by Glynn Wilson

Artur Davis, the soft-spoken and little-known Congressman who represents much of the area from Birmingham to Tuscaloosa, was in town this weekend while Congress takes a break from the August heat in Washington, D.C.

Glynn Wilson

Rep. Artur Davis at the Young Democrats cookout

Dressed casually in gray slacks and a blue buttoned-down shirt, Davis showed up to shake some hands at the Birmingham Young Democrats’ cookout in George Ward Park on Southside.

I was able to catch up with him for a few minutes to press my concerns about the threat to the Fourth Amendment’s protections against “unreasonable” searches and seizures, and to finally get some answers to questions his press staff seems incapable of responding to — electronically or otherwise.

In northeastern Jefferson County, where a concern for the Second Amendment’s protections for gun ownership are paramount politically, very few people have ever even heard of Davis. An unscientific survey of average working people in Clay, Pinson, Center Point, Trussville and Roebuck shows that he has almost no name recognition in this part of the world.

And since the newspapers and television news stations and radio talk shows in Alabama spend almost no time covering such “trivial” things as the threat to the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution from the Bush administration’s illegal spying operations over the past seven years, the average construction worker here doesn’t seem to be particularly concerned about that either.

But among active Democrats who were in attendance at the cookout, there is an awareness that Davis — along with Barack Obama, the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for president to run against Republican John McCain — voted for the new Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which included a provision exempting telecommunications companies such as ATnT from lawsuits for their admitted role in illegally spying on Americans since 9/11.

The main reason Davis supported the bill, he said, was political.

Since Davis endorsed Obama early on, and since President George W. Bush threatened to veto any FISA bill that did not contain telecom immunity, the moderate Democrats who hold sway in both houses of Congress did not want to give McCain ammunition in the last three months of the presidential election race by allowing the spying law to expire in August.

McCain could have used that as evidence that the Democrats are “weak on terror,” Davis said — as if he wasn’t going to run ads saying that very thing anyway. He has already.

In his defense, Davis did offer a legal answer to the question as well.

Davis is a Harvard-educated lawyer who interned at the Southern Poverty Law Center and clerked for U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson — the federal judge who ordered Judge Roy Moore’s Ten Commandments Monument out of the State Supreme Court building in Montgomery and one of my personal heroes. He also worked as an assistant U.S. attorney before running for Congress, unlike Alabama’s current attorney general Troy King, who had never tried a case in court.

Standing in the George Ward Park pavilion with the aroma of barbecued chicken in the air, Davis made the case that the new FISA bill was an improvement over the old one.

Under the old law, passed in 1978 in response to President Nixon’s abuse of federal resources to spy on opposing political activist groups, there was no provision for protecting American citizens abroad, Davis said. The new law extends those rights overseas beyond the nation’s physical borders “for the first time,” he said. It was a compromise the Democrats would never have gotten out of the Bush administration just a few months ago, he claims.

The new law also strengthens monitoring of the federal government’s spying by the so-called FISA court, he said, although critics have said the court is nothing more than a “rubber stamp” for the executive branch, no matter who is in power.

The new bill also changes the language for obtaining warrants to spy on Americans from “probable cause” to “reasonable suspicion,” he said, although in a country run by an Imperial President who thinks he is a king who derives his power from God and is not beholden to the law, that improvement seems hardly enough to stop the abuses.

Which brings us to the last issue, where Davis makes a good point.

Whether the law is enforced in a way that protects civil liberties “rests on the integrity of the executive,” Davis said.

So he is hoping one of the questioners at this year’s presidential debates makes sure to ask Senator John McCain the question: “Can we count on you to be responsible in enforcing the FISA law?”

Or, in other words, will you abuse the power of the presidency to spy on political opponents, like Nixon and Bush? We might also add: Will you also politicize the Justice Department to jail your enemies?

Whether Davis’s answer will assuage the critics on the left in the Democratic Party is questionable.

According to Ben Mazzara, the local organizer for the Greater Birmingham Democracy for America chapter, a group set up by Howard Dean to help register new voters, Davis’s position is much like a lot of the Democrats in Congress now, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They have so far refused to bring articles of impeachment against Bush-Cheney or to hold Karl Rove in “inherent contempt” for his role in the political prosecution of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman.

“They have placed winning elections above the Constitution,” Mazzara said at the cookout.

He said that may pale in comparison to how Bush and the Republicans have “eviscerated” the Constitution. But it certainly contributes to the low public approval ratings of this Congress and may cause problems after the election, he said, even if Obama wins.

