acknowledged publicizing documents related to a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. investigation into a failed savings and loan association of which Hurwitz owned 24.9 percent. In a report inserted into the Congressional Record June 14, 2001, Pombo accused the FDIC and the Office of Thrift Supervision of being conspirators in a scheme to obtain thousands of acres of redwoods in Headwaters Forest in exchange for debt Hurwitz owed from the association's collapse.

"This is a classic property rights case where you had the government coming in and trying to take away someone's property," Pombo said Monday. "That's what I'm about; that's what motivated me to run for Congress in the first place."

Hurwitz acquired Pacific Lumber in a hostile takeover in 1986, according to Pombo's report. Pacific Lumber owned about 6,000 acres of redwood trees in northern California's Headwaters Forest.

Calling it a "story of political corruption," Pombo said a cabal of environmentalists, members of Congress and officials in the Clinton administration conspired to pursue baseless charges against Hurwitz in an attempt to extort his land.

"There's no question it was a to-hell-with-them decision that was made," Pombo said, referring to his 14-page report that was criticized in 2002 by an FDIC spokesman as "a seamy abuse of the legislative process."

The FDIC claims documents that were released in Pombo's report — as well as a previous, 110-page filing from Rep. John Doolittle, R-Rocklin — contained sensitive, privileged information that effectively sunk its chances of recovering $300 million from Hurwitz for his alleged role in the collapse of the United Savings Association of Texas, which cost taxpayers $1.6 billion.

Pombo's report claims internal FDIC estimations showed a 50 to 70 percent chance the case would be thrown out anyway, and said that sensitive parts of the documents had been redacted.

The FDIC's pursuit of Hurwitz appeared to be stymied, in part, because he owned only 24.9 percent of the savings and loan instead of a full 25 percent.

The agency maintains that it was not interested in a debt-for-nature scheme.

"The FDIC has been on the record ever since the beginning of this that our case against Mr. Hurwitz had nothing at all to do with the trees. It was about recouping as much money as we could for the taxpayers who lost $1.6 billion when his S&L failed," spokesman David Barr told The Associated Press. He said the tree-swap idea was Hurwitz's to begin with.

Hurwitz was a close associate of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, giving at least $30,000 to DeLay and his federal causes since 2000, the L.A. Times reported. Hurwitz also gave $1,000 to Pombo's campaign in 1996.

The efforts of Pombo, Doolittle and DeLay were first reported in Sunday's Los Angeles Times.

Pombo and Doolittle subpoenaed the FDIC documents while they were part of a House Committee on Resources task force created in 2000 to probe the alleged debt-for-nature scheme.

Democrats refused to join the task force to protest past actions of the committee's then-chairman, Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, according to Daniel Weiss, a spokesman for Rep. George Miller, D-Concord, who was the ranking member on the Resources Committee at the time.

Miller criticized Pombo's and Doolittle's disclosures in a 2002 letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, saying that by making the documents public, the congressman gave Hurwitz's attorneys inappropriate access to internal information.

"It's irrelevant whether a member of Congress agrees or disagrees with a case," Miller spokesman Weiss said Monday. "But to seek to undermine an investigation is inappropriate."

A Resources Committee spokesman, Brian Kennedy, cited a 2005 opinion from U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes that accused the FDIC of corruption and ruled in Hurwitz's favor as evidence that Pombo was in the right.

"The only investigation that was going on was one by bureaucrats, activists and politicians trying to find a way to extort this man's land," Kennedy said. "And that's what the court concluded, and that's what the task force concluded."