“And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress … by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.”
- Revelation 14:19-20

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

When John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath in the 1930s, the United States was on the verge of coming apart due to the Great Depression, caused largely by run-amok corporate capitalism and an attitude on the part of Big Business, including Big Oil, that workers had no rights except as serfs in their kingdom.

Since we now face another Great Depression thanks to king Bush and his corporate cronies, perhaps it is time to revisit the Biblical theme of the grapes of wrath. Especially since the right-wing Republican attack machine keeps eluding to it and, as usual, in a way that shows they don’t know what the fuck they are talking about.

Glynn Wilson

Jill Simpson seems to have the ability to bring Republicans and Democrats together. She is shown here with two people you will never see in the same picture again, a couple of the biggest political opponents in Dekalb County. That’s the local dentist in the cap, Marvin Barron, the brother of the powerful Democrat in the Alabama Legislature Lowell Barron. On the other side, that’s a Republican rabble rouser who is trying to get the Bush Justice Department to investigate Barron, Jimmy Dan Kilgore. He drives around town in a pickup truck with a sign in the back that says, among other things, “Anybody But Barron.”

It’s also coming up on the one-year anniversary of the filing of the now famous affidavit of Alabama lawyer Jill Simpson that is now part of an ongoing probe into how the Bush administration turned the U.S. Justice Department into a full-blown election wing of the Republican National Committee.

And then there’s the news that Bush’s evil brain Karl Rove, who left the White House under a cloud of disgrace last August, was finally subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee this past week, followed by a new appeals court filing by former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman asking that his political conviction be thrown out.

Former Bush Aide Karl Rove Subpoenaed in Probe

Siegelman Asks Appeals Court to Throw Out Conviction

If you have been keeping up with the headlines, you knew that.

But if you have been depending on the corporate media in this country for news, you may not have heard about how the right-wing attack machine is still doing everything it can to try and discredit Ms. Simpson as a bona fide Republican whistleblower.

The darling blogger of the right-wing nuts leading this attack is a so-called conservative lawyer named John H. Hinderaker, who is best known for attempting to debunk the human causes of global warming and Darwin’s theory of evolution – in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence. He constantly takes up Rush Limbaugh’s tired and false theme that the American press has a “liberal bias.”

On Monday, May 19, Hinderaker promoted himself, a hit piece he wrote for the Powerline blog and a story on the Website of the conservative Weekly Standard on one GOP blog by calling Jill Simpson a “lunatic conspiracy theorist (and darling of the nutroots).”

Just so you will know, “nutroots” is a term coined by the Election 08 blog on March 10, 2006. It is a play on the name commonly used for liberal grassroots groups known as the Netroots.” Once used strictly by conservative blogs in reference to their liberal counterparts, the term entered the formal political lexicon when Sen. Orin Hatch used the term on the Senate floor on September 12, 2007, to describe MoveOn.org’s “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” advertisement in the New York Times.

But there is a real question about who the real nuts are in this story. The headline to Hinderaker’s hatchet job on Ms. Simpson was: “A Conspiracy So Lunatic…”

The evidence suggests, however, that Hinderaker is among the lunatic fringe, not Jill Simpson.

In the lead smear, Hinderaker calls Ms. Simpson “an unusual woman” and describes her, based supposedly on unnamed sources, as “a very strange person” who “lives in her own world.”

It is obvious what he is trying to accomplish with this nonsense. But we suspect anyone who knows Hinderaker might say the same thing about him. Does he claim that he is a normal, mainstream model of good behavior who lives in the world of reality? Of course not.

He doesn’t believe in science at all, apparently, which may make him normal in various religious cults operating on the fringes of American society, but not in the educated world where facts matter.

He says Ms. Simpson “has scratched out an uncertain living in DeKalb County, Alabama.”

