by Glynn Wilson

Glynn Wilson

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman in front of the federal courthouse in Montgomery on a break from his sentencing hearing in June, 2007.

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman will be back in federal court in Montgomery again Wednesday, this time making an oral argument before a different federal judge asking for a chance to be heard on issues related to “selective prosecution” and “government misconduct” in the handling of his case.

In an exclusive interview Tuesday morning, Siegelman, a Democrat, told me his attorneys will be making an argument that former U.S. Attorney Leura Canary — the wife of Bill Canary, head of the conservative Business Council of Alabama — had a partisan conflict of interest in bringing the alleged bribery and corruption case against him.

They will be revealing documentary evidence that Ms. Canary never actually recused herself from the case, he said, an issue we have reported on extensively in the past. She recused herself on the pages of the Birmingham News, but never actually filed a formal recusal document with the court, and e-mail messages show she was involved in directing the prosecution team even after she claimed to recuse herself.

Evidence will also be presented about judicial misconduct on the part of Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Fuller, who handled the case against Siegelman. Because of that, Siegelman said, Fuller will not be hearing the evidence on Wednesday. Instead, U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles S. Coody will be presiding.

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Former Alabama Governor Bob Riley is apparently intent on maintaining some control over the state Republican Party, at least when it comes to fund raising, according to a recent e-mail message intended to be secret that has now leaked out.

On February 20th, just one day after the Alabama Republican Party chose former State Senator Bill Armistead as Party Chairman over State Representative Jay Love of Montgomery, Governor Riley’s hand-picked candidate, Riley’s daughter Minda Riley Campbell, sent a secret e-mail to a select group of her father’s inner circle. The message was not sent to Alabama’s new Governor Robert Bentley or Armistead.

The e-mail details a plan to encourage a group of Riley’s closest allies and supporters, known as “The Governor’s Circle,” to divert all future contributions from the Republican Party to an organization created by and controlled by Riley, Speaker of the House Mike Hubbard and Senate President Pro Temp Del Marsh.

The organization would be independent from the Alabama Republican Party but would exist to keep control of the Party in Riley’s hands. Campbell’s e-mail suggests that this secret and exclusive group would be a better recipient of financial contributions and that it is more capable of determining the best Republican candidates than the state GOP’s duly elected leadership, according to a press release from the Alabama Democratic Party.

“After touting transparency and ethics reform during the special session, the former governor and his lieutenants are working in secret to consolidate and protect their own power,” former Judge Mark Kennedy, the new chair of the Alabama Democratic Party, said in the release. “It’s not the will of Republican voters, that’s for sure.”

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Toy Boy Troy Shows Up in Public

Connecting the Dots
by Glynn Wilson

Alabama’s unqualified attorney general Troy “Toy Boy” King held a televised news conference in Montgomery today to announce that, even though he claims the legal authority, he will not intervene to stop Gov’nah Bob Riley’s warrantless war on computerized bingo, the biggest threat to the chastity of the state’s citizens since the scourge of whiskey during Prohibition.

According to one of the bloggers at al.com, by sidestepping intervention, King avoids a legal showdown with Riley, a lame duck governor who can’t run for reelection. Yes, that’s the same governor who originally appointed King to fill the attorney general post five years ago, even though King had never seen action in a courtroom as a prosecutor.

The governor and attorney general have grown increasingly antagonistic toward each other on electronic bingo and other issues. Sources say Riley was largely behind rumors that surfaced on the Web and talk radio a couple of years ago that King was a gay Republican hypocrite, in spite of his own war on dildo shops in Montgomery.

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Agricultural Commissioner Ron Sparks, the Fort Payne Democrat running for governor, came out swinging on the gambling issue this week against Gov. Bob Riley, and his opponent in the Democratic Party primary, Rep. Artur Davis.