According to Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert who often appears on MSNBC to talk about these issues, history and the country may not judge the Democrats kindly. Check out this exchange on Keith Olbermann’s show:

TURLEY: … the most remarkable if not bizarre aspect of all of this [is] that President Bush’s allies in the last seven years have been the Democratic leadership and the Democratic members that have repeatedly stepped in to protect him, not just from impeachment, but serious investigation. And it’s part of a very cynical political strategy. It has succeeded.

The Democrats know that they can retain the Congress if they just let this guy (Bush), you know, sort of ripen on the vine. And that they are afraid that there could be a backlash if they try to impeach. But of course, that’s literally all politics and no principle. They took an oath in the House of Representatives. And the most important thing they have to do as House members is to stand firm in the face of presidential crimes.

And I think history will be very, very severe, not just for Speaker Pelosi, but all of the Democrats, of how they could let this come to pass where they stood silent and did nothing in the face of such compelling criminal record.

We will see if that prediction comes true, along with another one we made awhile back when covering the issue at the time: Will the issue come back to haunt Davis if he decides to run for governor of Alabama in 2010?

Good News, Bad News Friday in Washington

Senate Passes Bush’s Spy Bill With Telecom Immunity

According to Richard Cohen, executive director of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Davis is a fine lawyer with a promising future in politics.

“Two things were obvious about Artur from day one here,” Cohen said. “He was going to be a gifted lawyer and was destined for great things in politics.”

But according to William Crain, a regular commentor on one of the largest and most influential e-mail lists in Alabama, “Davis is DLC (Democratic Leadership Council).”

If you want to examine the nefarious ways and means of the DLC, he said, read this article and others like it on the site.

The key quote from Davis, which makes a lot of sense from a practical political point of view, goes like this.

“If you don’t win, you don’t get to do anything,” he says. “If you don’t figure out a way to translate your message into at least 51 percent of the vote, then you will not do very well.”

True, but is it possible to win elections and remain true to the Constitution at the same time? Some people think so. It just takes work to educate the people and the press.

“The reason that there is much dissention in the Democratic Party ranks today is caused by the leaders of the DLC, Hillary and Bill Clinton, Al Frome, Rahm Emmanuel (and others),” Crain said. “If you don’t like Neo-Conservatives you will certainly not like Neo-Liberals. And the DLC is Neo-Liberal. You don’t want a Neo-Liberal for governor.”

To learn more about Davis’s background and to read about some of the controversies on the sources of his campaign funding, check out this SourceWatch page, which shows he takes a lot of money from New Yorkers. You can also check out this page from OpenSecrets.Org, which shows that Davis takes a lot of money from corporations such as Southern Company, one of the worst polluters in the American South.

Ho, hum. Yawn…

Karl Rove’s minions have been hard at work today, high on meth and Red Bull, trying to follow-up the media coverage in the Siegelman appeal by trying to anonymously and otherwise discredit reliable sources.

Since I have other blog business to do around here and don’t have anymore time to waste on them, I’ll just leave it to former journalist of some note and now lawyer of some note in Montgomery, Priscilla Duncan, for the response.

A comprehensive statement of Karl Rove’s use of the media to attack Jill Simpson

by Priscilla Duncan

A response to: Unappealing Power Play

A Response To the Editors of The National Review

Dear Editors:

I am the legal counsel for Dana Jill Simpson, and we are demanding a retraction for the false and misleading statements in your August 5 editorial.

Ms. Simpson wrote an affidavit that was released just before Gov. Don Siegelman was sentenced last year. She was only the first of several persons who have testified regarding the political aspects of his prosecution. Included among them were law professor Scott Horton and former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones. Conyers’ inquiry was not solely based on her statement as you stated.

Ms. Simpson’s sworn testimony to the Judiciary Committee was structured exactly as Conyers and Lamar Smith requested. That testimony was backed up with about four pounds of Ms. Simpson’s documents, which you apparently haven’t taken time to examine.

She did not testify to Conyers in a private interview — where do you people get this stuff??

The hearing was in the form of a deposition to majority and minority counsel — three each. She was questioned four hours, sworn to tell the truth and there were no restrictions on inquiry. Ms. Simpson and I even offered to Republicans to answer questions over the telephone prior to the inquiry, but they evinced no interest.

During the time we were in Washington, we never met with Conyers or any member of the Committee or any member of Congress for that matter. Ms. Simpson has never met Conyers.