Any cursory check of her career shows she has done quite well as a lawyer over the past 20 years, not only representing the good people of her part of the world in divorces, bankruptcies and Social Security cases, but also representing clients with multi-million dollar contracts who work directly with federal emergency officials to clean up after major storms such as Hurricane Katrina.

Ms. Simpson is also described as “the daughter of rabid Democrats,” which is such a patently stupid lie that any cub reporter could check and find out not to be true. As I reported in the five part series I did telling Ms. Simpson’s story almost one year ago, her father was a Democrat who knew George Wallace well, but her mother’s entire family were lifelong Republicans.

I have sat at the dinner table with Ms. Simpson’s mother and listened to family stories and talked politics, so I happen to know she is a huge fan of Republicans such as Tom Delay to this day, who awarded her the National Leadership award for the National Republican Congressional Committee in 2003. She was somewhat shocked to read that she was considered such a “rabid Democrat,” Ms. Simpson said, considering that she also sat on the RNCC Business Advisory Counsel as a special adviser and honorary chair.

This lawyer blogger, who has no training or credentials as a journalist, claims Ms. Simpson was “rarely if ever been known to participate in politics as even a low-level volunteer” and this whopper: “Those who know her in DeKalb County scoff at the idea that she is a Republican at all.”

Well, it just so happens I was present at Jill Simpson’s property auction two weeks ago and interviewed about 20 people who have known her all her life who said she was a die-hard Republican who volunteered to work for GOP candidates in races all the way back to the 1980s, including the races of Governor Bob Riley. As I have reported before, she never claimed to be a paid staff member of those campaigns, so there is no credence to the attack on her on that front. Like many lawyers who are politically active, there is ample evidence her volunteer work as an investigator and her army of volunteers who post political signs has made a difference over the years.

But that does not deter Hinderaker’s libelous attack on her.

He goes on to say Ms. Simpson’s “house and law office were on the auction block. Rumor has it that she is leaving DeKalb County for good and heading for the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Jill Simpson, who barely got by in Alabama, is now toasted by the national Democratic party and featured on network and cable news. All this because she has testified – without a shred of supporting evidence – to a conspiracy so vast as to be not just implausible, but ridiculous.”

Ms. Simpson has openly admitted that turning against the Bush and Riley political machines hurt her law business for the past year, which is not surprising when you study the cases of whistleblowers in other cases – especially those who take on the Bushes and Karl Rove.

Siegelman still clings to the idea that his support of Al Gore in 2000 and his opposition to Bush was behind the initial investigation of him. Considering the evidence of a Justice Department turned rogue now coming up in cases in state after state, this should not come as a shock to anyone. So why does it still elude the understanding of right-wing bloggers and the corporate press in Alabama?

The grapes of wrath indeed.

As a matter of fact, Ms. Simpson held an auction of some of her extensive property holdings in order to buy a house and open a law office in Washington. She sold her burned down house for $57,000, not bad in a depressed market. And she sold her law office and an out building next door, along with the land next to the Rainsville City Hall and a city park, for $300,000. Not exactly a pauper’s return on her investment of about $65,000 a number of years ago. The city wanted the land anyway to fill out it’s growing municipal complex. Her office building may very well be used for the new Dekalb County satellite courthouse.

She rejected the bid on a 38-acre farm she still owns with a $150,000 lake on it. And she is keeping the house in Rainsville where she still lives with her mother and three children. When she is away working in DC, her secretary will still be working full time on her practice in Rainsville.

Yet without ever having met Jill Simpson, Hinderaker goes on to attack her mental health and the work of CBS’s “60 Minutes” on the story, all while defending the disgraced Karl Rove. He repeats the myth perpetrated by the Birmingham News that she has somehow changed her story several times over the past year.

Since I told the whole story based on an on the record interview almost a year ago, I can attest to the fact that the story has never changed. It’s just a complicated story with a host of characters, and different news outlets pick up on different aspects of the story in the retelling.