Sparks said in a press release he recently ask governor Riley if he were going to stop the people of Alabama from crossing the state line into Mississippi to gamble. Then the Commander of the Governor’s Task Force on Illegal Gambling, David Barber, resigned, admitting he won thousands of dollars gambling at a Mississippi casino.

“This just proves the hypocrisy of those who want to kill Alabama jobs and rob our children and seniors of important revenue. We have a Governor who takes Mississippi gambling money while his anti-gambling czar gambles in Mississippi,” Sparks said. “David Barber takes his Alabama money and goes to Mississippi to help educate Mississippi children and help create jobs for Mississippi workers. That money needs to stay in Alabama and help us, not them.”

Sparks pledged if the people of the state elect him governor, he will bring an education lottery to Alabama, protect Alabama jobs, and finally make gaming pay its fair share of taxes.

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Alabama’s agricultural commissioner Ron Sparks, who is vying to win the Democratic nomination for governor in 2010, lambasted Gov. Bob Riley’s Tuesday night state of the state speech in a statement released by the campaign on Wednesday.

“Last night’s performance by Bob Riley was shameful,” Sparks said. “At a time when our working families are struggling under the weight of an 11 percent unemployment rate, he says he’s created thousands of new jobs. At a time when teacher layoffs are a possibility and our kids bring toilet paper to school to help out, Bob Riley says he has plenty of money for education. And at a time when our seniors and children wonder if they will still have health care next year, Bob Riley says, ‘Don’t worry. Be happy.’”

“Folks, we don’t just have a budget crisis, we have a leadership crisis,” Sparks said. “I am the only candidate for governor with a plan to increase revenue. We need an education lottery and we need to make legal gaming establishments finally pay their share of taxes, just like Alabama families do. We need action, not slogans or sound bites.”

That’s the kind of governor we need, Sparks said, “not one that hides his head in the sand or tells us how sunny it is while the rain pours.”

by Glynn Wilson

Agricultural Commissioner Ron Sparks, the Fort Payne Democrat running for governor of Alabama, came out swinging against charter schools again today on the historic steps of the State Capitol Building in Montgomery.

“Today, at the foot of the seat of power in the State of Alabama, I stand alone in opposition to one of the most disastrous public policy initiatives in recent years,”: Sparks said. “In recent days, Artur Davis and Bob Riley have told the people of Alabama that the only way for Alabama to receive money for education reform from the federal government is through the implementation of charter schools. That is simply not true.”

There are federal programs in place now in Alabama that qualify for the stimulus funds, he said..

“We have innovative schools, magnet schools, and specialized programs of excellence in Alabama that would qualify us to receive some of the $4.3 billion of stimulus funding allocated for education,” Sparks said. “Since everybody wants to talk about charter schools, I’m going to tell you the truth about charter schools. Charter schools are only marginally effective. They are not innovative and visionary and have not produced results that justify this much discussion and debate. There is no guarantee that we will get a single penny of the stimulus money by implementing charter schools.”

Studies show that 85 percent of charter schools perform at the same level or below the level of standard schools, Sparks said. “Now, tell me what all the fuss is about? Where is the record of success to back up this demand for charter schools?”

Casino gambling has a better record of success than charter schools, Sparks said. He indicated that the statistics show there is nothing special about the performance of charter schools.

“Charter schools are at best, a mediocre experimental program,” he said. “So, if it’s not about performance then what is it all about? Why is there such a rush to get on board the charter school express?”

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by Glynn Wilson

The press in Alabama is finally reporting a story critical of Gov. Bob Riley — when he is about to leave office after a new governor is elected next year — thanks to a press conference today in Dothan by one of the governor’s key advisers for the past few years.

Glynn Wilson

Former ADECA director Bill Johnson during Bob Riley’s 2006 race for governor in the campaign office in Montgomery.

A former member of Riley’s cabinet, Bill Johnson, said Riley received campaign contributions from Native Americans who operate casinos in Mississippi, and he said that money is still influencing Riley’s fight against electronic bingo across the state.

