The Associated Press is reporting that a federal district court judge in Florida is delaying ruling on whether the judge who presided in the political show trial of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman should be allowed to decide if Siegelman and former HealthSouth chief Richard Scrushy deserve a new trial. What the wire service does not explain is what a Florida judge was doing with the case in the first place.

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle apparently issued a ruling last week saying he would wait to decide until another court rules on other appeals filed by Siegelman and Scrushy, who were convicted by a tainted jury and a federal judge in Montgomery who critics claim had a conflict of interest and should not be allowed to continue hearing post-trial challenges. It is also not clear whether the wire service is talking about the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta or the U.S. Supreme Court.

The judge in question is Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller, appointed by President Bush in August of 2002, just in time to preside in what some observers have described as a political show trial designed to get Siegelman out of the way so he would have no chance of challenging Governor Bob Riley’s reelection in 2006.

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Glynn Wilson

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman in front of the federal courthouse in Montgomery

by Glynn Wilson

The United States Supreme Court has vacated the political convictions of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy, prosecuted by the Bush Justice Department, and ordered an appeals court to review the cases in light of a recent high court ruling questioning the use of a vague mail fraud law.

The high court ordered the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta to review the Siegelman-Scrushy case in light of a recent Supreme Court ruling against “honest services fraud,” a vague and over used statute in political corruption cases, according to critics.

Last week the justices found fault with the honest services mail fraud statute in the case of former Enron chief Jeffrey Skilling. Since then, defense attorneys for Siegelman and Scrushy expressed some hope that ruling would give them a new chance to challenge their convictions.

Many lower court judges and scholars have called the law “hopelessly vague,” saying it could apply to conduct as routine as calling in sick to go to a baseball game, according to the New York Times. Critics have said the law gives potential defendants insufficient notice of what is a crime and prosecutors too much discretion in deciding whom to charge.

According to today’s Supreme Court ruling, the petitions for writs of certiorari were granted, meaning the court agreed to hear both Siegelman’s and Scrushy’s appeal. The high court “vacated” the convictions, meaning they are overturned — unless the appeals court can find a way to justify the conviction without three of the five counts related to mail fraud, apparently. The court remanded the cases to the appeals court in Atlanta “for further consideration in light of Skilling v. United States.”

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Guess Who Showed Up?

Glynn Wilson

by Glynn Wilson

About 20 people showed up at the Brookwood Mall Books-A-Million in Birmingham Tuesday to get a signed copy of former Bush political aide Karl Rove’s book, Courage and Consequence, a memoir of his time in the White House designed to try and repair the legacy of a president some scholars are already calling about the worst in American history.

The most prominent person to show up for a signed copy was none other than William “Bill” Pryor, the former Alabama attorney general who first started trying to investigate then-Governor Don Siegelman in 1998.

As a political payoff, Bush appointed Pryor to a judgeship on the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta in 2004 while Congress was in recess, although he was later confirmed by the Senate after a deal was negotiated by Senator John McCain’s “Gang of 14.”

Yes, that’s the same Bill Pryor Rove tried to deny knowing before the House Judiciary Committee, although Rove’s political consulting company ran his campaign for attorney general in 1998. When Pryor walked up and Rove saw him, he smiled real big and said, “Hey, Bud!”

Outside the mall and across the street, about the same number of people, about 20 by my count, showed up to protest Rove’s visit, sporting T-shirts with the slogan “Free Don Siegelman” and carrying signs indicating Rove is the real criminal who should be spending time in federal prison for his participation in high crimes and misdemeanors against the country and the Constitution by the administration of George W. Bush and Vice President Dick “Shotgun” Cheney.

Glynn Wilson

Frank Mathews, a former radio talk show host and aide to jailed Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford, led the protest with his group the Outcast Voters League.

Inside, reporters were allowed to take pictures and ask questions for about 10 minutes before Rove started the book signing.

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Democrats Plan Protest

Political strategist Karl Rove has announced that he will be coming to Birmingham to promote his new book of political fiction to try and shore up president Bush’s “legacy” in office, Courage and Consequence, according to the local CBS affiliate, Channel 42 News.

He will be signing books at the Books-A-Million at Brookwood Mall at 3 p.m. Tuesday, April 27.

During the stop in Alabama, the so-called “architect” of President Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns, the architecture including election theft here and there in Florida, Ohio and Baldwin County, Alabama, will also be the featured speaker for a dinner hosted by the Alabama Republican Party at 6 p.m. at The Club in Birmingham.

