by Glynn Wilson

The voting machines are not even locked away in the closet yet from the presidential election of 2008 and candidates are already lining up at the trough to get into the horse race of 2010 in Alabama.

Glynn Wilson

Rep. Artur Davis, D-Birmingham

Media critics have long complained about the coverage of politics since the press often uses sports metaphors, specifically the sport of horse racing. The academic complaint is that by keeping up with the status of the winners and losers, the press tends to ignore the real issues that should be of concern to voters.

The problem with politics today, especially local politics, is that people don’t vote for candidates on the basis of where they stand on the real issues anyway. And on key economic and social issues, there aren’t many candidates for public office in any event who disagree.

Everybody is for jobs and education and against abortion, it seems, and of course you have to be married with children. Otherwise, how could you ever produce a winning TV ad?

People vote for people on the basis of whether they like them or not, which is often based on how they look and whether they share the same religion, apparently, especially in a place like Alabama, despite our historical role in erecting the wall separating church and state.

Politics is not about qualifications, either. George W. Bush proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

And since you know blogs, they have to be fed, not so unlike a daily newspaper — or a horse — it’s time for our first “article” on the 2010 Alabama governor’s race.

Now the first horse out of the gate is obviously Artur Davis, the Birmingham Congressman with little name recognition in the rest of the state.

Davis glommed onto Barack Obama early on in the presidential race, using as his platform what’s left of the old New South Coalition machine put together by former Birmingham Mayor Richard Arrington. And since Obama won in a landslide in November, Davis is now in an enviable position vis a vis the new administration in Washington.

Glynn Wilson

Democratic Party Chairman Joe Turnham

He has not hesitated to start flaunting his new influence with the Alabama Democratic Party, basically dressing down state party chairman Joe Turnham in public recently for presuming to start a series of meetings to advise the new president on possible political appointments in the new administration from Alabama.

Davis, Turnham Differ on Process for Appointments

That was not the smoothest move on the part of Davis, who showed that perhaps he has the ego of a Harvard lawyer and does not share Obama’s savvy when it comes to finessing his potential rivals. I mean the guy is not even so nice to his friends.

Democratic Party officials and operatives are looking at the polls from Alabama in the presidential race and wondering how in the world Davis thinks he has any chance at all anyway, considering something like 80 percent of white voters in Alabama did not vote for the black guy. They voted for the John McCain-Sarah Palin ticket in numbers only rivaled in places such as Oklahoma.

Davis made an appearance this past weekend at a trial lawyers retreat hosted by billionaire attorney Jere Beasley, we’re told, and got a standing ovation. So there’s some indication Davis is trying to wrap up the support of the trial lawyers early on.

But we’re also told that the Jefferson County Democratic Party, which could act as a base for Davis in his race, is virtually non-existent at this point. No money. No organization. So it is unclear what base Davis expects to have in this Old South state.

Davis also does not seem to share Obama’s technological proficiency. While there have been a number of stories out of late about how Obama will be the first president in the White House to use e-mail on a Blackberry to communicate, Davis and his entire staff seem almost incapable of returning phone calls, much less answering questions of Web journalists via e-mail.

They just don’t seem to get it.

So Democrats are looking at other options.

The obvious first choice will be Jim Folsom Jr., who made his comeback in Alabama politics two years ago by winning his old job back as Lt. Governor without mounting much of a campaign at all. He has the name recognition and should probably be considered the front runner, even before the first polls have been taken.

The Associated Press went ahead and did their first story on Folsom this week.

Folsom Considering Run for Governor, Again

There are some potential problems with a Folsom candidacy, chief among them his obvious Old South name and his lack of creativity for bringing Alabama into the twenty-first century. He doesn’t do e-mail or return phone calls either.

Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks has also been mentioned, but we understand he may have some personal problems that could derail his candidacy.

Glynn Wilson

Charles Barkley at an Obama fundraiser in Birmingham last year

Then there’s always former Auburn and NBA basketball star Charles Barkley to consider, although he has apparently pushed his ambitions back to 2014.

And let’s face it. Since Alabama tends to be a conservative, red state, the Republicans might be more interesting to watch anyway, if you are a horse race handicapper intent on picking a winner.

Bradley Byrne, the head of Alabama’s beleaguered two-year college system, could get the nod as Gov. Bob Riley’s heir apparent. Birmingham attorney Luther Strange has been mentioned, although he might be more likely to run for Attorney General to replace Troy King. Troy University Chancellor Jack Hawkins may also jump into the race, as well as “Yella Man” Jimmy Rane, state Treasurer Kay Ivey and Tim James, according to stories in Alabama’s Newhouse newspapers.