My favorite line in Hinderaker’s uninformed rant comes near the end, when he says, “Simpson’s story is unbelievable and contradictory on so many levels that it cannot bear a moment’s inspection.”

So that’s why he is spending so much time and space trying to debunk it?

Then, in his defense of “the architect” of Bush’s elections and the man who turned the Alabama Supreme Court into part of the right-wing conspiracy, he says with a straight face, “Karl Rove has become the man who cannot be libeled.”

As a lawyer, Hinderaker should know better. He knows that Karl Rove is a public figure and a former high-level public official and therefore would face a high bar in claiming libel in any court of law in this land.

Ms. Simpson, on the other hand, was unknown to the general public one year ago and has never held a government post, so it would be much easier for her to claim that he is libeling her – and win.

Of course that’s not the real issue here. No one is suing anyone for libel, at least not yet.

There is an all out fight going on for the political soul of the country, however. And from this vantage point, where facts matter, it looks like Hinderaker and his ilk better look out for true believers like Jill Simpson, as well as the power of the pen from real journalists, bloggers or otherwise.

And they might want to look out over their shoulders for the wrath of God. Somehow we don’t think if Jesus were to come back today he would be hanging out with the liars and thieves who have been running this country into the ground for the past seven and a half years. Let the river of blood flow – with their blood.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
- Battle Hymn of the Republic

Now for a suggestion from Jill Simpson on how to compel Karl Rove to testify about his knowledge of White House involvement in the political prosecution of Don Siegelman.

Perhaps House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers should send out the Sergeants at Arms of the House to arrest Rove and drag him before the committee. It would constitute a new use for the office to be sure. But in these uneasy times, why not turn to the Constitution itself to save it?

Those of us in the “reality-based community” are tired of seeing the letter and the spirit of the Constitution shredded in the name of corporate monarchy. Holding Rove and Bush accountable are essential steps to restoring the world’s trust in pluralistic democracy.

“The truth is still marching on,” Ms. Simpson said, as she said it would last summer when she was humming the Battle Hymn of the Republic when the first attacks on her hit the press.

“I’ve marched myself to Washington, now we’re going to march Karl Rove up there to testify,” she said in an interview Sunday. “We’re not going to give up until the truth marches on.”

This is free-lance writer and author Craig Unger interviewed March 24, 2008 on the subject of “The Christian Right.” He is working on a little “October Surprise” piece for Vanity Fair magazine on Jill Simpson and the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. Now that the right-wing Republican bloggers are calling Ms. Simpson “the darling of the nutroots,” perhaps it’s time to teach them a little lesson about what that means – and what it’s like to be crushed under a wine press of credible information like dried up old grapes. (Watch for Part 2 in Sunday’s column).

Picasso’s Don Quixote

Fox 6 News in Birmingham had the story Sunday on the broadcast at 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. on how the independent Web Press influenced the case of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.

A news team interviewed me and Roger Shuler of the Legal Schnauzer blog this afternoon in Picasso’s Blog Bunker, a.k.a. “The Bunker.”

The sign on the door is a print of Picasso’s depiction of Don Quixote. If you don’t know what that means, well, do some Google research.

Siegelman Released from Prison; Did Bloggers Play a Role?

The reporter seemed interested to learn about how blogs work, and especially the comment feature. The post we did on the great “60 Minutes” black out in the Tennessee Valley got 99 comments, in case she or anyone else is interested. This has to be close to a record for blog comments in Alabama…

Siegelman Prosecution Questions Answered on ‘60 Minutes’

House Judiciary Panel Moves Forward on Political Justice Investigation

by Glynn Wilson

Glynn Wilson

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman on trial

Don Siegelman will be free at last Friday morning after spending nine months in a Louisiana prison, and he will be on his way to Washington in early May to testify before Congress about the politics behind his prosecution at the hands of a Justice Department that has been called “out of control,” where politics mattered more than justice under President George W. Bush and his political brain Karl Rove.

