Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman appears on Fox News today discussing HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy…

The governor got in a couple of good points saying that Scrushy would be a free man today if he had agreed to testify against Siegelman.

“He could have thrown me under the bus any time he wanted to and walked out of that courtroom a free man. Richard Scrushy is in prison today for something he absolutely did not do.”

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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Connecting the Dots
by Glynn Wilson

After spending a good part of the day Tuesday studying the U.S. attorneys response to the motion for a new trial filed in federal court by former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy, I re-watched The Other Boleyn Girl film on Encore last night.

As many long-time readers will remember, we spent a good bit of time and space back during the Bush years showing parallels between American democracy then and European monarchy in the days of Henry VIII as well as King George III.

So what’s the lesson for today?

There is a great and telling line in the film that should help readers understand where we are today in American law.

Elizabeth Boleyn, the mother of Mary and Ann Boleyn, is arguing with her husband Thomas about sending Ann off to exile in the French court, while offering up Mary as a mistress to King Henry. She is trying to convince her husband that the family’s rise to wealth and power by courting the king will end badly, but he is too greedy to listen.

When Thomas downplays her assertion that the head of the previous resident of their new palace is now resting on the end of a stake, he counters by saying yes, but “he committed treason.”

“What is treason,” Elizabeth asks, “but whatever the king and his lawyers say it is?”

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by Glynn Wilson

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was lobbied to drop the case against former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman during his trip to Birmingham Thursday for the swearing in of Joyce White Vance as U.S. attorney for the state’s northern district, sources say.

Several people, including Alabama Democratic Party officials, spoke to Holder on behalf of Siegelman, and about firing U.S. Attorney Leura Canary — the prosecutor married to Karl Rove’s political ally Bill Canary of the conservative Business Council of Alabama — according to sources present for the swearing in.

Barry Ragsdale, an attorney who is a friend of the Vances and has been associated with the Over the Mountain Democrats in the past, acted as master of ceremonies for the swearing in. Apparently he is a funny guy, and made several jokes, including poking fun at Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Fuller of Alabama’s middle district, the federal judge who presided in the controversial case against Siegelman and his co-defendant Richard Scrushy.

“I’m glad Karl Rove gave you permission to be here,” Ragsdale quipped, according to the Birmingham News account of the swearing in.

Rove, of course, was the chief political adviser to President George W. Bush, who recently testified in an investigation of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on political prosecutions and political firings of U.S. attorneys.

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In the latest development in the federal case against former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, retired Chief U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon of Birmingham recently wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder seeking a probe of misconduct by federal prosecutors, including their alleged “judge-shopping,” jury-pool “poisoning” and “unfounded” criminal charges in an effort to imprison Siegelman and forestall his election campaign in 2006.

Judge Clemon, a highly respected jurist and one of the first African American judges in the American South, took this unusual step because he felt duty bound to report corruption that occurred on his watch, according to an announcement from the non-profit Velvet Revolution.

This development comes days after detailed evidence revealed that Siegelman’s trial judge, Mark Fuller, was chosen to preside over the trial because he had a “grudge” against Siegelman which bordered on hatred because Siegelman appointed an investigator to look into Fuller’s shady activities.

Siegelman Deserves New Trial Because of Judge’s ‘Grudge’, Evidence Shows

Moreover, the new evidence makes a strong case that Judge Fuller labors under conflicts of interest because he owns a majority share in Doss Aviation, which receives hundreds of millions in contracts from the military and has ties to CIA activities.

Last week, VR called for the removal of Siegelman’s prosecutor, Laura Canary, and for an investigation into the activities of Judge Fuller, both which now have been echoed by Chief Judge Clemon in his letter to Eric Holder.

“What more does it take, Mr. Holder, to clear the stench of corruption from this case?,” the release asks, and then demands: “Step in and enforce the rule of law, now!”

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

Here is a little song I wrote
You might want to sing it note for note
Don’t worry be happy
In every life we have some trouble
When you worry you make it double
Don’t worry, be happy…
– A Bobby McFerrin song

The rain is coming down steadily in The Ham. But that’s OK. I’m dry in The Bunker and it’s good for the garden anyway.

Don’t worry. Be happy…

Some of my Facebook friends think I should join the crowd with the snappy, happy news, like Mike Royer, Pam Huff, Southern Living and the Newhouse boys, who of course write their columns four days before the paper comes out anyway…

And Dog knows I want to, since Bush is gone back to Texas and The Obama is in the White House and all’s right with the world, right?

Not so fast.

According to New York Times columnist Frank Rich, Obama Can’t Turn the Page on Bush, and neither can we until we get some unfinished business out of the way.

