Editor’s Note: Locust Fork Journal editor and publisher Glynn Wilson is on vacation. Cindy Sheehan’s columns are reprinted with permission.

by Cindy Sheehan

Day 11 of our Journey for Humanity and Accountability found our caravan group at the Charlottesville, Virginia, home of David Swanson, director of AfterDowningStreet.Org.

I got to know David after my group Gold Star Families for Peace became one of thefirst organizations to sign on to ADS when the memoswere exposed on May 1, 2005. That collaboration led towhat I thought was going to be the downfall of BushCo: the fact that on July 23, 2001, there was a secret meeting at 10 Downing Street that pretty much said that the invasion of Iraq was a foregone conclusion and the intelligence was going to have to be “fixed” around the policy of pre-emptive invasion.
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by Cindy Sheehan

Being in the deep south has been a very interesting experience. As George’s approval numbers hover down some where in Congress’s range and approval for their war is shrinking, we have encountered very little opposition to our message, but the opposition we have encountered has been vile, abusive and potentially
dangerous.

In Houston, one of the more active kingdoms of war profiteering, we encountered no protest. As a matter of fact, while we were stationed on a bridge over I-10 holding our “Impeach Bush and Cheney” and “Troops home now” signs, we had almost 100% approval. People were actually stopping their cars to applaud us and in some cases, join us.

Our next stop was New Orleans where the policies of BushCo are still harming our brothers and sisters. The various governments are gobbling up land in poor, but hard-working class areas to be used for upscale housing and/or casinos. We meet with several grass-roots organizations who are feeding people, helping them find homes and jobs. There was also not one peep of opposition to our message because the people of New Orleans intimately understand the reasons that BushCo should be impeached.

The fun started, however when we got to Montgomery, Alabama, where right off the bat, the Secretary of the Montgomery Repugs confronted me and displayed his ignorance by stating that he loves George Bush and that George had “nothing” to do with the war in Iraq.

When some Veterans for Peace confronted him and asked him why he didn’t enlist to go to Iraq if he was such a strong supporter of the mayhem, he let us know that he was “courageously” supporting the war effort by staying in America, working and “paying his taxes.” Now that the encounter with this brave patriot has been shown all over cable news, every pipsqueak repug with a bad toupe will be confronting me to get his 15 minutes of fame.

In Montgomery, our Caravan met with many nice folks who were on the side of impeachment and ending the war with us, but we also ran into a couple of people who were upset with BushCo for different reasons. On a beautiful, magnolia tree lined street where our group was hosted for a pot-luck, a home had the sign: “Give War a Chance.” The homeowner and father of five told us that George Bush “is a “pussy” and that if he were President, he would “wipe out” the entire Middle East with nukes.

He has a service age daughter whom he said he would be proud for her to go to Iraq and he would be thrilled if she got some “confirmed kills.” Another gentleman driving down the street didn’t know why we were so upset because America had a “civil war” so why can’t Iraq “have one?” We all needed to be decontaminated on that visit!
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A former Reagan official has issued a public warning that the Bush administration is preparing to orchestrate a staged terrorist attack in the United States, transform the country into a dictatorship and launch a war with Iran within a year.

Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, blasted Thursday a new Executive Order, released July 17, allowing the White House to seize the assets of anyone who interferes with its Iraq policies and giving the government expanded police powers to exercise control in the country.

Roberts, who spoke on the Thom Hartmann radio program, said: “When Bush exercises this authority [under the new Executive Order], there’s no check to it. So it really is a form of total, absolute, one-man rule.”

“The American people don’t really understand the danger that they face,” Roberts said, adding that the so-called neoconservatives intended to use a renewal of the fight against terrorism to rally the American people around the fading Republican Party.

Old-line Republicans like Roberts have become increasingly disenchanted with the neoconservative politics of the Bush administration, which they see as a betrayal of fundamental conservative values.

According to a July 9-11 survey by Ipsos, an international public opinion research company, President Bush and the Republicans can claim a mere 31 percent approval rating for their handling of the Iraq war and 38 percent for their foreign policy in general, including terrorism.

“The administration figures themselves and prominent Republican propagandists … are preparing us for another 9/11 event or series of events,” he said. “You have to count on the fact that if al Qaeda is not going to do it, it is going to be orchestrated.”

Roberts suggested that in the absence of a massive popular outcry, only the federal bureaucracy and perhaps the military could put constraints on Bush’s current drive for a fully-fledged dictatorship.

“They may have had enough. They may not go along with it,” he said.

The radio interview was a follow-up to Robert’s latest column, in which he warned that “unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the U.S. could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran.”

Roberts, who has been dubbed the “Father of Reaganomics” and has recently gained popularity for his strong opposition to the Bush administration and the Iraq War, regularly contributes articles to Creators Syndicate, an independent distributor of comic strips and syndicated columns for daily newspapers.

Reagan Official Says White House Peparing New September 11 Attack

Read his syndicated column on the subject here:

This is a wake-up call that we are about to experience another 9/11-WMD.