And then there’s Attorney General Troy King himself, although we suspect he has developed a certain kind of infamy that may knock him out of any race he decides to enter.

The hottest rumor out of Montgomery right now is that Davis is running for governor not to win it, but to develop name recognition around the state for a future run at the U.S. Senate. And there’s also an indication that Davis will pick up the support of his old friend Bill Canary at the Business Council of Alabama in the primary. There appears to be a cynical strategy afoot to get a black man on the Democratic ticket so a Republican victory in the general election would be a virtual certainty.

When I heard this news I almost booked a one-way ticket to Portland, Oregon. As photographer Spider Martin used to say, “Alabama God-Damn.”

If that is the plan, I don’t want any part of it. Maybe the best thing to happen is this.

When the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta gets around to tossing out the conviction of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, maybe he should get back into politics and run for governor, again.

Glynn Wilson

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman

After surveying the landscape of my poor home state after moving back here in recent years, it has become quite obvious why Siegelman had the loyal following of many people here. He is the best candidate the Democrats have ever had for governor in this state’s history, with the possible exception of George C. Wallace. But that was another time. There was no Republican Party to speak of here then.

I wasn’t here during Siegelman’s one term as governor, so I can’t vouch for how effective he was as an administrator once he won the office he had vied for his entire adult life. But perhaps having been humbled by nine months in a federal prison and tens of thousands of dollars of debt for legal fees, maybe he can mount a comeback and be better at it.

I know one thing from my dealings with him over the past few months. He can cook a pizza and talk on the phone and send an e-mail message all at the same time. If I could find a single other politician in Alabama who could match those multi-tasking skills, I might support them myself editorially.

So if you want to have a chance of obtaining our endorsement to be governor of Alabama, prove you have what it takes. Start by sending me an e-mail message.

If none of them can manage that, maybe we should just opt for a celebrity like Barkley. I don’t have any idea what kind of an administrator he would make. But I suspect he would be an effective communicator, and a lot of fun to boot. And he may be the only Democrat who could win.

by Glynn Wilson

With a new day dawning in Washington, D.C., due to the election of Barack Obama as the first black president in American history, who looks determined to govern like Lincoln and make changes in that corrupt town, is it possible that Bush administration officials will totally escape the long arm of justice for their roles in high crimes and misdemeanors more damaging than any corruption in our history?

While former Bush political adviser Karl Rove is still in defiance of a Congressional subpoena to testify under oath and still faces an investigation for destroying e-mails and other documents, obstruction of justice and other civil and criminal infractions for his role in turning the Bush Justice Department into a political arm of the White House, the Washington Post company actually pays him money to write a column for Newsweek magazine advising the Republican Party on how to get itself out of the political wilderness.

There is something very wrong with this picture. It stands journalism ethics on its head to see a political operative of Rove’s mendacity allowed such a prominent voice in a news publication. Perhaps the magazine should suspend the column until we know whether Rove is going to end up behind bars himself, or simply escape justice.

From reading between the headlines and talking to sources in Washington, I find it is now pretty clear there is an intellectual power struggle going on in the Democratic Party over whether to investigate the crimes of the Bush administration or simply “turn the other cheek” and move on to tackle the major problems facing the country and the world once Barack Obama is sworn in as the new president on January 20.

It looks like a major global warming initiative is at the top of Obama’s agenda after the inauguration that could include a bailout of sorts for the U.S. automobile industry, with caveats that General Motors, Ford, and the rest retool their manufacturing plants to make far more efficient vehicles that run on alternative energy sources such natural gas and a couple of different types of batteries.

While the Senate Judiciary Committee issued a new 60-page report this week that includes a resolution holding Rove in contempt, it is not clear whether this has any chance of even making it to the floor of the current lame-duck session in the Senate for a vote — or whether there will be the political will to bring it back up after the new Congress is sworn in next year. [See pdf version of the report here]

The report cites a host of evidence showing that White House and Justice Department officials focused on the political impact of federal prosecutions and pushed for partisan investigations, and that Rove and others at the White House were involved in the firing of federal prosecutors who did not toe the Bush-GOP line. It also suggests that the reasons for the firings were contrived as part of a cover-up, especially on the part of former Bush yes-man Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who has now been indicted in Texas in another case.

The U.S. Justice Department itself already found in an internal report that the White House engineered the firings and that inappropriate political concerns played a role in several of those cases.