Ms. Simpson’s account has never changed, only the questions. Many of the “stories” as you refer to them, were detailed earlier to journalists or lawyers, but were not released due to their selection of topic. Other issues simply were not explored. 60 Minutes interviewed Ms. Simpson in three cities for more than 6 hours and telephoned numerous times on fine points. The two minutes of Ms. Simpson’s interview that 60 Minutes chose to use was not selected by Ms. Simpson. If there really were inconsistencies in her testimony, Karl would have something else to offer besides calling her “a lunatic,” a word Google associates with Rove 99,800 times.

In her Congressional testimony Rove is mentioned 16 times. Obviously, no one on your staff has read it, and you are repeating false information vomited out by Mr. Rove and his henchmen. Rove attacks Ms. Simpson because he knows she knows more. Her information about such matters is vast. Rove can’t afford to testify without knowing it all, and for this reason he has attempted to lure her into a defamation action against him for the scurrilous lies he has told about her in GQ, Weekly Standard , Powerline , News Busters and now The National Review.

I am sure Rove has steadily cursed the Republican counsel in the Judiciary Committee for not grilling Ms. Simpson with more gusto last fall — but then, Rove ran out of Washington like a scalded dog two weeks before Ms. Simpson testified on Sept. 14. He resigned Aug. 31.

As Ms. Simpson says, “Slander is the ultimate revenge of a coward.” Rove has trampled through government like a wild boar in a turnip patch for too many years. Now that he’s being hunted, he is hiding in the woods from the House Judiciary Committee. He needs to come out in the sunshine, tell the truth and stop being terrified of Ms. Simpson.

That it takes a small town lawyer in Alabama to do it, casts shame on all you puffed up big-city pundits. Barry Goldwater would be embarrassed by you and so would William F. Buckley.

PD

And What is Objectivity Anyway?

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

TUSCALOOSA, Ala., Aug. 3 — Imagine Alabama as a cave and the people as prisoners who have been chained since their childhood deep inside in the darkness, where good information is almost impossible to come by.

Their lives are stuck in an unmovable chain of events limited by discrimination in education, a narrow range of job opportunities and a press with only the profit motive to guide its deliberations. The people are thus chained with their heads aimed in one direction, their gaze fixed on a single wall.

Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, which puts out lots of light.

And between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which various animals, plants and other people, seen as puppets, move along and form the rest of the world outside the cave called Alabama. The puppets cast shadows on the wall, and the prisoners watch these shadows, sometimes on a screen that resembles a TV.

Behind this cave there is a well-used road, and upon this road people are walking and talking and making noises. The prisoners believe that these noises are coming directly from the shadows they are watching pass by on the cave wall.

The prisoners engage in a game, naming the shapes as they come by. This, however, is the only reality that they know, even though they are seeing merely shadows of objects.

Inside the cave there is an island, where radio talk show hosts parrot the unreality gleaned from the shadows on the wall. Anyone who objects to the Zeitgeist of the cave and tries to tell people they are jumping to conclusions based on shadows on a wall is banished from the island and paraded in public as an “idiot” or, Dog forbid, a “liberal.”

This story is adapted from the Greek philosopher Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” which symbolizes the trek from ignorance to reality, where truth is gained from looking at universals in order to gain understanding of experience. The things which people perceive as real are actually just shadows on a wall.

Just as the escaped prisoner ascends into the light of the sun in Plato’s story, the people of Alabama must use the Web to amass knowledge and ascend into the light of true reality. Otherwise, they are doomed to a life of ignorance and damnation.

Allegory of the cave

A Missionary Blogger

This is the story of one missionary who descended into the cave and tried to unchain the people by starting a blog, doing his best to tell the people they were jumping to wrong conclusions about the world by depending on just the information displayed on the shadow on the wall. But like any mob, they objected to the missionary’s message and started throwing stones his way.

One of the main sermons of this missionary has to do with the search for an attainment of objective knowledge. The mob was not interested in hearing about it. But like the Bourbon Street preacher who carries the cross every Saturday night in the New Orleans French Quarter trying to save the lost souls of the sinners, the missionary went right on blogging.

One of the main conclusions drawn by the mob is that the term “objectivity” is an unchallengeable principle of journalistic “professionalism,” defined as “fairness and balance.”

Some also included the properties of “disinterestedness, factuality, and nonpartisanship,” although after more than 100 years of debating the subject, the mob could never quite agree on what it really meant. But they developed an online encyclopedia to define it.

