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.

Alabama is one of the key states in the Super Duper Tuesday presidential primary Feb 5, 2008.

So on Wed., Nov. 28, the Obama campaign will hold a grand opening of it’s Birmingham headquaters at 1813 4th Ave North on the second floor beginning at 6.30 p.m. There will be food, a bar and dancing, along with a conference call from Michelle Obama and an address from Rep. Artur Davis,

More information at BarackObama.Com. To volunteer, e-mail: Volunteer@alabamaobamateam.com.

John Edwards leads the presidential race in Alabama among Democrats, according to an ongoing poll on the Alabama Democratic Party’s Website.

Edwards is polling 29 percent compared to 27 percent for Hillary Clinton, 21 percent for Dennis Kucinich and 12 percent for Barack Obama. Joe Biden and Bill Richardson pull 4 percent each, with 1 percent for Chris Dodd and Mike Gravel.

AlaDems.Org Presidential Poll

So far, 354 votes have been cast in this unscientific online poll. It is only a snapshot of public opinion from active, Web savvy Democrats.

Democrats Say ‘Let the People Vote’

Alabama Governor Bob Riley has once again gone against the wishes of local government officials and appointed George F. Bowman, a retired two-star Army general, to replace former Jefferson County Commissioner Larry Langford who was elected recently as Birmingham’s new mayor.

The announcement was immediately attacked by Alabama Democratic Party Chairman Joe Turnham, who said in a press release that he will join outraged Jefferson County voters who were ready to elect a replacement for Langford. The bipartisan Jefferson County Election Commission had already scheduled an election for February 5, 2008.

Governor Bob Riley made this same mistake in a majority Democratic Mobile County Commission district after the election of Sam Jones as mayor. A lawsuit was filed in that case and the governor was forced to call a special election, which was subsequently won by a Democrat.

A three-judge panel from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled that Department of Justice preclearance must be sought prior to such appointments.

“Clearly Governor Riley is thwarting the democratic process here and denying the voters of Jefferson County their right to elect a representative to the county commission,” Turnham said. “This action is clearly contradictory to the ruling of the 11 th Circuit Court, it violates the Voting Rights Act, and it flies in the face of a bipartisan decision by an official election commission to hold an election for this seat.”

Turnham said the Democratic Party and citizens of the county will exhaust every legal and political remedy to ensure that voters, not the governor, choose their representation on the Jefferson County Commission – as prescribed by law.

by Glynn Wilson

The people of Alabama need to start paying attention to the race for the White House now that the state’s presidential primary vote has been moved to Feb. 5, according Nancy Worley, vice chair of the Democratic Party and former secretary of state.

“It’s possible we will know who the presidential nominees will be on Feb. 5,” she said, since so many states have also moved their primary votes for president to that early date.

She is not saying who she will support personally in that vote, but she said, “I would put any one of the eight Democrats up against any of the Republicans.”

Ms. Worley was in Birmingham Monday night meeting with the Greater Birmingham Chapter of Democracy for America and the Progressive Democrats of America. She discussed a number of election issues with the group.

She could not say much about her ongoing court battle with state Attorney General Troy King, except to point out that he was appointed by Gov. Bob Riley and, like many of president Bush’s appointments at the Department of Justice, he had never tried a case in court.

And, King’s state indictment of her came along at the same time and for the same reason the Bush Justice Department brought it’s case against former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, she said, “Because we were both doing well in the polls.”

Ms. Worley is a former high school teacher from Decatur who always wanted to be involved in public service to help her state and country. For many years, she volunteered her services to the Alabama Education Association and educated herself on the election process.

When she retired from teaching and got the opportunity to run for office, it took a lot of hard work and traveling all over the state since she did not have a lot of money. But the hard work paid off in 2002 and she was elected, only to see her reelection chances fade in 2006 because of the partisan fights that erupted in the courts.

When updating the voter rolls became a heated issue in the news because of King’s intervention at the behest of Riley, Ms. Worley said that she could get the job done by the fall of 2007. Riley had the court place him in charge of that process, and he failed to meet the federal deadline as well.

But you would not know that from reading the corporate newspapers and watching the local television news in this state.

As a matter of full disclosure, I have known Ms. Worley since the late 1980s when she proved to be a tireless and invaluable source on a coastal erosion story I covered for a chain of newspapers on the Gulf Coast.

After spending so many years learning the system in Alabama, and after four years of running the election system as secretary of state, she is now a knowledgeable source on what is right and wrong about the system today.

And she happens to agree with me that many of the problems we face in Alabama are holdovers of the era of George C. Wallace, the powerful little governor who ran the state like his own fiefdom and tried to translate his populist appeal into presidential power.

“George Wallace held power for so long,” she said, that many of the systemic problems we face can be traced to his legacy.

There is no doubt, she said, that the governor of Alabama “is one of the most powerful governor’s in the country” because he is largely accountable to no one.

Even President Bush must face the Washington press corps and answer questions on occasion. The prime minister of Britain is required to face members of Parliament and answer questions on a regular basis.

But not one single media company in Alabama has ever bothered to examine why the governor here has so much power and so little accountability.

Ms. Worley’s main advice for the group, in the interest of providing accurate and fail safe elections for the people of the state, is to push and make sure that every polling machine is tested prior to each election. That is not being done as the law requires, she said.

Also, many probate judges and poll workers are not adequately educated on the issues, which could open the door to election fraud from the technically competent crook – like what apparently happened in Bay Minette in 2002.
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As the Democrats get ready to debate tonight in Las Vegas, it might be a good time to look at the latest public opinion data out of Alabama.

Alabama may be a red state in national politics in the voting booth, and to read most of the Alabama press and watch local television news, you would think everybody in Alabama is a pro-Bush, religious conservative.

But when asked their opinions by survey researchers, that’s not what you find at all.

According to the Alabama Education Association’s Capital Survey Research Center out of Montgomery, when asked whether or not they had confidence in the abilities of President George W. Bush, only 12 percent of respondents said they had confidence in Bush.

Another 47 percent said they had lost confidence in the president and another 31 percent said they had “doubts” about his ability.

The survey also showed that the people of Alabama, like the vast majority of Americans, have turned against the Iraq war. A majority, 53 percent, say the war is “not worth it.”

Furthermore, 61 percent of Alabama citizens say the country is “on the wrong track.”

If the voting for president were held today in Alabama, the numbers show Fred Thompson leading Republicans at about 34 percent to 20 percent for Rudy Giuliani and 11 percent for John McCain.

Among likely voters for the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton leads with the support of about 33 percent, with Barack Obama holding the support of about 29 percent, and 10 percent going to John Edwards.

For another perspective complete with pie charts, check out Tommy Stevenson’s blog on the Tuscaloosa News Website.

For more information about public opinion in Alabama, go to the Capital Survey Research Center.

AP: Democrats Prepare to Address the West in Vegas Debate

The Alabama Democratic Party will hold its annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner at the Birmingham Jefferson Civic Center with keynote speaker General Wes Clark on Friday, Nov. 30, with a reception starting at 5:30 and dinner at 6:30 p.m.

Reservations can be made online at: AlaDems.Org.

For more information, visit the AlaDems.Org Home Page.