Representative Patrick T. McHenry, a North Carolina Republican who is chair of a subcommittee of the House oversight committee, told Elizabeth Warren he believed she had misled Congress about her role in settlement talks between government authorities and mortgage servicing companies, according to an article in today's edition of The New York times by Edward Wyatt.

Ms. Warren, who is directing the start of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, denied his accusation and said that she had clearly stated in March that she had provided advice to officials of the Treasury and Justice Departments about their investigations of fraud among mortgage-servicing companies.

The article said that "the argument was a rare collapse of the decorum that usually pervades discussions among even the most fervent opponents on Capital Hill," adding that "it demonstrated the level of frustration some Republicans apparently have over the consumer agency, its leadership and its authority as established by the Dodd-Frank Act that followed the financial and mortgage crisis. After an hour in which Ms. Warren repeatedly parried efforts by Mr. McHenry and other Republicans to pin her down with "yes or no" answers to questions about her March testimony - and about the bureau's powers and responsibilities - Mr. McHenry abruptly moved for a temporary recess so lawmakers could attend a floor vote. Ms. Warren objected," adding that "Congressman, you are causing problems....we had an agreement."

"'You're making this up,' Mr. McHenry replied, eliciting gasps from the audience....a senior Democrat, Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, tried to smooth things over. 'Mr. Chairman,' he said, 'I'm trying to be cordial here - you just accused the lady of lying. You need to clear this up with your staff.' Mr. McHenry did not back down. After the meeting broke, he said in a statement: "I was shocked by Ms. Warren's blatant sense of entitlement. She was apparently under the assumption that she could dictate a one-hour time limit for her testimony to Congress, and that we were there at her behest instead of the other way around. This is just further example of her disregard for Congressional oversight.'"

"Faced with strong opposition to Ms. Warren, a Harvard professor, President Obama has not nominated her to lead the new bureau. In fact, officials in the Democratic Party are trying to pressure her to return to Massachusetts to run for the United States Senate in 2012," the article said.

Ms. Warren "touted" the new bureau "as a vital new financial markets cop while Republican lawmakers slammed the agency as a powerful financial regulator with too few checks and balances," according to an article by Maya Jackson Randall in today's edition of The Wall Street Journal.

The lead editorial in today's edition of The Journal maintained that "No one in Washington does moral indignation better than Elizabeth Warren...and yesterday she was in high dudgeon on Capitol Hill attempting to repel efforts to hold her new bureaucracy more accountable," adding "we hope Republican keep at it."

"Ms. Warren's response to these efforts has been to say her critics want to 'stick a knife in the ribs' of the agency; release a statement claiming Congress intends to 'defund, delay and defang' her agency 'before it can help one family'; and in written testimony yesterday, declare that, 'While making baseless claims might be shrewd tactics for those who want to undermine the Bureau's work, they are flatly wrong.'"