Chances are Siegelman will see no more jail time in a case that should have ended in a mistrial in 2006, when jurors violated their oath against the standard charge by Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller and based their decision on reading online news reports and pressure from improper communications carried out by e-mail.

Writing for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, judges Susan H. Black and Stanley Marcus, just days after finally obtaining the long-awaited transcript from the two year old trial, ordered his release saying he proved he was not a flight risk and there are significant questions worthy of a full hearing on appeal.

“After a thorough review of this complex and protracted record, we conclude Siegelman has satisfied the criteria set out in the statute, and has specifically met his burden of showing that his appeal raises substantial questions of law or fact,” they wrote in the four page order.

Mobile attorney Vince Kilborn told a Montgomery TV news station he was at a loss for words at the surprisingly quick announcement, coming on the heals of an inquiry by U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, after touring a Louisiana prison, asking the Justice Department to release Siegelman so he could testify about the politics behind his prosecution.

Kilborn then said Siegelman would be released sometime Friday and the legal team will continue working on briefs to get Siegelman’s conviction reversed.

“His wife and his daughter, Dana, are driving out to get him,” Kilborn said. He called it “a big win in a very long war. It’s a good feeling. He’s an innocent man and he’s been in prison for nine months.”

The House panel has been investigating claims Rove was involved in the dismissal of at least nine U.S. attorneys, as well as the prosecution of at least three Democrats who served as public officials, including Siegelman, who served as Alabama’s governor from 1999-2003.

The tainted jury convicted him and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy of bribery, conspiracy to commit mail fraud, mail fraud and obstruction of justice, but acquitted him of other charges, including racketeering and extortion.

While Siegelman maintained that the case against him was political for months leading up to his trial and then his sentencing in June 2007, it was a signed affidavit in May 2007 and later sworn testimony by North Alabama Republican lawyer Jill Simpson that became the key evidence bringing the case to national attention.

That story hit the New York Times and Time magazine in June. Then, following an in-depth report in the Locust Fork Journal days later, New York lawyer and writer Scott Horton began blogging about the case at Harpers.org. The story made its way finally onto the CBS investigative magazine show “60 Minutes” last month, and was then picked up by hundreds of bloggers.

Rove resigned from the White House last August, days after Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez also walked away in the wake of Ms. Simpson’s agreement to testify under oath in Washington. Rove has since declined to answer questions under oath before Congress and faces an ongoing perjury probe for his failure to appear along with former White House legal counsel Harriet Miers and Josh Bolton, Bush’s chief of staff.

The Alabama Democratic Party, which was reluctant to get out front in support of Siegelman in his election bid in 2006 while he was under the cloud of indictment, put out a press release today welcoming the news of his release.

“This is the correct step that should have been taken many months ago by Judge Fuller,” party executive director Jim Spearman said. “Fortunately the 11th Circuit is righting this wrong. The people of Alabama and this nation need to be reassured that justice is truly blind.”

Party chair Joe Turnham said he supports the House Judiciary Committee’s call for Siegelman to testify about the possible political influence within the Department of Justice.

According to House Judiciary Committee spokeswoman Melanie Roussell, “The chairman has determined it would be appropriate to hear from Mr. Siegelman himself and believes he would have a lot to add to the committee’s investigation into selective prosecution.”

“Hopefully today’s call for Governor Siegelman to testify by the House Judiciary Committee is the first step to investigate charges of partisan justice in the U. S. Attorney’s Alabama offices,” Turnham said. “We renew our call for the U. S. Attorney General to name an independent investigation to look into these serious allegations of all current political prosecutions so as to reassure the people of Alabama that the justice system is not being influenced by partisanship at any level.”

The appeals court denied former Healthsouth CEO Richard Scrushy’s request to be released pending his appeal, indicating he failed to prove he was not a flight risk.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Louis Franklin, who prosecuted Siegelman and Scrushy, told the AP he was “absolutely” surprised by the court’s ruling, but added the government would continue to contest Siegelman’s appeal.