But will Rove ever be brought to justice, especially for his role in the investigation of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, who was knocked out of the 2006 race for governor by his indictment and spent nine months in prison as a result of a corrupt political investigation?

According to Erica J. Chabot, press secretary to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont has made it clear that he is not willing to “close the door” next year on the work the committee has done on the investigations under this Congress.

“This is not something the chairman has taken lightly,” she said of the U.S. attorney firings, the Siegelman case, and the investigation of Rove.

“But we have to wait and see what that next Congress is going to look like, what the committee is going to look like, where the priorities fall into place in those first few months,” she said. “Obviously, there are going to be a lot of things that need the committee’s attention right away, like an attorney general nominee. That certainly doesn’t move anything off the priority list, but it just might shuffle the order they show up on that list.”

She said it does not have to be a “one-or-the-other” situation.

“There’s a way to have that forward-looking attitude while examining what did happen and determining whether other courses of action need to happen in the next Congress,” she said. “I think there’s a way to do both. I think right now it’s just a little too early to tell what the 111th Congress or Senate Judiciary Committee is going to do.”

She simply said she didn’t know whether there is a possibility of a full-floor vote on the Rove contempt citation in the current Congress, although a prominent Washington, D.C.-based reporter for one of the most influential newspapers in the country told me it would be “dead on arrival” in this Congress and would be “filibustered to death.”

Even if this Congress were to find the time before the holiday recess at the end of the year to take it up, President George W. Bush would then have an opportunity to pardon Rove, much as he commuted the sentence of former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was convicted for his role in leaking the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame-Wilson to the press after a special prosecutor’s investigation.

It is not even clear at this juncture when Congress will recess for the holidays, Ms. Chabot said. That will depend on the business that has to be done over the next few weeks.

“That’s a question I wish I knew the answer to so I could make some travel plans,” she said, laughing.

Attempts to reach the press secretaries for the House Judiciary Committee and Birmingham Congressman Artur Davis were unsuccessful for this story, perhaps since it looks like Davis is in a fight with state party officials in Montgomery over the future of the Alabama Democratic Party. We’ll have more to report on that later.

Meanwhile, GOP whistle-blower Jill Simpson, the North Alabama lawyer who is largely responsible for the Congressional investigation into the Siegelman case, did have some strong feelings about the investigation when reached at her law office in Rainsville.

“Karl Rove is in complete defiance of Congress and the rule of law by refusing to appear and to turn over all the documents in this case,” she said. “He has withheld evidence and defied Congressional subpoenas. They must get to the bottom of what went wrong at the Department of Justice in order to correct it.”

There is no way they can reach a final conclusion in the case, she said, “until they look in all the drawers and roll up all the carpet and get to the bottom of the facts in this case.”

She also pointed out that the members of the House and Senate “owe a duty to the citizens who have sent them to Washington to uphold the Constitution and show that no man is above the law.”

“King Karl is not above the law,” she said. “They can’t let this go.”

The Case for Why Siegelman’s Verdict Should Be Overturned

by Glynn Wilson

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman was cooking a pizza at his Birmingham home when I got him on the phone Thursday night to talk about his appeal coming up on the ninth of December in Atlanta.

Glynn Wilson

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman in front of the federal courthouse in Montgomery on a break from his sentencing hearing in June, 2007.

I called to ask about the appeal and other things, like his reaction to the election of Barack Obama as president and the somewhat less-than-stellar performance of the Alabama Democratic Party in the same election.

He had some thoughts on how the state party could have done a much better job, and he was disappointed to see another Republican elected to the state Supreme Court. He was surprised the state went so heavily for Senator John McCain, who won Alabama’s nine electoral votes with 60 percent of the overall vote and maybe 80 percent of the white vote.

For now I’ll keep most of his comments private on the problems with the state party and save them for a more detailed analysis in the works for later. Here the focus is mostly on the appeal.

But I have to report that Siegelman got excited when he talked about the Obama landslide, which he called “astounding” and “stunning.” And he talked in the language of a policy wonk on how the campaign did it: A massive and highly effective Web and Internet fundraising campaign, block-by-block nationwide canvassing, educated and dedicated workers at every level, not to mention one of the smartest, most articulate, gracious, and calm-under-fire candidates since John F. Kennedy in 1960.

“It was without a doubt the most impressive and effective campaign in the history of politics,” he said. “Too bad we couldn’t do more with that on the state level.”

