by Glynn Wilson

U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and the House of Representatives took concrete steps in the first days of the 111th Congress to ensure a continuation of ongoing investigations of the Bush administration, specifically torture of detainees, warrantless wiretapping, and for politicizing the Department of Justice by firing independent prosecutors and wrongly prosecuting Democrats.

The details are just beginning to emerge on the House Judiciary Committee Website, but stories in the Las Vegas Sun, the TPMMuckraker, and Consortium News show that at least some members of Congress are not ready to move on and let bygones by bygones when it comes to potential crimes by Bush administration officials.

Conyers introduced a bill calling for a National Commission on Presidential War Powers and Civil Liberties that will establish a “blue ribbon commission” comprised of experts outside government service to investigate the broad range of policies of the Bush years, “undertaken by the Bush administration under claims of unreviewable war powers,” according to the press release.

Also, as part of a routine package of rules governing the opening of the new Congress, the House agreed to continue the lawsuit it brought last year after President George W. Bush’s former officials ignored subpoenas to produce documents and appear before the House Judiciary Committee. The action shows that the coming of a new Congress won’t stop House leaders from continuing their long-running effort to obtain documents and testimony about the U.S. attorney firings from White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, former White House counsel Harriet Miers, and especially former Bush political aide Karl Rove.

Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley of Las Vegas, primarily interested in the case of the firing of Nevada’s former U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden in the U.S. attorneys scandal, said the move by the Democratic-controlled House is an assertion of congressional authority after several years of what scholars see as executive branch overreach by the Bush administration.

“A very fine U.S. attorney from the state of Nevada was unceremoniously removed for no reason –- I would like to know why, I would like it to be made public and I would like those responsible punished,” Berkley said. “By passing this rule we have assured this will be done.”

There is no word from Birmingham Rep. Artur Davis on where he stands on the investigation of the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, although he told me for a story last month: “I’ll let John Conyers decide what to do about that.”

It looks like Montgomery Independent editor and publisher Bob Martin is finally catching up on his post-holiday reading, since an editorial published online today shows that he is now echoing our reporting from last month on a potential Davis candidacy for governor.

Siegelman said in an e-mail response he’s heard nothing from the House Judiciary Committee on the investigation of his case. But he said, “I trust John Conyers. He has been in Congress longer than most.”

Democratic Party activists have feared for the past few months that the new Obama administration might “turn the other cheek,” so to speak, and not take the time and effort to look back at the Bush administration’s legal failures. A wide array of groups, including the “aggressive progressives” at Democrats.com, have kept up the pressure on Conyers and others to hold the administration accountable, especially Karl Rove, who is still in defiance of a Congressional subpoena to testify in Siegelman’s case.

With a New Day Dawning in D.C., Will Rove Escape Justice?

We have messages in to the House Judiciary Committee press office and Davis’s press office. We’ll add more to this story if and when we hear back.

The mainstream, corporate news media in Alabama still shows a serious deficiency in covering this story, although one Associated Press reporter in D.C. has weighed in a few times. Most other political blogs in Alabama also seem to completely ignore this story and its implications, with the exception of Roger Shuler at the Legal Schnauzer blog.

Guest Column
by Roger Shuler

As we await the appointment of new U.S. attorneys by the Barack Obama administration, perhaps we should ask this question: Just how important are these appointments?

The answer is “very.” And Alabama is Exhibit A when it comes to evidence that illustrates the ways corrupt U.S. attorneys can harm the cause of justice.

Experience and research have taught me that federal criminal statutes are very broadly written–frighteningly so. Clarity about federal law usually comes from the case law, and a U.S. attorney must have both the intellectual ability and the moral clarity to accurately determine what is a crime and what is not.

That process has been butchered in Alabama under the George W. Bush Justice Department From Hell.

Consider two cases, both involving Alabama governors:

* We all know about the saga of former Democratic Governor Don Siegelman and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy. Siegelman accepted a $500,000 donation for his lottery campaign and appointed Scrushy to a hospital-oversight board to which he already had served under three previous governors. Despite law and fact to the contrary, U.S. Attorney Leura Canary determined this activity constituted a crime.

* Current Alabama Governor Bob Riley, a Republican, packed Alabama’s Joint Patriotic Immigration Commission with his own major donors. Four of the appointees gave at least $390,000 to the Riley campaign.

How are Riley’s actions different from Siegelman’s actions? Answer: They aren’t. So why was Siegelman investigated and prosecuted, while Teflon Bob Riley never drew scrutiny from law enforcement? Answer: That’s what happens when you appoint political hacks as federal prosecutors.

It’s clear that Siegelman and Scrushy did not commit a crime, and I would suggest that Riley probably did not commit a crime with his appointments to the immigration commission.

But I would further suggest that it’s time for someone to look past Riley’s Teflon coating and examine some of his other activities, particularly his associations with corrupt GOP politicos Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon and the ties that Riley and his associates have to the gambling industry.

For good measure, and hitting close to home, it might be time for someone to look into connections that Riley associates have to my unlawful termination at UAB and the broader corruption of Alabama higher education.

Will Alabama’s new U.S. attorneys, appointed by an Obama administration, be up to the task? I would suggest that citizens should do more than just hope on that issue. We should do everything we can to hold their feet to the fire.

Originally published on Shuler’s Legal Schnauzer blog.

Also, we are told this story out today in the New York Times regional newspapers is due for a correction–the part where Leura Canary is applying to stay on.

Obama to Fill Federal Posts in Alabama

And we would add that folks might want to put a little pressure on the committees making the recommendations, including the state party panel and the Davis panel. You can bet corporate pressure is involved.