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

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 politicization 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 when the White House can just say we are not going to testify if we don’t want to,” Ms. Simpson said. “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 Sánchez, 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 everywhere 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, that he and Bill Canary conspired to advance the prosecution against me by Canary’s wife,” Siegelman said.

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

On Dan Abrams show “Verdict” on MSNBC, in an ongoing series called “Bush League Justice,” Julian Epstein, former counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, said Republicans will admit, off-camera, that the case against former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman was “fixed.”

The segment mainly concentrated on the breaking news that Karl Rove finally gave written answers to some questions about the Siegelman case, reported below, although he was not under oath.

Epstein said Rove actually appeared to “incriminate” himself by refusing to answer a specific question about whether he contacted certain officials.

The other important thing about the segment shows more than ever that the “evidence” of White House involvement in the Siegelman case rests squarely on the affidavit and testimony of Alabama lawyer and GOP whistleblower Jill Simpson.

But there are more intriguing questions now that no one seems to be asking: What if Bush was “in the loop?”

And, there’s this just out on the Harper’s magazine Website:

New Allegations of Prosecutorial Misconduct in the Siegelman Case

Exclusive interviews with Jill Simpson, Scott Horton, and Don Siegelman

by Glynn Wilson

Updates below…

Jill Simpson breathes another sigh of consternation over the telephone from Rainsville as the news hits the blogs that Karl Rove has once again tried to deny influencing the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman — without raising his right hand and swearing to tell the truth under oath.

Glynn Wilson

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman on trial. We can finally now report that the woman in the background is Sephira Bailey Shuttlesworth, wife of Birmingham Civil Rights icon Fred Shuttlesworth, thanks to Bonnie Fountain, a photographer and copy editor in Birmingham.

The Talking Points Memo out of Washington, D.C., is claiming an “EXCLUSIVE” Wednesday on a story under the headline:

Karl Rove Issues New Denials in Gov. Siegelman Prosecution in Written Answers to HJC (House Judiciary Committee). Other bloggers are commenting there that they had it first, however, so who knows.

But we can report this from an EXCLUSIVE interview today with Jill Simpson.

“They’ve tried to call me a liar the whole time, but I swore under oath,” Ms. Simpson said. “The moral of the story for Karl Rove is, if what he is saying is true, then why won’t he go testify?”

The news, if it is news, is that the House Judiciary Committee received a copy of Rove’s written responses to questions from the ranking minority member of the committee, a Republican from Texas. Rove is trying to delay and/or avoid contempt charges by substituting a written denial that is not signed or sworn under oath.

Questions from Rep. Lamar Smith, R.-Texas, are now online, along with Rove’s answers, submitted by his lawyer, Robert Luskin.

One way Rove tries to deal with the 14 questions from Smith is to deny without really denying certain key things, which in Washington politics, as opposed to a court of law, is called a “non-denial denial.”

Smith’s Question: Before former Alabama Governor Donald E. Siegelman’s initial indictment in May 2005, did you ever communicate with any Department of Justice officials, State of Alabama officials, or any individual other than Dana Jill Simpson, Esq., regarding Governor Siegelman’s investigation or potential prosecution? If so, please state separately for each communication the date, time, location, and means of the communication, the official or individual with whom you communicated, and the content of the communication.

Rove’s Answer: I have never communicated, either directly or indirectly, with Justice Department or Alabama officials about the investigation, indictment, potential prosecution, prosecution, conviction, or sentencing of Governor Siegelman, or about any other matter related to his case, nor have I asked any other individual to communicate about these matters on my behalf. I have never attempted, either directly or indirectly, to influence these matters.

But if he had said that under oath, a lawyer or a Congressman could say, “but what about that phone record we have here as exhibit X?”

Or maybe: Was your friend Bill Canary, head of the conservative Business Council of Alabama, just lying about that? Perhaps we should get him up here to testify as a rebuttal witness?

Ms. Simpson’s position is that the written responses are nothing more than what Rove has said already in other forums, and the questions have been “asked and answered.” But they are not the key questions and they have certainly not been answered under oath.

From talking to attorneys, Ms. Simpson believes Rep. Smith wanted to have her subpoenaed to testify along with Rove — if the committee goes forward with the full contempt citation and takes the extraordinary step of having Rove arrested.

“But he doesn’t have the votes,” she said, since the committee is made up of a majority of Democrats since the 2006 election.

The Republicans on the committee who questioned Ms. Simpson last year were not very prepared for the interview, she said, “So they regret not asking me a bunch of questions.”

And the bottom line for Rove is, he wants to know what other evidence Ms. Simpson has about the relationship, evidence that has so far not been revealed in sworn testimony. And typical of lawyers, until a case gets into court, and everybody is under oath, the entire case is not going to be laid out.

“Karl Rove can go do what he wants to do, say what he wants to say, but he has a duty to testify,” Ms. Simpson said.

While the story so far has included the line that he is operating under a broad claim of executive privilege since the events occurred when he was still working in the White House as President George W. Bush’s chief political aide, conversations with the president are supposed to be kept confidential. But now other bloggers are reporting that Bush never actually exempted Rove from testifying under executive privilege, probably because Bush doesn’t want to reveal that he was in the loop on the Siegelman case.

So the story today amounts to the same old spin from the spin master himself, according to Washington political experts.

According to Scott Horton, a New York attorney and writer who has followed the case closely and blogged about it himself for the Harper’s magazine Website, if Rove indeed had no discussions with anyone about Siegelman, then he had no need to refuse to appear and answer questions under oath.

“But the questions and answers are both very carefully tailored to look comprehensive while they are not,” he said. “If Rove were to appear, his relationship and dealings with Bill Pryor, whom he served as a paid political advisor as Pryor was assembling a case against Siegelman, would be fair game and he would be compelled to answer them; similarly, he would be forced to enumerate and discuss his dealings with Bill Canary, his wife, U.S. Attorney Leura Canary, U.S. Attorney Alice Martin, and Bob and Rob Riley.”

“Second,” he said, “his final pages consist of an extended effort to trash Jill Simpson with rank falsehood and innuendo, largely drawn from Rove’s own sock puppets. In the end the main point remains this: Rove needs to take an oath and submit to the Committee’s questions, just as Jill Simpson did. His contempt of Congress is obvious, and the reason he won’t testify is also increasingly plain.”

Ad 1: After appearing on Verdict with Dan Abrams on MSNBC Wednesday night, Siegelman said this in an e-mail interview:

“Rove built his career in Alabama working with Bill Canary. Canary and Rove’s client started investigating me in 1999,” Siegelman said. “Rove’s partner’s wife accelerated the case federally in 2001. Rove’s partner’s wife indicted me during the 2006 campaign and brought me to trial less than four weeks before the Democratic primary.

“There is sworn testimony that Rove’s partner said that he had it worked out with Karl to destroy me and that two Alabama U.S. attorneys would do the job. Both those U.S. attorneys did in fact indict me. And now, Rove refuses to deny that he talked to Bill Canary about prosecuting me.

“Does anyone believe all this is circumstantial? How much more proof do you need? They sent me to prison on less evidence than this.”

Other breaking news out on this subject from Wednesday:

AP: Siegelman Supporters Call for Expanded Probe

AG Says Siegelman Findings to be Released

Six Questions for Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias

One from the archives, important facts and clues for the newbies on this story: The Nation: A Whistleblower’s Tale

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…

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…