Johnson said a senior staffer in Riley’s 2002 campaign for governor told him that an Indian tribe that operates two casinos in Mississippi promised $3 million to the campaign, although the campaign didn’t receive the entire amount, according to a report from the Alabama bureau of the Associated Press.

Johnson served as grass-roots and logistics coordinator for Riley’s campaigns for governor in 2002 and 2006, meaning he was in charge of the campaign sign operations in counties around the state, and Riley appointed him director of the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs. But he resigned to run for governor as a Republican this year because of a falling out with the governor, sources in Montgomery say today.

In a letter to the Legislature last week, Riley denied the charge in anticipation of the press conference, saying any suggestion that his efforts to prohibit electronic bingo could leave Indian casinos with a statewide monopoly on the machines is a “baldfaced lie.”

“When we have proven our determination to combat illegal gambling in our state, the federal government will have to address this issue at Indian casinos,” Riley wrote.

In reaction to the news today, Ron Sparks, the Fort Payne Democrat who is the only candidate in the governor’s race running on a pro-gambling platform, commended Johnson for revealing Bob Riley’s hypocrisy on gambling.

“Johnson’s admission that Riley took millions of dollars from Mississippi casinos to protect their market share, confirms testimony already on record from Senator John McCain’s Senate Committee,” the Sparks campaign said in a press release.

“It is time to stop playing politics with the casino issue,” Sparks said. “As governor, I will fight for statewide regulation, taxation of gaming for the benefit of schools and Medicaid, and the development of casinos to bring badly needed jobs to Alabama.”

The protection of the Mississippi casino market has cost Alabama hundreds of millions of dollars, he said. “Its time for that to end. As governor, I will stand up for the people of Alabama and not the casino owners in Mississippi.”

by Joan Brunwasser

Welcome back for the second half of my interview with The Locust Fork News-Journal‘s editor and publisher, Glynn Wilson. So, Glynn, if, according to you, it takes a huge investment of time and energy to understand a story, that explains why the mainstream press has not done its job on many important stories. You, on the other hand, are eminently qualified to discuss the Siegelman/DoJ case. So, if Rip Van Winkle approached you and said, “Ever since I woke up, I keep hearing the name Siegelman. What’s up with this guy?” could you walk him through it so he would grasp why the Siegelman case is so significant?

Hmmm. Well, as you know from researching the case yourself, it is a complicated deal. It’s hard to boil it down to a sound bite for TV, but this is what I can say.

Like any politician, Don Siegelman is certainly no perfect human being. This may be hard for people who live in so-called blue states to grasp, but just identifying yourself as a Democrat in a red state like Alabama invites irrational attacks from the right. And in what I like to call “the Bush years,” they really didn’t care about the Constitution or the abstract concept called “the rule of law.”

People who believe the Bible fundamentally and get their news from Fox and Rush Limbaugh and conservative Big Mule rags like The Birmingham News don’t care about facts or the truth. Many of them still believe George Bush was “the man.” They didn’t get the OpEdNews memo.

Here’s what you need to keep in mind.

When Bob Riley stole the election from Siegelman in 2002 in the closest race in Alabama political history, (according to whistle-blower Jill Simpson, a Republican operative with close ties to the Rileys at the time) the Rileys threatened to use the legal system to investigate Siegelman if he ever ran again. So when he announced in 2004 that he would run again in 2006, the Karl Rove-Bill Canary political machine kicked into high gear to go after him. Canary’s wife, Laura Canary, the U.S. Attorney in Montgomery, then launched the investigation of Siegelman.

Even though the career prosecutors in the Department of Justice could not really find enough evidence to bring charges, and told attorney Doug Jones nothing was likely to result from the case, a “top down” review of the case was ordered from Washington after Rove, Bush’s political adviser, had communications with people in the DoJ. That we know, even though the Birmingham News editorial page editors continue to deny it.