He was reluctant to talk in great detail about his hearing before a three-judge appeals court panel in less than a month, especially considering how Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Fuller in Montgomery sentenced him to a number of months of extra jail time last summer for talking about the case to the media.

But he is hopeful the court will find its way to justice and throw out the case and let his co-defendant Richard Scrushy out of prison by Christmas.

While we were talking on the phone and he ate his pizza, he also managed to e-mail me a copy of the Time magazine story about to come out on the Web and in this week’s edition. He had not had time to evaluate it or react to it. After reading the story and my take on it the next morning, Siegelman told the TPMMuckraker on Friday he considered it “another shocking revelation in the misconduct of the U.S. attorney’s offices.”

He called the level of manipulation of the prosecution team by U.S. Attorney Leura Canary, who supposedly recused herself from the case because of her involvement along with her husband Bill Canary in previous political campaigns with Siegelman’s opponents, another example of the “outrageous criminal conduct in the U.S. Attorney’s office and the Department of Justice.”

He said further that what the Time story revealed was “more frightening than anything that has come before.” And he believes that his case is just the “tip of the iceberg” in terms of politicized prosecutions by the Bush Justice Department, with the full knowledge and direction of former White House aide Karl Rove and most likely Bush himself.

Solid Arguments

A detailed analysis of the appeals briefs in the case reveal four solid arguments the appeals court panel could stand on to reverse the conviction, order a mistrial, or reduce the sentence.

The first and perhaps most important reason for the court to completely dismiss the case is the lack of substantial proof of an explicit quid pro quo, a Latin and legal term meaning “something for something,” for Siegelman’s appointment of Scrushy to the state hospital regulatory board. This exchange was supposedly for contributions of $500,000 to pay off the debt on an education-lottery campaign, none of which went into Siegelman’s pocket.

The jury in the case heard the prosecution hammer this point about a “tit-for-tat” exchange over and over again during the final weeks of the trial. But in their appeals brief, Siegelman’s attorneys point out that according to precedent, the quid pro quo would have to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt among all of the charges — conspiracy, mail fraud, and bribery. And, they argue that in addition to insufficient proof, Judge Fuller’s jury charge did not make this clear. They ask for complete acquittal on those grounds alone.

Glynn Wilson

Scott Horton speaks to a North Alabama media reform group in April.

According to New York attorney Scott Horton, who has followed the case closely and written about it himself for the Harper’s magazine Website and The Daily Beast, the tit-for-tat business the way it was used in this case has “broad consequences for the political world.”

He said in an e-mail interview if the standard that the prosecution argued and Fuller implicitly accepted is correct, “politicians around the country should be in jail right now. Indeed, that number would arguably include Judge Fuller, whose appointment to the federal bench by George W. Bush followed a lifetime of contributions to Republican campaigns.”

He pointed out that it would include the 146 individuals who gave $100,000 or more to the Bush-Cheney campaign who received appointments to federal jobs in return.

Two, on the bribery charge, the appeal brief argues that the statute of limitations had run out. The timing of the alleged bribe was never spelled out in the original indictment, but the judge allowed the prosecution team to nail down the details later. This is a shoddy way to run a prosecution at best.

In an earlier interview, Siegelman’s attorney in the early phases of the case, Doug Jones, said he agreed to wave the statute of limitations on the alleged bribery in the interest of appearing to cooperate fully with the prosecutors in the investigation. But that was at a time when he was being told that the chances of an indictment were slim, well before the “top down review” of the case from Washington he testified about last year before the House Judiciary Committee.

It is clear from the dates looking back now that the alleged crime of passing checks in exchange for the appointment took place in the summer of 1999. Scrushy was appointed to the CON board on July 26, 1999, and the prosecution’s evidence showed the first check from Scrushy was received about that time. The indictment came down on May 17, 2005. For the bribery indictment to be valid, the crimes would have had to take place after May 17, 2000.

The prosecution brought its case too late. Case closed. Charges dismissed, except in a courtroom run by a political opponent of Siegelman with a mandate from the Republican White House to dispatch a brand of political justice only allowed in corrupt, criminal empires.

This should have been dealt with by the judge and should never have made it to the jury. But as we now know, the judge was not acting as an honest broker.

While some newspaper reporters and members of the public may scoff at this notion of dropping the case on appeal based on a technicality, perhaps they should consider the argument that this alleged bribe was nothing more and nothing less than a political contribution. And it’s not like Scrushy needed to give Siegelman money to sit on the board. His role as founder of one of the most innovative health care companies in the state and country at that time would have warranted him a position on the board without the contribution. He sat on the board under previous Republican governors.