Objectivity (journalism)

Interestingly, over in another section of the same encyclopedia, unbeknownst to the people stuck in the cave called Alabama, another group of people were discussing something called objectivity in science.

Here, an objective account of something is one which attempts to capture the nature of the object studied in a way that does not depend on any features of the particular subject who studies it. An objective account is, in this sense, impartial, one which could ideally be accepted by any subject, because it does not draw on any assumptions, prejudices or values of particular subjects.

Science is mostly regarded objective in this sense. This objectivity in science is often attributed with the property of scientific measurement that can be tested independently. It is thus intimately related to the aim of testability and replication.

To be properly considered objective, the results of measurement must be communicated from person-to-person, and then demonstrated for third parties, as an advance in understanding of the objective world. This is referred to in academic circles as “peer review.”

Scientists first started using the Internet to exchange these ideas - before the prisoners of ignorance in the cave got their hands on it.

In the modern political era, sometimes the “facts” were tested in courts of law, Congress and the “court of public opinion.”

The idea was to come to a consensus as a society on what constitutes “demonstrable knowledge,” which would then confer powers of prediction on the possessors of this knowledge, sometimes passed on through a technological construction.

While in the Alabama cave none of this mattered, the missionary went right on preaching his daily sermon anyway.

Sometimes the missionary would point out to the people trapped in the Alabama cave that there was another cave far away in a place called New York. And there was a blogger in New York called Jay Rosen, a college professor who spent most of his time trying to reason out the role blogs will play in the new millennium as the century of the mass circulation daily newspaper comes to a close.

And there the discussion often turned to this question of objectivity, even though the people in the New York cave have not yet figured out that there is a connection between objectivity in journalism and objectivity in science either.

Getting the Politics of the Press Right

One very well respected Washington Post reporter, Walter Pincus, who moves the debate forward but has still not quite figured out the connection, says the important thing is for journalists to have the courage to admit they they’re participants in the political system.

He wrote an essay for a new magazine called Frank: Academics for the Real World, which is published by the Clinton School of Public Service in Arkansas, although it is not free online. In a piece called “Power of the Pen: A Call for Journalistic Courage,” Pincus does something rare for any mainstream journalist, according to Rosen. “He openly argues for a more political press. He even uses the word ‘activist,’ which is forbidden in the mainstream newsroom code.”

According to Rosen’s interpretation of the article, Pincus says that courage in political reporting sometimes means the courage to admit you’re a participant — a player, a power in your own right — within the struggle for self-government, the battle for public opinion and the politics of the day.

Rosen also cites Josh Michah Marshall of the Talking Points Memo blog, who says the important thing is to show integrity — “not to be a neuter, politically. Having good facts that hold up is a bigger advantage than claiming to reflect all sides equally well.”

This mix used at the TPM combines political argument, dogged investigative work, news aggregation, a filtered community forum, some media criticism, and user-assisted reporting to try and get at the truth for the people in the cave with access to the Internet.

But according to the people in the cave called Alabama, and especially those who hold a place on the talk radio island, this is all just laughable non-sense from “liberals” who just oppose George W. Bush’s actions as president because they are “lackeys of the Democratic Party,” a party which everybody in the Alabama cave knows is no better than Soviet Communism, the “evil empire” itself.

Nevermind that even many Republicans in other caves realize Bush is the worst president in American history, or the fact that their favorite political party, the Republican Party, acts a lot like the Nazis in Fascist Germany - who our parents went to a lot of trouble of defeating in a great war many years ago.

But for a missionary or a blogger to point that out amounts to a form of treason to the mob in the cave. They and their representative bloggers just love to throw stones marked with the word “liberal” at anyone who disagrees with them - even if their conclusions are based on nothing more than shadows on the wall of a cave.

Don Siegelman Agrees

by Glynn Wilson

Alabama attorney and GOP whistleblower Jill Simpson is calling on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to allow a vote in the full House of Representatives on “inherent contempt” for former Bush political aide Karl Rove.

In light of the Judiciary Committee’s vote Wednesday finding him in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify under oath about his involvement in the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and the politization of the Department of Justice, Ms. Simpson said in an exclusive interview it would be “useless” to turn the case over to the Bush Justice Department.

If the House simply finds Rove in “statutory contempt,” the case will just be turned over to Attorney General Michael Mukasy, she said. And his office has shown time and again that he is not interested in finding out the truth and holding former White House officials responsible under the law, including Harriet Myers and Josh Bolton.