I have been asked numerous times by average people not on the hard right or left how it could be possible that the courts could be so corrupted in a case like Siegelman’s that politics would trump truth and justice. It is perhaps hard to fathom, but just ask Paul Minor in Mississippi or any of the U.S. attorneys who were fired on orders from the White House for not being politically loyal enough. Rove was a student of Machiavelli, who wrote and told King Henry VIII that kings either rule by love or fear. Bush was not the kind of man who inspired love, so he had to rule by fear by demanding absolute loyalty.

The point of prosecuting Siegelman was not about the law. It was about politics from the start.

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by Roger Shuler

An article in Sunday’s Montgomery Advertiser reveals that Alabama Governor Bob Riley apparently has committed a federal crime — not once, but twice.

The article, by reporter Sebastian Kitchen, was meant to provide details about the two political parties’ financial condition heading into Alabama’s 2010 election.

But Kitchen, perhaps inadvertently, reveals that Riley appears to have violated federal bribery and honest-services fraud statutes. Riley certainly committed crimes if the Don Siegelman case is to be believed as the law of the land.

Siegelman, Alabama’s former Democratic governor, and co-defendant Richard Scrushy, the former CEO of HealthSouth, were convicted on federal corruption charges in 2006. At the heart of the case was a transaction where Siegelman accepted $500,000 from Scrushy for an education-lottery campaign and then appointed Scrushy to a position on a state health-care board, where he had served under three previous governors.

Now, let’s take a look at what Kitchen reveals in his reporting about the Alabama’s GOP’s swelling coffers.

First, Kitchen states that Riley is chairman of the Alabama GOP’s Campaign 2010 fund-raising effort.

Then, comes this nugget about Raymond J. Harbert, CEO of Harbert Management Corporation in Birmingham: Some of those donors to the Republican Party include Raymond Harbert of Birmingham, who Riley appointed to the Auburn University board of trustees as an at-large member in March 2009. He donated $10,000 in 2008.

Let’s review that information briefly. Harbert made a donation to a fund-raising campaign, chaired by Riley, and then was appointed by Riley to the Auburn University board of trustees.

But that isn’t the only curious transaction in Kitchen’s story. We also have this regarding Birmingham physician Swaid Swaid: Dr. Swaid N. Swaid, who Riley appointed to the Certificate of Need Review Board, donated $5,000 in 2008.

Again, let’s review. Swaid gave to a campaign chaired by Riley and then was appointed by Riley to a spot on the Alabama Certificate of Need (CON) Review Board.

Both of these transactions sound an awful lot like the alleged crimes in the Siegelman/Scrushy transaction, do they not? And Swaid even was appointed to the same board to which Scrushy was appointed.

A devil’s advocate might point out that there was no proof of a quid pro quo in Riley’s transactions with Harbert and Swaid. But a student of the Siegelman/Scrushy trial knows that a quid pro quo was not shown in that case either, and U.S. Judge Mark Fuller’s jury instruction did not require one.

A devil’s advocate might also point out that the amounts of Harbert’s and Swaid’s donations were not nearly as large as the one from Scrushy. But if memory serves us correctly, the amount of the donation was not an overriding factor in determining whether a crime took place in the Siegelman/Scrushy case.

Finally, the donations apparently went to the Republican Party, not to Riley personally. But that also was the case in the Siegelman/Scrushy matter.

Scrushy currently is in federal prison, and Siegelman might be heading back, because Siegelman received a donation from Scrushy and then appointed the CEO to a state board.

That is exactly what appears to have taken place with Bob Riley’s donations from Raymond Harbert and Swaid Swaid.

Roger Shuler is a veteran legal journalist. This article appeared first in the Legal Schnauzer blog. He and I are in the process of teaming up to build the alternative, independent Web Press in Alabama. If you like to see these stories you will not see in the so-called mainstream press in this state and want to help fund this effort, consider making a large or small donation today.