Glynn Wilson

HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy and his wife Leslie in front of the federal courthouse in Montgomery in June, 2007.

While people have a right to dislike Scrushy for the way he treated people and for cashing in his stock options as the tech bubble was bursting and costing many people great sums of money who had invested in HealthSouth, if the government was going to put him in jail for his role in “cooking the books” in that case they should have convicted him in the Birmingham trial, which was botched by another political appointee, U.S. Attorney Alice Martin, a Republican of questionable qualifications placed in her office for her loyalty to George Bush and the GOP.

Certainly the practice of rewarding loyal political subjects and campaign contributors with jobs should be reformed. But the question people should ask themselves is this: Is the best way to accomplish that throwing innocent people in jail?

Three, on the issue of juror misconduct, the very idea of jurors reading news coverage online and e-mailing each other about the case outside the jury deliberation room would be instant grounds for a mistrial in any honest court. It is clear that the judge and prosecution team in this case did not fully investigate this issue by examining computers and e-mail addresses used by jurors or by questioning the jury or U.S. marshals at length about this.

The new disclosures by Time magazine this week make clear that claims of juror misconduct in the case “are much more substantial than Siegelman or his attorneys knew when they filed their arguments,” Horton says. “In fact, there were improper communications between prosecutors and at least one juror. And it was one of the jurors implicated in the existing misconduct concerns.”

In other words, one of the jurors who was communicating with the prosecution through the U.S. marshals’ service about a romantic relationship with one of the prosecution team was also one of the jurors who read news coverage online and sent e-mails to other jurors trying to get them to find Scrushy and Siegelman guilty.

“Moreover,” Horton says, “the Justice Department hid these facts from the court and the opposing counsel. At this point it seems clear that the jury was corrupted, and that the Justice Department played an active role in that process.”

I have covered many court trials over the past 28 years as a reporter, and I have never seen any judge, Republican or Democrat, who would allow this kind of shenanigans to go on. It is simply outrageous and someone should be held accountable for it.

If the conservative newspapers in Alabama can’t see this, then I have no sympathy for them for their falling circulation numbers. It is irresponsible journalism of the highest order to allow this kind of corruption of the court system — no matter what your political-editorial slant.

Then finally, without citing the affidavit of GOP whistle-blower Jill Simpson or raising the issue of a conflict of interest on the part of the judge themselves, Siegelman’s attorneys adopt all of the arguments in the appeals brief of Richard Scrushy, who does cite Simpson’s claims, and argues that Fuller should not have sat in judgment in the case while he was in the defense contracting business with the federal government. As has been previously reported ad nauseum, Fuller was a lawyer in the defense contracting business in South Alabama when President George W. Bush appointed him to the court — just in time to take up the case and knock Siegelman out of the race for governor.

Doss Aviation, a company in which Fuller owned a controlling interest, received a $117 million contract with the Air Force on the day Siegelman was convicted. If Fuller had been appointed by a Democrat, you would have been able to hear the screams of the conservative newspapers in Alabama on Fox News, all the way to New York.

While some attorneys have expressed skepticism that the appeals court panel will rule favorably on this claim, we think they should consider it, especially since the prosecution team goes to great lengths to tie Siegelman and Scrushy together in an unholy conspiracy. There seems to be plenty of evidence that the bigger conspiracy was on the other side and directed by Karl Rove with the full knowledge of the president himself.

There is an attorney in Montgomery who could shed considerable light on the extent to which George W. Bush was interested in keeping up with developments in the Siegelman case. We won’t name him for now, but we know from talking to other sources who have heard it from him that Bush was in the loop in this case. On top of all the other grounds for impeachment, this would certainly add to the list. Unfortunately, the hierarchy of the Democratic Party refused to pursue this for the past couple of years, and now it is too late.

Then consider what it would be like if you were on trial in a case like this. Would you want to sit in a courtroom and place your fate in the hands of a judge who did millions of dollars in outside business with the U.S. government, the military, and the FBI? Common sense, and basic ethical considerations, should raise red flags in the mind of any honest person on this score — especially appeals court judges.

The Siegelman brief asks for a complete dismissal of the verdict in the case on appeal and for a judgment of acquittal. Short of that, it asks for an order for a mistrial and reassignment to another judge if there is a retrial.

It would be very unusual for an appeals court to “smack down” a district court judge in “quite so harsh a manner,” Horton says. “On the other hand, their ruling setting Siegelman free already indicated what I’d call a lack of patience with Fuller. They clearly suspect something extremely foul and have not acted on it.”

