MONTGOMERY – The Alabama Democratic Party closed qualifying for those people who intend to run as a candidate for delegate to the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver Friday night at 5 p.m.

“Democrats in Alabama and across the country are excited about taking back the White House in the next presidential election, and that excitement is reflected by the number of people who signed up to support their candidate at next year’s convention,” party chair Joe Turnham said in a press release.

More than 360 Alabama voters qualified with the Democratic Party before the deadline today, compared to about 300 for the Republican Party. The roster of Democrats is diverse not only in terms of race and gender, accordin to the release, but also in the mixture of political veterans and first-time candidates. Every congressional district is represented on the list.

Though the majority of those who qualified did so as Clinton, Edwards, or Obama delegate candidates, in fact all Democratic candidates on the ballot in Alabama received some measure of support. Many uncommitted candidates also made the deadline. Thirty-four pledged district-level delegates and seven pledged alternates will be elected during the February 5 presidential preference primary.

For an UNOFFICIAL listing, please visit this page on the AlabamaDems.Org Website.

Officers of the Central Alabama Labor Federation, AFL-CIO and leaders of local unions in Birmingham and Jefferson County will join with community and religious leaders and elected officials Monday, Dec. 10, at 2 p.m. for a community forum and press conference at CWA Union Hall, 210 Summit Pkwy, in Birmingham.

This press conference, one of hundreds of events being held across America on Monday, International Human Rights Day, is designed to expose the loss by American workers of a fundamental and internationally recognized right, freedom of association and the right to join and form labor unions, according to a press release.

The right to form a union is one of the basic human rights proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ratified by the United Nations on December 10, 1948. U.S. labor law has recognized the right of American workers to organize since the National Labor Relations Act passed by Congress in 1935.

“But routine and massive violation by employers of the legal rights of workers has essentially nullified the law and workers attempting to exercise those rights are harassed, coerced, intimidated and fired with impunity,” union spokesman Stewart Burkhalter said. “The result is that U.S. workers have fewer rights than workers in any other industrialized nation.”

Research shows that 60 million Americans say they would join a union tomorrow if given a fair chance. Union workers make on the average 26 percent more than workers without a union and are far more likely to have health and pension benefits, according to government statistics.

Speakers will include Stewart Burkhalter, President of Alabama AFL-CIO; Jim Spearman, Executive Director of the Alabama Democratic Party; Ron Sparks, Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries;
Lucy Baxley, former Lieutenant Governor; Senator E.B. McLain and Representative Merika Coleman.

For more information, contact Stewart Burkhalter at (334) 462-5434.

by Glynn Wilson

A pardon for former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman could be on the presidential agenda if the Democrats take back the White House in 2008, according to Pam Miles, a member of the Alabama Democratic Party executive committee who was in Washington, D.C. this weekend for the Democratic National Committee’s fall meeting.

She talked with a number of the presidential candidates at the meeting in addition to party chair Howard Dean and members of Congress, she said, pressing the issue of doing something about the political prosecution of Siegelman.

“The investigation and the possibility of a pardon would be on the agenda,” she said. “It came up in every conversation.”

Siegelman’s case was received well by Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, she said, in addition to Dean and a number of members of Congress, including Mike Honda of California, and a staff member for Dave Obey of Wisconsin, the chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee.

Senator Hillary Clinton was the only presidential candidate who failed to attend the fall meeting because of the bomb threat in her New Hampshire office last Friday, according to Miles and a New York Times blog.

D.N.C. Fall Meeting Ends on Difficult Note

Ms. Miles presented a personal eight-page letter to Howard Dean from Don Siegelman on her trip, although the contents of the letter are not yet being made public for the media.

What struck Ms. Miles the most on her trip was the extent to which people from other countries seemed to know more about Seigelman’s case than people in the United States, which may be a statement on the American media.

She talked to people from China, the Philippines and Africa who seemed to know more about the story than people form North Carolina, she said, and they had learned about the case from blogs, not mainstream media coverage.

She also talked at length to Washington Post columnist David Broder about Siegelman’s story. If he were to write about it, it would be a first for the Post, which has so far only run AP stories about the case and even the Washington Post-owned Salon.com has yet to do a lengthy story.

Ms. Miles has worked for the Democratic Party and for Don Siegelman’s campaigns at least since 1998. She is known as the administrator of perhaps the biggest Democrat e-mail list in Alabama run out of Huntsville.

