SOMEWHERE ON THE LITTLE PIGEON RIVER, Feb. 27 — Too bad I can’t tell you where this picture was taken, yet : )
Can’t make it too easy for the GOP-IT boys to find me on the Google Earth map, if you know what I mean. We’re still editing video from the belly of the beast, and working on a major inside report now…
But we must take a Yuengling break at sunset here beside the Little Pigeon River, with the Smoky Mountain peaks in view (off in the distance in blue).
Update: The site we chose, number 30, was right beside the one rapid giving the park its name. Dozing off to sleep in the back of the Chevy van by the “riplin’ waters,” livin’ the MoJo life on the road…
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn., Feb. 26 — The cardinals are singing their morning song as the sun tries to break through the clouds on this spot where the 84th Indiana Infantry camped in the fall of 1863 before the Battle of Chickamauga.
Chattanooga was a vital rail hub between Nashville and Atlanta in those days when telegraph lines were the new technology, and the town, located on the Tennessee River, served as an important manufacturing center for the production of iron and coke.
It served as the “Gateway to the Lower South” for the Union Army then, and by the time all the battles of Chattanooga were over, Abraham Lincoln’s forces under Gen. Ulysses S. Grant held undisputed control of the state of Tennessee. The city became the supply and logistics base for Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s 1864 “March to the Sea” through Atlanta that broke the spirit of the Confederacy and helped bring the Civil War to in an end.
In just a little while, we will be heading over to Broad Street with a video camera to try and find out if it’s true that the key evidence against Bush administration officials in their perversion of democracy is still backed up on computer servers with the company that produced and stored Websites and e-mail accounts for the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and the Republican National committee.
The Waterkeeper Alliance environmental group has launched a new Website to debunk the notion of “clean coal,” according to a press release sent out by the Black Warrior Riverkeeper, a non-profit environmental group out of Birmingham, Alabama.
TheDirtyLie.com Web site was launched “to combat the lies that are being spread about coal, including the myth of so-called ‘clean coal.’”
“The full cycle of coal use destroys our land, uproots communities, despoils our streams, contaminates our water supplies, and poisons our air,” according to the release. “Coal-burning power plants are the leading emitters of CO2 emissions that exacerbate climate change, their SO2 emissions cause acid rain that kills our forests, and they spew out tons of the neurotoxin mercury.”
There are about 100 active surface strip mines and underground coal mines in the Black Warrior watershed today. Many are operating along the banks of the river and its tributaries. They are allowed to mine within 100 feet of the river and 300 feet of homes. Water discharge permits are given to mines allowing them to discharge pollutants such as total suspended solids (muddy water), and heavy metals (iron and manganese).
Coal from Alabama is used to make coke for the steel-making process, is shipped overseas, or is burned at power plants to produce electricity. Sixty percent of Alabama’s energy is created by burning coal.
There are three active coal-burning power plants in the Black Warrior watershed. Gorgas Steam Plant is on the Mulberry Fork in Walker County; Miller Steam Plant is on the Locust Fork in Jefferson County; and Greene County Steam Plant is on the Black Warrior River in Greene County. Miller Steam Plant was the number one mercury emitting power plant in the entire nation in 2007, spewing out nearly a ton of mercury. Gorgas and Greene were named in the top 50 dirtiest plants list.
Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman urges supporters in Rainsville at his 63rd birthday party to keep the pressure on Congress to continue the investigation of Bush administration officials, including Karl Rove, who perverted justice for political reasons not only in his case, but in cases across the country.
Environmental Group Questions Use of Trust Fund for New Roads
Conservation Alabama issued a statement today that called on Alabama legislators to prioritize fixing Alabama’s crumbling roads and bridges and funding mass transit programs before spending Alabama Trust Fund dollars on new roadways.
Sen. Lowell Barron (D-Fyffe) is sponsoring SB279, a bill that would take $1 billion from the Alabama Trust Fund to build more highways and bridges across the state, but would not provide any funding for transit programs.