“The time is now,” Ms. Simpson said. “Ms. Pelosi promised when she took over the House after the 2006 elections to clean up. It’s time for her to clean the White House for thumbing their noses at Congress.”

Ms. Simpson says she feels akin to the 127,000 people who signed a petition calling on Congress to send Karl Rove to jail, she said, and she thinks the House should use the Sergeant at Arms to arrest him. Inherent contempt and the Sergeant at Arms have been rarely used in American history, she said, “because most people don’t thumb their noses at the United States Congress.”

“Mr. Rove has repeatedly thumbed his nose at the U.S. Congress, and he should have respect for the Constitution and the Congress,” she said. “The time has come to stop this.”

The Judiciary Committee voted 20-14 Wednesday to hold Rove in contempt of Congress for failing to respond to a subpoena to testify under oath before the committee.

“This is a Constitutional crisis,” Ms. Simpson said. “When the White House can just say we are not going to testify if we don’t want to. The Department of Justice has repeatedly NOT stood up for the Constitution and that only leaves Congress.”

She agreed to go to Washington to testify last year, she said, because she considered it a civic duty.

“Karl Rove should see it as a civic duty too,” she said. “Instead, he prefers to run around the country thumbing his nose at the Constitution.”

Ms. Simpson commended Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the Commercial and Administrative Law subcommittee, along with committee chairman John Conyers and Birmingham Rep. Artur Davis, “for their valiant efforts to restore the integrity of the Constitution of the United States,” she said. “”They need to do a thorough, to the bottom of the bucket investigation. Otherwise there is going to be a revolt.”

Rove is claiming he has White House executive privilege, she said, “but that sure as heck doesn’t prevent him from spouting off his mouth every where he goes.”

Rove thinks because he is an elite political operative no longer serving in government that he is above the law, she said. “He thinks he is the law.”

Furthermore, she said, President George W. Bush should want to get to the bottom of the story for his own legacy.

While everyone’s attention is focused on Rove’s role in manipulating the Justice Department, perhaps they are ignoring an “in-the-loop” role by members of the Bush family as well. After all, isn’t Rove just a political operative who takes orders from the people he works for?

“George Bush owes a duty to the citizens of the Unites States to ask that his employees testify, if he really wants to heal the problems at the Department of Justice,” she said. “This is directly going to affect his legacy.”

In reacting to the story today, Don Siegelman said in an e-mail message: “I have always said I believe Jill Simpson. She is an American hero.”

Siegelman said the Texas Republican and ranking minority member of the committee, Rep. Lamar Smith, has made false statements himself, along with Rove in his written responses to the committee last week.

“We must encourage the full House to vote yes,” Siegelman said. “To do otherwise would advance the cause of this corruption of the DOJ and make it more likely to happen again.”

Rove didn’t even deny the central sworn allegation against him, Siegelman said: “That he and Bill Canary conspired to advance the prosecution against me by Canary’s wife.”

Karl Rove and George Bush could not be reached for comment.

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

Now that we convinced some key United States Senators to delay the vote on Bush’s spying bill and legal immunity for the telecom giants until after the Fourth of July, Independence Day holiday - keeping the Constitution out of the fire for at least a few more days - it’s normally that time of year when we all take a summer break.

In normal times of peace and prosperity, we could all break out the barbecue grills or head for the boat on the lake and pop off some firecrackers and revel in the inherent beauty of American freedom.

Alas, this is no normal year and these are not normal times.

If I were one to put any mental stock into Biblical prophecy, I would say there is plenty of evidence to say these are “the end times.” Floods, forest fires, droughts, food crises, wars and rumors of wars (will Bush-Cheney bomb-bomb Iran before they leave office?)

This has become something of a joke amongst the so-called Birmingham Gay Photographers Club, so named by me for a group of mostly bachelors who get together and go camping from time to time and specialize in photographing nature. Since most are over 50 and are not married, they also like to make gay jokes about each other. It’s a guy thing. (Sorry ladies, and gay people : )

Because of the serious nature of the times, I promise not to write about what I had for breakfast today or the latest on my Revolutionary Garden.

Instead I feel like a little government and media criticism.

While you all know how I feel about the monopoly, corporate press in Alabama, meaning the Newhouse newspapers in Huntsville, Birmingham and Mobile, I do check in from time to time just to see if they are getting the message over there in corporate-chain medialand.

And ever so subtly, it looks like the pendulum is beginning to swing - if just a tad.

Anyone who knows anything about the culture of newsrooms knows it takes a long time to change anything. We’ve hammered their lousy Web design for so long that I just get burned out on bothering.