Auburn Republican Mike Hubbard tells Alabama news organizations he’s “excited” to get Rove to come to town and help raise money.

While I have no doubt Republicans will flock to see the bald-headed white guy who president Bush called “Turd Blossom,” we doubt he will draw crowds like Sarah Palin.

Some Democrats who support former Governor Don Siegelman say they are working on mounting a protest of Rove’s visit.

They’ve designed a sign that says, “Restore Justice: Jail Rove. Free Don.”

“If you stand on the side of Gov. Don Siegelman, you’ve got a rare opportunity this coming Tuesday in Birmingham to add your voice in calling out Karl Rove as he continues his book tour,” said the Rev. Jack Zylman of Southside.

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by Glynn Wilson

An Alabama Senator with long-standing ties to the US military-industrial complex and an outspoken critic of President Barack Obama is backing down from a direct confrontation with the White House today after taking the unprecedented step of announcing last week that he would filibuster all the president’s appointments to secure earmarks for his home state.

US Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican who switched from the Democratic Party to be part of the Gingrich revolution in 1994, placed a hold on more than 80 presidential nominations before the Senate last week. He relented on Monday, saying he had simply been trying “to get the White House’s attention.”

Read the full story at Truthout.org, a non-profit independent news Website…

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman made his case once again on Fox News on Tuesday. He is hoping the U.S. Supreme Court will take up his conviction in a review of the law against honest services mail fraud.

The Supreme Court is considering about a half-dozen cases on the rights of people accused of crimes involving drugs, sex and corruption, and could consider the conviction of Siegelman and his co-defendant Richard Scrushy as part of that review.

Civil liberties groups and associations of defense lawyers have lined up on the side of the accused, but so have conservative, libertarian and business groups. Their briefs and public statements are signs of an emerging consensus on the right and left that the criminal justice system is an aspect of big government that must be contained, according to The New York Times, giving Siegelman supporters hope that his case may also be considered for the counts involving the law against “honest services mail fraud,” what critics call an over-broad and vague statute the court should strike down.

This so-called “overcriminalization” is at the heart of the conservative critique of crime policy, and even the conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce made the argument in a recent friend-of-the-court brief about a federal law often used to prosecute corporate executives and politicians. The law, which makes it a crime for officials to defraud their employers of “honest services,” is, the brief said, both “unintelligible” and “used to target a staggeringly broad swath of behavior.”

There’s no concrete word on when the high court may announce a decision in those cases. If the court refuses to hear the case, Siegelman will face Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Fuller again in Montgomery for re-sentencing, if he refuses to grant a motion for a new trial.

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman appears on Fox News today discussing HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy…

The governor got in a couple of good points saying that Scrushy would be a free man today if he had agreed to testify against Siegelman.

“He could have thrown me under the bus any time he wanted to and walked out of that courtroom a free man. Richard Scrushy is in prison today for something he absolutely did not do.”

by Joan Brunwasser

Welcome back for the second half of my interview with The Locust Fork News-Journal‘s editor and publisher, Glynn Wilson. So, Glynn, if, according to you, it takes a huge investment of time and energy to understand a story, that explains why the mainstream press has not done its job on many important stories. You, on the other hand, are eminently qualified to discuss the Siegelman/DoJ case. So, if Rip Van Winkle approached you and said, “Ever since I woke up, I keep hearing the name Siegelman. What’s up with this guy?” could you walk him through it so he would grasp why the Siegelman case is so significant?

Hmmm. Well, as you know from researching the case yourself, it is a complicated deal. It’s hard to boil it down to a sound bite for TV, but this is what I can say.

Like any politician, Don Siegelman is certainly no perfect human being. This may be hard for people who live in so-called blue states to grasp, but just identifying yourself as a Democrat in a red state like Alabama invites irrational attacks from the right. And in what I like to call “the Bush years,” they really didn’t care about the Constitution or the abstract concept called “the rule of law.”

People who believe the Bible fundamentally and get their news from Fox and Rush Limbaugh and conservative Big Mule rags like The Birmingham News don’t care about facts or the truth. Many of them still believe George Bush was “the man.” They didn’t get the OpEdNews memo.

Here’s what you need to keep in mind.

When Bob Riley stole the election from Siegelman in 2002 in the closest race in Alabama political history, (according to whistle-blower Jill Simpson, a Republican operative with close ties to the Rileys at the time) the Rileys threatened to use the legal system to investigate Siegelman if he ever ran again. So when he announced in 2004 that he would run again in 2006, the Karl Rove-Bill Canary political machine kicked into high gear to go after him. Canary’s wife, Laura Canary, the U.S. Attorney in Montgomery, then launched the investigation of Siegelman.