“We lost this battle, but we’ll still fight for the conviction,” he said.

Mike Hubbard, chair of the Alabama Republican Party, told the AP he was disappointed in the ruling.

“The former Governor’s release pending appeal does not change the conviction by a jury of his peers,” he said. “It would be premature to turn this development into anything other than a formality.”

Jill Simpson said Hubbard’s response was surprising, treating the issues at stake as mere politics and not worthy of a full investigation.

“These are very serious issues,” she said. “Everyone should respect a person’s right to a fair trial under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. What he said was just distasteful and classless.”

At stake, according to Hiram Eastland of Greenwood, Mississippi, lead counsel for Siegelman, are “profound issues that should concern every American, Republican or Democrat” regarding political expression through campaign contributions.

Experts, including 44 U.S. attorneys, have said the alleged quid pro quo of Scrushy’s donations to help pay off the debt on Siegelman’s lottery for education campaign appear to be no more than typical campaign contributions, in part because none of the money went into Siegelman’s pocket.

Another Siegelman attorney, David McDonald of Mobile, said his client is “emphatically” eager to appear before the House committee.

“We welcome the inquiry,” McDonald said. “We will continue to cooperate in every way.”

No matter what happens before the House Judiciary Committee, and what ruling the 11th Circuit makes in the case, chances are Siegelman will never see another day of jail time, and may be poised for a political comeback with his newfound fame, some sources say.

Siegelman would most likely be pardoned by either Democratic candidate in the presidential race, University of Alabama political scientist Bill Stewart told the AP, if they are elected in November.

“If he’s out until January and we elect Clinton or Obama,” he said, “I expect he will be pardoned just like Scooter Libby.”

Bush commuted the sentence of Libby – the former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney – just days after Scrushy and Siegelman were hauled off to jail in shackles last summer without the benefit of 45 days to put their affairs in order before self reporting, which is typical of white collar defendants in federal court.

That drastic action fired up Siegelman’s supporters to begin a campaign to get him freed by raising a cry that echoed all over the Internet and the World Wide Web, calling Siegelman, “America’s number one political prisoner.”

The e-mail lists and blogs lit up with hundreds of comments today as the news spread of Siegelman’s release.

“When I read your e-mail I actually started to tear up,” said Butch Lambard of the South Baldwin County Democrats, a regular reader of The Locust Fork News and Journal and a member of our e-mail list.

“If we, or anyone, can organize a ‘Welcome back, Don’ party, I want to be there,” he said.

“Hopefully, there will be a homecoming celebration of some sort,” said a commenter on another list. “There should be huge fanfare for his homecoming.”

After reading all the coverage of the case today, Ms. Simpson said the 11th Circuit Court made the right decision based on the evidence and the law. And she said it was gratifying to see the House Judiciary Committee move forward with the investigation by taking testimony from Siegelman.

“He will be the best witness,” she said. “And I believe Scrushy and Siegelman will be vindicated in the end. They did not receive a fair trial, and it was political.”

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman will be released on bond pending appeal, according to a ruling by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta today, the Associated Press is reporting.

In the ruling, the three-judge panel said Siegelman had raised “substantial questions of fact and law” in challenging his conviction.

Also today, the United States House Judiciary Committee asked the Justice Department to allow Siegelman to be released so he can testify before Congress about possible political influence over his prosecution, according to the AP DC bureau.

Committee Chairman John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, believes Siegelman “would have a lot to add to the committee’s investigation into selective prosecution,” said Melanie Roussell, a spokeswoman for the committee.

More details later…

Political Justice At Issue

by Glynn Wilson

The general counsel for the United States House of Representatives filed a civil lawsuit on behalf of the House Judiciary Committee Monday to enforce subpoenas on former aides to President Bush who have refused to cooperate in the investigation of how the Justice Department was turned into a political arm of the White House.