The Birmingham News has now turned its Website mostly into a series of blogs - as if readers turn to newspapers for blogs - although the programmers at Advance still don’t understand that what readers need is a news page that quickly tells them what the important news of the day is going to be. Not just yesterday’s news posted at 4 a.m. The news that is happening NOW in Washington, New York, London, or Bagdad - or Clay, Alabama.

“It’s going to be a sunny day today,” is not the lead story, guys and gals. Sorry to break it to you.

And while we still refuse to link to it, if you are so inclined to keep up with what newspapers in Alabama are covering today about what happened yesterday, you can do it easily enough on this page:

Alabama News

If you go there and hit the Birmingham News and then search around for the Editorial Page, which is incredibly hidden to the point where we wonder if they are just ashamed of it, you will find an editorial from Sunday FINALLY acknowledging that the Bush Justice Department’s Inspector General’s office released a report last week saying politics and ideology played a paramount role in everything the department has done during the tenure of President George W. Bush, including the hiring of interns.

The editorial page editor of the paper, Bob Blalock, who everyone says is a “nice guy,” a euphemism for “not so smart,” received an interesting honor recently from the University of Alabama’s College of Communications (my alma mater). In their new public relations brochure to keep alumni up on the goings on of the department, the redesigned Communicator - which you can download and read as a pdf file here - you can read the blurb about him receiving the alumni of the year award for print journalism.

You can also read a puff piece about First Lady Laura Bush’s reading program, which she apparently formed to help out her illiterate husband.

And of course Mr. Blalock was awarded this honor by the new dean, whose picture is all over this issue, who as it happens also served in the Texas Air National Guard at the same time as Bush. You remember the story about how Bush went AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard in 1972 to work on a political campaign in Alabama.

Some coincidence, eh? More of Karl Rove’s handiwork in Alabama?

Nah, that would just be a lefty conspiracy theory, right? Then why did they take that entry on his curriculum vitae off the Website after I asked his secretary about it and pointed it out to the former dean? We just report. You decide…

Meanwhile Blalock’s editorial page, while finally telling its readers about the politicized Bush Justice Department in the Sunday paper, has a simple conclusion to draw from it. It was just “dumb.”

The only thing we can conclude is that if the Bush Justice Department was just “dumb,” then the Birmingham News editorial staff must just be “dumber,” since the most important case in the country of this corrupt, political justice occurred right under their noses.

It is quite interesting and curious that one of the two star reporters here who carried the Bush Justice Department’s water in perpetuating this Republican brand of political justice recently left the paper, as we reported here, even though he told me he was happy here just a few months ago after winning a freaking Pulitzer Prize for his reporting supporting the Bush Justice Department’s view of the world.

And since it took several days for the News to discover, digest and pass on the story about the report, I guess it will take them even longer to get around to passing on the most important story this week out of Washington.

That is, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, the Michigan Democrat, issued a subpoena to the Department of Justice this week demanding documents in the ongoing investigation of politics at the department, including the Siegelman case. You can download and read the document here on the committee’s Website.

The DOJ has until July 9 to produce those documents, including e-mails. That deadline falls on the eve of the day when the committee is expecting to hear from former Bush political adviser Karl Rove. This could be the most interesting news in the month of July, unless of course Senator John McCain gets the domestic terrorist attack he needs to win the presidential election.

Rove has been subpoenaed to appear and testify under oath - or face arrest for contempt of Congress. Of course he has so far refused to honor the demand to appear, citing White House executive privilege, even though it is not clear how conversations with the president were involved - unless Bush was fully in the loop in the investigation of Siegelman.

Now if that were the case, it would add another interesting tidbit to the considerable list of reasons why Bush-Cheney should be impeached, even though it is obvious this Democratic Party-controlled Congress has no stomach for impeachment in this historic election year.

Now here’s an interesting morsal to savor as you chow down on Fourth of July barbecue and burn the flag for true Independence from tyranny. The ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, Lamar S. Smith, a Texas Republican, of course, has said that if Conyers subpoenas and arrests Karl Rove, he will try to subpoena and arrest Alabama’s famous GOP whistleblower Jill Simpson to testify at the same time.

Well, we have it on good authority that if he tries to do that there might be a problem. There is a certain sea-going cruise planned in the land of the Czars in the days ahead. Where will Karl Rove be on July 10?

Stay tuned in blogland. You may never find out in mainstream medialand, unless it’s just plain too late…