“In a state with 2,100 structurally deficient bridges, we must ‘Fix Alabama First’ because we can ill-afford to build new roadways at the expense of maintaining and improving our existing roads and bridges,” said Adam Snyder, executive director of Conservation Alabama. “Our organization opposes any legislation that seeks to build new roads or create more responsibilities for the Alabama Department of Transportation until the state repairs the roads that we have and properly funds and supports mass transit programs in the state.”
Alabama is one of only four states in the country that does not provide dedicated state funding for mass transit. Additionally, more than 80 percent of Alabamians drive by themselves to work each day. In Birmingham, commutes average more than 30 miles a day, which ranks as one of the five longest commutes in the country – on par with much larger cities such as Los Angeles and Atlanta.
Conservation Alabama opposes new ALDOT responsibilities, proposed by bills in the Alabama State Legislature that include establishing a toll road authority (HB217) and an inland waterway authority (HB118/SB368).
Conservation Alabama is the state’s only non-partisan environmental lobby non-profit, which maintains a full-time presence in the Alabama State Legislature. Our mission is to make sound environmental policy a political reality in Alabama.
Some juvenile degenerate is passing this disgusting image around over the Internets. We felt a moral obligation to report it. Take that Turd Blossom.
by Glynn Wilson
Karl Rove, the former political adviser to President George W. Bush, was a no show again this morning at the House Judiciary Committee, sources say, where he once again faced a subpoena to testify under oath about his role in political prosecutions and firings from his perch in the White House for seven years.
A staff member for the committee confirmed this on the telephone, saying simply: “He did not show up.”
Republican sources say Rove is laughing his ass off and having a party in Illinois Monday night, while House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers is back in his district in Michigan and not even in Washington, D.C., even though his office said last Thursday that the deposition was still on for Monday morning.
Apparently the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has given Rove’s attorneys, the White House counsel and the Obama Justice Department another week to reach an agreement on whether Rove should be covered under “executive privilege,” and thus be immune from having to testify about his knowledge of political manipulations of justice in the U.S. attorney firings scandal and the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.
According to Scott Horton, a New York attorney and contributing writer to Harper‘s magazine, Karl Rove has stated repeatedly that he was uninvolved in the prosecution of Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, and that he has no Executive Privilege to assert in this regard.
“Yet when subpoenaed to testify on this subject he refuses to appear,” Horton said. ” At this point the record is clear: Rove won’t repeat his claims about the Siegelman case under oath and subject to cross-examination. That fact is extremely revealing, and it suggests strongly that Rove’s public, unsworn comments are not truthful.”
It’s another sad day for democracy, and the press is sound asleep.
Alabama’s senior Republican Senator Richard Shelby is having to backtrack today on comments he made at a town hall meeting Saturday in Cullman, which may have been made in retaliation for recent reports alleging that White House counsel Graig Craig violated Shelby’s attorney-client confidentiality when he talked to North Alabama lawyer Jill Simpson about representing her before her testimony in the Siegleman case before the House Judiciary Committee, as we reported early this morning in this story.
Shelby’s office is calling a Cullman Times report “incomplete” and a “distortion” of his comments on President Obama’s citizenship status during a town hall meeting Saturday.
When asked during the meeting whether there was any truth to the rumor that Obama was not a United States citizen, Shelby said, “Well his father was Kenyan and they said he was born in Hawaii, but I haven’t seen any birth certificate. You have to be born in America to be president.”
According to the Politico, a Washington-based publication, Shelby spokesman Jonathan Graffeo issued the following statement:
“The Cullman Times article contains an incomplete account, and therefore a distortion, of Sen. Shelby’s comments regarding President Obama’s citizenship. At the town hall meeting in Cullman, Sen. Shelby laid out the Constitutional qualifications for the Presidency and said that, while he hasn’t personally seen the President’s birth certificate, he is confident that the matter has been thoroughly examined.”
The Times stands by its reporting as complete and accurate, according to a statement on the newspaper’s Web site. The paper is also seeking video or audio recordings from the meeting to verify the report.
During the Bush years, we specialized in covering the politicization of the U.S. justice system as much as any news organization. Our archives are about the most comprehensive for anyone researching the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, and the original case against Richard Scrushy, which Glynn Wilson covered for The New York Times.
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