Even though the career prosecutors in the Department of Justice could not really find enough evidence to bring charges, and told attorney Doug Jones nothing was likely to result from the case, a “top down” review of the case was ordered from Washington after Rove, Bush’s political adviser, had communications with people in the DoJ. That we know, even though the Birmingham News editorial page editors continue to deny it.

I have been asked numerous times by average people not on the hard right or left how it could be possible that the courts could be so corrupted in a case like Siegelman’s that politics would trump truth and justice. It is perhaps hard to fathom, but just ask Paul Minor in Mississippi or any of the U.S. attorneys who were fired on orders from the White House for not being politically loyal enough. Rove was a student of Machiavelli, who wrote and told King Henry VIII that kings either rule by love or fear. Bush was not the kind of man who inspired love, so he had to rule by fear by demanding absolute loyalty.

The point of prosecuting Siegelman was not about the law. It was about politics from the start.

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Editor’s Note: In case you missed it at OpEdNews.com, here’s part one of the interview…

by Joan Brunwasser

Glynn Wilson is editor and publisher of The Locust Fork News-Journal. Readers trying to get to the bottom of the Siegelman case, the politicization of the DoJ, the story of whistleblower Dana Jill Simpson, and other steamy tales will fare better with the Locust Fork News-Journal than with virtually any of the mainstream press. Glynn is an old-school newspaperman, in the best sense, with decades more experience than I have. So, I’m going to mostly pass him the ball, and get out of the way while he runs with it.

Welcome to OpEdNews, Glynn. Where are you based, who are your readers and how come you’re so on top of these important, but much ignored, stories?

The Locust Fork News-Journal is an alternative, independent news website ranging the diverse landscape of the American South, covering politics and science, nature and media stories from New Orleans to Washington, D.C. We’ve even filed Mojo assaults on New York a time or two.

As editor and publisher and chief investigator, news feature writer and columnist, I now reside on the outskirts of Birmingham, Alabama, very near the Jefferson-Blount County line and just a few minutes from the Locust Fork River, a fork in the Black Warrior River. When it was launched four and a half years ago, the site was designed as an innovative merger between a blog and a news page. (I was not new to web publishing, having been the editor and publisher of The Southerner magazine, southerner.net, the first magazine published online back in the 1990s.)

Just as other news websites with more of a “reality-based” as opposed to a “faith-based” intellectual view of the world, our readers tend to be more educated on average and computer savvy, as well as more liberal, progressive and also independently-minded than your average conservative talk radio listener or Fox News viewer. We do have a fair amount of libertarians and independents that also use the site, however, and judging by the number of sustained attacks from the right-wing attack machine, we have a lot of conservative readers, too.

While we have a large base in Alabama, we also have fans in New York, Washington, D.C., New Orleans and other southern states, as well as the West Coast and the Great Northwest. As you probably find with OpEdNews, many people in California and Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington tend to use us. There are many ex-patriot Southerners out there on the other coast. We also get a fair amount of international traffic, I guess mostly from search engine hits as well as locals abroad.

Why I was on the Siegelman story and the Jill Simpson story and have a better handle on the politicization of the DoJ – and have the largest archive on it – is a long story. But let’s see if I can boil it down for your readers.

I have been a reporter and writer for about 30 years, an academic for nine of those, and covered a lot of Siegelman’s campaigns for office in Alabama all the way back to the 1980s. For context, I wrote the definitive story on his inauguration in 1999, when he was heralded as Alabama’s first “New South” governor. The New South Rises, Again: Alabama Gets Its First ‘New South’ Governor.

During Siegelman’s term as governor, I was not in my home state of Alabama, since I had moved first to Georgia, and then to Tennessee, and eventually New Orleans chasing an academic career teaching journalism, as well as free-lancing. I wrote for The Dallas Morning News, the Christian Science Monitor and then The New York Times out of New Orleans.

During the 2004 election, I broke a big piece of the Bush AWOL story and moved to DC for awhile, but then in 2005, I found myself back in Birmingham with a family situation – when The New York Times called and wanted me to help them cover the first trial of HealthSouth’s Richard Scrushy, Siegelman’s co-defendant in their second trial.

It was during that trial, and after I completed the free-lance work for The Times on the case, that I decided to start LocustFork.Net.

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