“We do not have a king in our country, we have a President and his advisers who, like all citizens, cannot simply ignore the law,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich, said in announcing the lawsuit.

At issue are the firings of at least nine U.S. attorneys for political reasons and the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, as well as the actions of loyal federal prosecutors who were retained by the Bush administration.

The lawsuit names former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, a Bush loyalist from Texas, and White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten. Both were cited for contempt of Congress last month, but have refused to testify under oath on the orders of President George W. Bush in a broad claim of executive privilege.

In the press release announcing the lawsuit, the committee criticizes the Justice Department under Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who refused to present the contempt citations to a grand jury, “contrary to federal law.”

“We will not allow the administration to steamroll Congress,” Conyers said. “Under our system of checks and balances, Congress provides oversight of the executive branch to make sure that government power is not abused. The administration’s extreme claims to be immune from the oversight process are at odds with our constitutional principles on which this country was founded, and I am confident the federal courts will agree.”

Miers and Bolten violated their obligations under committee subpoenas by refusing to appear before the committee or to provide subpoenaed documents. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and will be served on Ms. Miers and Mr. Bolton as soon as possible.

The Judiciary Committee asks the court to find that Ms. Miers is not “immune” from the obligation to appear before the committee in response to a duly authorized, issued and served committee subpoena, and for both defendants to produce privilege logs identifying all documents withheld on grounds of executive privilege.

The lawsuit also asks the court to rule that executive privilege does not cover documents not involving the president or undertaken directly in preparation for advising the president or whose contents are widely-known, previously released or previously the subject of extensive, authorized testimony.

The court should require both defendants to appear before the committee to respond to pertinent questions not protected by executive privilage.

“I do not take this step lightly,” Conyers said. “It is extremely rare that Congress must litigate in order to enforce subpoenas and no compromise can be reached. Unfortunately, this administration simply will not negotiate towards a compromise resolution so we must proceed. I look forward to a quick and favorable ruling by the court, so that we can complete our investigation.”

About a dozen Justice Department officials have resigned since evidence in the investigation became public, including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and White House political adviser Karl Rove. Documents turned over by the department indicate that the White House played a substantial role in the development and execution of the plan to force U.S. attorneys to resign, as well as the Siegelman case.

The contempt citation passed the House by a vote of 223 to 32 after most Republicans boycotted the proceeding, and marks the first time in U.S. history that either chamber of Congress has sued the Executive Branch to enforce a subpoena.

The report on the year-long investigation says the committee “has uncovered substantial evidence” that the Bush administration and Justice Department “injected partisan considerations” into the forced resignations or retention of U.S. attorneys and cites “credible evidence” that U.S. attorneys who “failed to return desired indictments or failed to bring voter fraud prosecutions that were considered politically useful to the administration were forced to resign,” as were those who “prosecuted officeholders allied with the administration.”

In a related story, former Bush aide Karl Rove spoke to a hostile crowd at the University of Iowa recently. And in response to questions, he said, “I haven’t been indicted yet, but I fully expect to be by the end of the year.”

Related Links
House Judiciary Committee Files Suit Against Administration
House Panel Sues to Force Bush Aides to Testify
Executive Privilege on the Firing Line
Rove Expects To Be Indicted by Year’s End

by Glynn Wilson

The Bush Justice Department and the administration of Alabama Governor Bob Riley continue to play offense in the great ongoing political war against the rule of law in America. The war is being played out on Alabama soil like some of the great battles of the Civil War, only this time, the federal government is on the wrong side of history.

In a move that can only be described as political theater, as opposed to honest, objective law enforcement, United States Attorney Alice Martin sent henchmen from the U.S. Marshals Service all the way from Birmingham to Montgomery this week to make a show of serving subpoenas on members of the Alabama Legislature.