She also ran for a state House seat a few years back, but lost to the Republican in District 25, a district where Republicans make up about 76 percent of voters. Mac McCutcheon now holds the seat as a Republican but votes with Democrats in the Legislature much of the time.

Which brings up another interesting point. When the Republicans were trying to gain a foothold in Alabama back in the 1980s, they recruited Democrats to change parties. Now that there is such a backlash against Republicans with the failings of the Bush administration and Republican scandals dominating the news, is it time for Democrats to now go back after some of that talent in the Republican Party and recruit people to switch back?

“Absolutely,” Ms. Miles said. “That is already under discussion.”

Bill Clinton has talked about it, she said.

And now that the Republican Party is coming to be seen as “the party of the pervs,” she said, with gay Republicans ensconced in scandal such as Sen. Larry Craig from Idaho, is it possible we will be seeing more candidates switch back to the Democratic Party in the near future?

Details Emerge on 8 Larry Craig Gay Affairs

Photo by Glynn Wilson

General Wesley Clark says Siegalman’s prosecution was “politicized” and called “W” the “worst ever.”

by Glynn Wilson

General Wesley Clark received standing ovations from Democrats Friday night when he called former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman “a great American” and an “honest man” who was “unjustly confined” by a rogue Justice Department “politicized” by a corrupt Republican administration, and for his criticism of Bush’s war in Iraq.

The keynote speaker at the annual Jefferson-Jackson fund raising dinner at the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center ballroom, Clark said America is “a nation at war” at home on many fronts as well as abroad.

He made the case why the Democratic Party is the party to bring the nation together again after seven long years of rule by crass corporate capitalist Republican neo-cons who have trashed the Constitution on many fronts.

“We’re seeing a 20 year campaign to polarize and partisanize this country and take away the basic fundamentals that we fought so hard to put in place,” he said. “It’s the use of executive power to put in wiretaps and other spying on the American people to take away our fundamental liberties…

“It’s the wholesale politicization of the Department of Justice,” he said. “It’s a stench of corruption that has run from the White House, through Jack Abramoff…”

The past seven years have been wasted by one lost opportunity after another, he said, on health care, education, civil rights, energy and the environment, including global warming.

“We didn’t have to fight that war in Iraq” he said, adding that George “W” Bush is “the worst” president ever.

Clark, a four star general, led U.S. and NATO forces in Kosovo during the administration of Bill Clinton. He has endorsed Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president.

Leading up to Clark’s address, other speakers included state Supreme Court Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb, Lt. Gov. Jim Folsom Jr., Congressman Artur Davis, Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks, state Senator Vivian Davis Figures, party chair Joe Turnham, vice chair and former Secretary of State Nancy Worley and Joe Reed, president of the Alabama Democratic Conference.

Photo by Glynn Wilson

Congressman Artur Davis from Birmingham is a rising star in the Democratic Party…

Reed, who has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, called on Democrats to work hard and “win” elections in 2008, because winning is more important than anything else.

If the Democrats had won the White House and other races in 2000 and 2004, he said, “Don Siegelman wouldn’t be behind bars today.”

Congressman Davis was praised by many of the speakers for his work on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, which is investigating Siegelman’s prosecution as part of a probe into the politization of justice by the Bush administration.

Siegelman is awaiting word on his appeal in a Louisiana federal prison after being sentenced to seven years and four months by a Republican activist judge for allegedly taking a bribe from HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy, who is also serving time in the case awaiting his appeal. Both of them have filed motions demanding release from jail pending appeal, but the appeals process is being held up due to the death of a court reporter who never finished the transcript of the trial from last year.

Prosecutors from the U.S. attorneys office in Montgomery have denied politics played a role in the case. But they have been noticeably silent of late since the Senate confirmed Michael Mukasey as Attorney General to replace Alberto Gonzales, who resigned under a dark cloud of suspicion in August.

There is no word yet on whether Gonzales will be prosecuted in Congress or the courts for his malfeasance in office, although Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy ruled against president Bush’s claims of executive privilege this week for his long-time political fixer Karl Rove.

(See story below: Senator Leahy Rejects Bush’s Executive Privilege Claims)

Photos by Glynn Wilson

Other Democrats at the dinner included, from left, Joe Turnham, Sue Bell Cobb and Joe Reed

Video courtesy of LeftInAlabama.com.