Paul Craig Roberts: A Wake-up Call

Even as George W. Bush thumbs his nose at constitutional checks and balances and the rule of law, Democratic leaders can’t find the courage to utter the “I-word.” But an unprecedented dual impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney may now be needed to protect America’s legacy as a democratic Republic that upholds the twin principles that no man is above the law and everyone possesses inalienable rights.

Millions of Americans are looking for some political leader who will dare step up and say: “Impeach the bastards!” 

For the full story on why impeachment might just make sense, go to the independent Consortium News.Com.

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
- Thomas Paine, 1776

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

I’m wondering if Thomas Paine ever took a break from the Revolution to enjoy nature, maybe go fishing.

To tell you the truth, I would rather be sitting by a river or a creek watching the birds and maybe snapping some pictures than having to re-fight the American Revolution.

So yesterday, when the e-mail messages slowed down and the phone stopped ringing, that’s what I did.

I picked up a friend and photographer and we rode over to Turkey Creek, the only habitat in the world for the vermilion darter.

Photo by Glynn Wilson

A yellow-crowned night heron fishing

One good thing about Turkey Creek is that it is only a few miles from where I live. Another is that it is not visited by that many people, so it is easy to find a rock along the creek to sit on and rest your feet in the cool water and not have to listen to other people talk. And, you don’t have to hike for miles in the summer heat and humidity into the outback to find that spot and contemplate your historical connection to this land that goes back much further than the Europeans who invaded this place 400 years or so ago.

But alas, here I sit back in front of this bank of computer monitors reading the good and bad journalism from the American press online.

And I’m wondering a couple of things. Maybe you have been asking yourself questions about this too.

Why is it that a New York attorney who spent summers in Alabama as a kid visiting his grandparents shows more knowledge, wisdom and understanding of this place than all of the newspaper reporters combined who have lived and worked here for many years, some of them all their lives?

Scott Horton, who writes a blog column on the Harper’s magazine Website, has done his best to come to the rescue of oppressed people in this dog forsaken state.

But the daily newspaper and wire service reporters and editorial writers here, with a few notable exceptions, continue to crank out the most asinine blathering bullshit ever seen in American journalism.

This seems to confound the editors at national news organizations such as the New York Times. Although if they had studied their press history, they would realize that Alabama newspapers have long been the bastion of corrupt, corporate obfuscation. Remember, “Big” Jim Folsom called the Birmingham News the paper of the “big mules,” or the industrial interests.

You would think that after all this time, things would change even in hidebound Alabama, a place Neil Young described as well as any American artist ever has in a song published in 1972 – the same year George Bush Jr. came to Montgomery to party his way into Republican Party politics.

I have written many times in this space that there are many mysteries in life, and maybe the dog shit that passes for journalism around here is one of those mysteries. Or maybe not.

I know the reporters on the ground think they are working hard and trying to get at the facts. They would never admit to being manipulated by their corporate, Republican bosses. But when your main interest in life is keeping a job writing for a newspaper and hoping to make it to retirement before the entire print journalism industry collapses, what is a local newspaper reporter to do?

Loyal Bush Republicans control the machinery of this state like no other, and don’t give me any lip about all the Democrats in the Alabama Legislature. They are Republocrats at best. And they may be part of the reason the press in Alabama hates Democrats and clings to Republican Governor Bob Riley – who does not bait the races, make fun of Charles Darwin or get drunk and screw around on his wife, at least not in public.

But you would think that with all their liberal education and their love of America, the First Amendment and the concept of freedom, at some point they would find a way to stand up for truth and justice - at least a little bit.

Maybe in their heart of hearts, somehow they really think the Republican Party, George Bush and Bob Riley stand for freedom – or maybe they just think the Republicans are more macho than the Democrats when it comes to standing up to terrorists who would threaten our security. Maybe when they sit down to dinner with their families in their little pink houses they would rather be safe than free.

Hey, I can understand that. Something inside of me would like to find a safe little job and a safe place to live too. One side of me says “let the politicians run the world; I would rather be photographing the birds.”

But there is another side of me that chomps at the bit when I see anybody, Democrat or Republican, handcuffed and shackled and hauled off to jail - after a trial that on the face of it was manipulated from Washington and conducted unfairly by local prosecutors and a judge who seem to have no regard for any Constitutional oath or sense of right and wrong.

Maybe some of those reporters hated Richard Scrushy so bad that it does not matter to them if he got a fair trial or not. As long as he is in jail, they must say to their friends away from the newspaper, all is right with the world.

Maybe the reporters in this state believed all the rumors about Don Siegelman, even though none of them have been able to substantiate any of them, and so they have no place in their hearts to mourn the complete lack of justice in this case. Or maybe they are all a bunch of Republican religious nuts who believe justice is divine.

Of all the people I have had dealings with in my native state - since moving back here a few years ago after years of being away – Jill Simpson seems to be the only person here who actually believes in justice. She is a religious Republican too, but she will not stand by and allow justice to be subverted for political purposes. She has suffered numerous slanders in the local press since she decided to try and shine the spotlight of justice on the corrupt prosecution of Siegelman and Scrushy perpetrated in Montgomery.