If not for long-standing Legislative rules, they would have stormed into the Legislative chamber, with TV cameras from Birmingham in tow, to put on a real show.

But in the end, the show did not have the ratings power of the recent CBS News “60 Minutes” segment on the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, so Karl Rove must be sorely disappointed down there in his Rosemary Beach bungalow not far from the Alabama line.

According to the official Bush and Riley administration mouthpiece, the Birmingham News, two Alabama Board of Education members and a former acting chancellor of postsecondary education, which oversees Alabama’s two-year colleges, are among those who have been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury investigating alleged corruption in the state’s two-year college system.

Vice chancellor Don Edwards told the News Friday that his department had received subpoenas for state school board members former vice chairman Ethel Hall of Fairfield and current vide chairman David Byers of Birmingham. Edwards said former acting Chancellor Renee Culverhouse, president of Gadsden State Community College, has also been subpoenaed.

And according to the Associated Press, at least nine present and former legislators, including two of the Senate’s most powerful leaders, have been subpoenaed in the Bush Justice Department’s probe of alleged corruption in the two-year college system.

According to their attorney Michel Nicrosi, four state senators were issued subpoenas to testify, including President Pro Tem Hinton Mitchem, D-Union Grove, Rules Chairman Lowell Barron, D-Fyffe, Judiciary Committee Chairman Rodger Smitherman of Birmingham and Dean of the Senate Bobby Denton, D-Muscle Shoals.

Other sources say Rep. Blaine Galliher, R-Gadsden, has been issued a subpoena, along with Rep. Jack Page, D-Gadsden and Rep. Neal Morrison of Cullman.

Morrison resigned from the Legislature last year when he was named president of Bevill State Community College in Sumiton.

Other legislators who have confirmed personally or through attorneys that they have received subpoenas include House Majority Leader Rep. Ken Guin, D-Carbon Hill, Rep. Merika Coleman, D-Birmingham and Rep. Craig Ford, D-Gadsden, bringing the total harassed so far to 14 Democrats and one Republican.

Alabama Democratic Party Executive Director Jim Spearman called into question the method by which U.S. Marshals attempted to serve legislators subpoenas to appear to testify in a grand jury proceeding. Reporters were apparently tipped off by calls stating U.S. Marshals were coming to the Alabama Statehouse to serve some legislators, he said in a press release.

“The drama surrounding these actions and the U.S. Department of Justice’s disruption of a legislative session for the routine serving of a summons to appear in court sends a poor signal to Alabama citizens who are already complaining about partisan political interference into the federal prosecution of former Democratic Governor Don Siegelman,” Spearman said. “These ladies and gentlemen have not been charged with a crime and could have been served by other means in their local communities, not in Montgomery during a legislative session in front of TV cameras and reporters.”

State law actually prohibits serving members of the legislature while they are in session. Section 29-1-7 of the Alabama Code protects members from this kind of action by U.S. Marshals yesterday. In fact, the Marshals could have violated this law by their disruption of the session and have been charged with a misdemeanor.

“Thursday’s action only strengthens our resolve to insist that the U.S. House and Senate as well as the U.S. Attorney General immediately launch an inquiry into Alabama’s federal justice system to assure Alabama citizens that politics and partisanship have not been used in prosecutions or in the serving of subpoenas,” Spearman said. “If Republican operatives had any advance knowledge of yesterday’s serving of subpoenas at the Statehouse, they should have to testify before Congress under oath.”

According to sources in Montgomery and Birmingham, the subpoenas call officials to testify before a grand jury being convened on March 13 and 14 in Birmingham, when Bush appointed prosecutors apparently want to talk to lawmakers who have worked in the two-year system about what kind of work they did to earn their salaries.

Hall, who has been on the state school board for 21 years, said she has no idea what federal investigators want.

“I haven’t done anything wrong and I will answer what questions I can,” she said.