At least not yet.

Glynn Wilson

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman had clearly lost some weight while he was in prison last year. He is shown here having a little fun at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Birmingham May 2.

In the response brief from federal prosecutors, they counter all these arguments with legal boilerplate language that looks as though it was copied and pasted from a computer program. There is simply nothing in it worth citing or reporting. From an objective point of view, it is simply not believable.

If the court rejects any of the options laid out by Siegelman’s lawyers, they make a detailed case for why he should be released for time served (nine months) because of the unconstitutional addition to his sentence for exercising his First Amendment rights of free speech to talk to the media.

They cite an internal report from the Bush Justice Department itself which said there is “significant evidence of selective prosecution” and “extensive evidence that the prosecution [was] directed or promoted by Washington officials, likely including former White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Advisor to the President Karl Rove, and that political considerations influenced the decision to bring charges.”

In other words, the case was political. That’s not the purpose of courts. Case closed.

And then, of course, there are implications for the future of American jurisprudence on how this case comes out, beyond the immediate fate of Don Siegelman, Horton says.

“Leura Canary and her team have been fending off a Congressional probe of their misconduct with claims that the case is still active and they cannot therefore be compelled to testify before Congress,” Horton says. “Canary did, however, submit a representation to Congress to the effect that she had no involvement in the case after major decisions were taken — a claim which has now been objectively established as untruthful. Making false statements to Congress is potentially punishable as a felony.”

In addition, Canary’s office has refused to release more than 600 pages of documents about the case, including e-mails, letters, and memos.

When the court of appeals rules in the case, perhaps by Christmas, the case will be close to its legal conclusion, Horton said, other than an appeal to the United States Supreme Court.

“Then their stonewalling tactics will come to an end,” he said. He called the hearing on the ninth of December and their decision in this case a “day of reckoning for the Eleventh Circuit.”

“This is a court overwhelmingly dominated with Republican judges, most of whom have gotten to the bench after a career engagement in GOP politics,” he says. “Will they be able to put their partisan interests aside and deal fairly with a Democrat who has been abused by a Republican administration? We’ll know shortly.”

A new day is dawning in America, and President-Elect Barack Obama is hiring, according to the e-mail inbox today.

And the state Democratic Party people are in on some of the decision making (see below).

For those interested in working in the Obama administration, here’s the online link to alert them to your interest:

http://change.gov/page/s/application

You fill out a simple form, submit it online from the site and they promise to email you a more detailed application at some point in the near future.

There are hundreds of mid and lower level political appointments to be made. If you have a qualification they’re looking for, they may be interested and even more interested if you also volunteered for the campaign. (The jobs are, after all, political appointments.)

This also came in today:

Alabama Democrats Form Presidential Advisory Council

Alabama Democratic Party Chairman Joe Turnham today announced the formation of a party-sponsored Alabama Presidential Advisory Council. The Council will serve as a catalyst for recommending persons for public service in the new Obama Presidential administration, specifically those who are eligible to become Presidential Appointees for Alabama.

The Council will consist of approximately 21 persons, made up primarily of Executive Officers of the State Democratic Executive Committee, Alabama’s DNC Members, and several at-large members. The party has asked the three Democratic Members of Alabama’s Congressional Delegation to participate as well.

“This Council is similar to the one we formed in 1996 after the Clinton-Gore re-election,” Alabama Democratic Party and Council Chair Joe Turnham said in a press release.

“This Council consists of a diverse representation of our party leadership from a regional, racial and constituency level [and] provide an open, consistent and transparent vehicle on which qualified Alabamians who want to serve may place their names for review,” he said. “In the absence of a Democratic, statewide-elected U.S. Senator or Governor, this Council can assure that the broadest consensus can be reached as to qualified persons whose names should be submitted to President-elect Barack Obama for consideration.”

“The choice of nominees is solely the prerogative of our new President,” he continues. “However, the broad consensus, stemming from a recent sampling of our over 1,000 elected Democrats and dozens of party officers from across Alabama, is that they wanted the state party to take a lead role in advocating to the new administration as to whom Alabama Democrats would like to recommend for federal appointments.”

The Council held its first meeting Monday in Montgomery and will meet periodically as the appointment process progresses. Those persons interested in consideration or participation in this process should contact Alabama Democratic Party Executive Director Jim Spearman at 334-262-2221 or jim(at)aladems(dot)org .