While I would rather be off communing with the birds and listening to the sound of water over rocks from the depths of time, I know an injustice when I see one. And if fighting against injustice is not the job of a journalist, what is?

No true journalist can sit idly by and watch his state and country sullied beyond recognition by the likes of the corrupt forces who now run this state and country.

Will those safe little jobs be worth it when the world comes crashing to an end because some terrorist gets his hand on a nuclear bomb, or global warming is allowed to continue unabated and the seas begin to rise?

When the shit goes down, I will still be over here on the Web Press fighting for truth, justice and freedom. Will you?
***
Meanwhile, Jill Simpson issued a press release today. The full text is reprinted below:
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by Glynn Wilson

Attorneys for former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy have filed a motion demanding a new trial on the basis of juror misconduct with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

Attorneys for former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman have not filed their paperwork in the appeal as of yet for reasons that are unclear.

In the motion for a new trial and to preserve documents filed this week by attorney Art Leach, a number of e-mail messages and news articles about the e-mail messages are included as exhibits. The bottom line is that if the e-mails are not forgeries, and there is no evidence or indication that they are, then jurors in the Siegelman-Scrushy trial in Montgomery violated the standard jury charge demanding that they not read news media coverage of the case or discuss the case amongst themselves outside the jury room.

In one message included in the text of the motion, one juror says, “I was confused between all the evidence and other Internet stuff and information that some jurors brought in and was talking about… They were pulling stuff out of files and some were talking about have Internet information and talking about that too.”

Evidence is presented that at least two jurors admitted searching the World Wide Web for information on the case in the news media online, and tried to use that information to pressure other jurors to come to a guilty verdict on that basis - not on the basis of evidence presented at trial.

The motion asks Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Fuller to hold a hearing and examine the jurors under oath about their online media consumption and discussing the case via e-mail. It asks that all juror computers be preserved as evidence to prevent the destruction of documents and that jurors provide all of their e-mail addresses and IP addresses to the court.

According to the motion, the judge was in error when he “never asked a single juror if he/she received or sent any of the e-mails as they appeared” in the exhibits presented at trial.

Some of the information apparently accessed by jurors included a transcript of a WSFA TV Courtroom Chronicles blog that included evidence presented before the judge when the jury was ordered out of the courtroom - which would in and of itself create prejudice on the part of the jury, according to legal experts.

Attorneys argue in the motion that this is one of those rare cases where documentary evidence could readily, and conclusively, resolve an otherwise complicated, difficult, legal issue.

“Here, if the purported e-mails are authenticated, then it is apparent that the jury was exposed to extrinsic evidence that was prejudicial to (the defendants) and that (they are) entitled to a new trial,” the motion reads.

It accuses the judge in this case of “failing to conduct a meaningful investigation” into the alleged juror misconduct, which would be sufficient grounds for a new trial on appeal.

According to well-established precedent in the U.S. justice system, there is a long-standing requirement that a jury’s verdict must be based on the “evidence developed at trial” and that principle “goes to the fundamental integrity of all that is embraced in the constitutional concept of trial by jury.”

The government in this case has a legal and moral obligation to determine whether the verdict was “tainted.”

Also set out in the motion is the unambiguous obligation of a U.S. attorney “that he is the representative of a government dedicated to fairness and equal justice for all and, in this respect, he owes a heavy obligation of fairness to the accused.”

It does not appear that this was the case here, and according to legal experts, an order for a new trial is warranted.

Editor’s Note: In the face of a crass attempt by the Bush White House and the U.S. attorneys office in Montgomery to spin their way out of a mounting effort on Capitol Hill to investigate the blatant politicization of justice in America, we are publishing this summarized version of the Jill Simpson affidavit story for the records of the House Judiciary Committee and to clear up public misunderstandings in this case caused by poor local reporting. We are prepared, along with Rainsville attorney Dana Jill Simpson, to testify against these mean spirited and corrupt public officials if the opportunity arises. There comes a time in the life of a news organization when it becomes necessary to stand up against tyranny. This is one of those times.

Another version of this story was published in The Progressive Populist newspaper out of Texas here.

by Glynn Wilson

If there is any state in the Union where the Bush White House and Karl Rove have manipulated the justice system of America for political purposes, it is Alabama. The relentless political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, a Democrat, by Bush appointed Republican prosecutors and a Republican judge, is the most compelling case now before Congress and the courts, legal experts say.

Photo by Glynn Wilson

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman

“So far the evidence coming out of the U.S. attorneys scandal points to political motivation in prosecutions or the suppression of prosecutions in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and California, but the strongest case so far, and the one where the direct involvement of Karl Rove is most apparent, is in Alabama, a state where Rove’s roots and political connections run very deep,” New York attorney Scott Horton said in an interview. He has followed the case closely and writes a column at Harpers.org called No Comment.

While Siegelman claimed for years that the federal prosecution of him was “political,” no one listened until May of this year.

A month before his sentencing on bribery charges, a Republican lawyer from Rainsville in the northeast corner of Alabama named Dana Jill Simpson wrote and signed a sworn affidavit with evidence that the case had been directed from the White House and the governor’s mansion from the outset.
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