Walter Braswell, an attorney who represents Rep. Randy Hinshaw, D-Meridianville, who works for the Central Alabama Skills Training Consortium, said he has spoken with the U.S. attorney’s office about this apparent fishing expedition.

“I’ve been told this is sort of a survey of all legislators who also have some employment or contract with public education,” Braswell said. “They want to hear how they came to have their jobs, exactly what they did and how they were evaluated.”

Some of the subpoenas were issued in the Statehouse, some in the parking lot and some at people’s homes, sources say.

Postsecondary Chancellor Bradley Byrne has said his department had an agreement with federal prosecutors for subpoenas to be sent to the him when employees of the system are to be served. Why that agreement was violated is anybody’s guess at this point, although it is known that Byrne, a former state senator from Baldwin County who was Riley’s hand-picked choice for chancellor, has been touted as Riley’s potential heir apparent as governor in 2010.

“What they did was illegal,” said a key legislative aide who spoke only on condition of anonymity. “The key question is going to be, why did they have to use these tactics? It’s completely out of control.”

The timing is also at issue, coming in the wake of a key legislative victory for the Democrats in Cullman and the national attention over the Siegelman case.

“It’s not coincidence,” the aide said. “This is tit for tat. They feel the need to remind people that Democrats are bad.”

There’s the active campaign by Governor Riley to take over the Legislature by 2010. And then there’s that active perjury complaint pending against U.S. Attorney Alice Martin, which now might get a closer look by Democrats who control key committees in Congress.

As we often like to say: “It’s a war and no one is safe.”

Pam Miles, a member of the Democratic Party’s executive committee and a long-time supporter of Siegelman, compared the tactics to the Gestapo in Nazi Germany and said some of the people now coming under fire may wish they had done more early on to stand up against the Bush Justice Department’s treatment of Siegelman.

“And when they came for me, who will stand up for me?” she asked. “If people had stood up for Don Siegelman, maybe we could have avoided some of this.”

The law:

Section 29-1-7
Privilege of members from arrest and civil process.
(a) Members of the Legislature of Alabama shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest and shall not be subject to service of any summons, citation or other civil process during their attendance at the session of their respective houses and in going to and returning from the same.
(b) Whoever knowingly and willfully denies to any member of the Legislature the privilege and immunity granted herein is guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $1,000.00 or by imprisonment for not more than one year, or by both.
(Acts 1959, 1st Ex. Sess., No. 88, p. 148.)

Locust Fork News and Journal editor and publisher Glynn Wilson will be speaking to the Madison County Democratic Women at the Holiday Inn Research Park at noon on Thursday, March 6.

According to the press release for the event, Glynn Wilson is a veteran free-lance journalist with 28 years of experience, including nine years of that teaching writing at the university level.

He has published in The Nation magazine, the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor and the Dallas Morning News as well as some of the best alternative weeklies in the country, including Gambit Weekly in New Orleans.

He has taught at the University of Alabama, the University of Tennessee, Georgia College and Loyola University New Orleans.

He has been a Web publisher for 10 years, and most recently has published The Locust Fork World News and Journal for the past three years since returning to his native Birmingham after a stint in DC, where he free-lanced for Time magazine and States New Service, in the run up to the 2004 election.

He is considered the definitive source for information online about the political prosecution of Don Siegelman, in part since he did the first in-person, on-the-record interview with Jill Simpson in June, 2007. For his early work on that story, he was awarded a full grant from The Nation Institute’s investigative fund to continue the investigation of that case, which results in a 2800 word story that is still considered the definitive work on it to date.

The Nation: A Whistleblower’s Tale

The price of lunch is $16 and reservations (chicken or vegetarian dish) may be made by calling LaWanda Siniard at 656-8787 or e-mail: madisoncountydemocraticwomen@gmail.com

There will be seating available for those who do not wish to have lunch (pay the server directly if ordering coffee or tea.) Registration begins at 11:30 lunch served at noon.