What prompted me to think about this today was an exchange I had this week on Facebook, the newest, most trendy, don’t worry be happy social networking Website, where I swear the programmer geeks who created it should adopt the Bobby McFerrin song as their theme song.

What they won’t tell you is that George H. W. Bush tried to use the song in the 1988 U.S. presidential election campaign until McFerrin, who was a Democrat, objected and the campaign desisted.

Oh, how soon we forget.

But don’t worry. Be happy…

While I love Google myself, if I were teaching again I would tell my students you can’t depend on Google for everything.

Here’s an example that fits right into today’s theme.

For some reason, my biggest critics on the Web tend to be engineers. Now back when I was pursuing a research academic career, one of my main professors used to make fun of engineers by calling them jarheads. Why? Because among pure research scientists, engineers are sneered at because they are involved in the so-called “practical science.”

But like a lot of things during the Bush years, that meaning got distorted when the movie Jarhead came out in 2005, depicting a company of marines calling themselves jarheads.

Not surprisingly, the sound track to the movie contained the song, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

Now there is a host of communications research which shows a certain and fairly large segment of the public likes this snappy, happy news, which is why local television news broadcasters started smiling and laughing at each other on TV starting in the early 1980s. Prior to that, network TV news broadcasts were usually somber, straight news affairs. Anyone here old enough to remember Huntley-Brinkley?

Now, the silly local broadcasters will smile at the camera, even when they are reporting that several marines died in Iraq today. The jarheads…

Newspapers started picking up on this a number of years ago, which is one of the reasons that’s what you get when you pick up a Newhouse paper like the Birmingham News. Even when they are delivering bad news, the tone is still snappy and happy.

I had the opportunity to do some reporting for one of the Newhouse papers considered to be the best in the chain when I worked for a time in Washington, D.C., back in 2004 and 2005. I did some free-lancing for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, but the deal went sour when the DC bureau editor wanted me to produce some snappy, happy news about the latest campaign finance reports about members of Congress from Ohio, including Dennis Kucinich.

Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t see much humor in campaign finance reports. I stayed up very late one night analyzing the reports and wrote a story which I thought did them justice. But the editor was terribly distraught when he read my report. The paper used the AP story instead of mine. Why? Because the editor said, and I swear I’m not making this up, “We don’t want analysis. We just want something short and snappy and funny…”

Right. Sorry, but that’s not why I got into journalism.

For a local example from today’s Newhouse news, take this piece of so-called business reporting. It’s actually a pretty interesting tale about Richard Scrushy and his country band Dallas County Line, but to those of us who know the whole story, there are several things missing.

Where is the criticism of the Bush appointed prosecutor? And where is the admission that the Birmingham News made a fortune on advertising from Scrushy’s Healthsouth, before the editors and publisher lost money on HealthSouth stock along with everybody else in Mountain Brook who were taken in by it?

If you want to see some real, substantive reporting about the Siegelman-Scrushy cases, this week you have to turn to the Huffington Post, where a guy I know named Andrew Kreig has a report under the headline (my headline anyway):

Siegelman Deserves New Trial Due to Judge Grudge

I met Mr. Kreig in Atlanta on the day of the appeal hearing in Atlanta. He showed up with a binder full of printouts of all my stories on the Siegelman-Scrushy cases, and we had an interesting lunch talking about it all. His report is the result of his substantive investigation over a number of months, and it is a piece of investigative journalism worth catching.

Be forewarned, though. It’s not snappy, or particularly happy.

Of course the Alabama bureau of the Associated Press came out with an almost celebratory piece of reporting this week, saying what we already reported would most likely be the case before the all Republican panel of judges who heard Siegelman’s case on the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

Siegelman, Scrushy Lose Bid for Full Court Review

The Newhouse reporter in Washington managed to break this little sentence of news this week at al.com, based on a leak, of course, from you know who: Obama to Replace Alice Martin With Joyce Vance?

And this came a little while later on a liberal blog: Bush U.S. Attorneys To Be Replaced in ‘Next Couple of Weeks’

Now that’s happy news.

But these items are not.

Politics As Usual On Siegelman Appeal?

Prosecutors Want Longer Sentence for Siegelman?

So sorry to be the harbinger of bad news today, but I hope you will agree that we delivered it in a snappy, happy way.

Don’t worry. Be Happy.

The world’s going to end in 2012 anyway.

Right…

Only snappy, happy news, please…

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.

A broad coalition of organizations and individuals launched a “Restore Justice At Justice” campaign today to demand redress for all those politically prosecuted under the Bush Justice Department, beginning with former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and Paul Minor of Mississippi.

On Wednesday, a this group of organizations and individuals dedicated to an honest and accountable government launched a new Web site at RestoreJusticeAtJustice.com, a campaign to clean up the Department of Justice’s sad record of political prosecutions under the Bush Administration.

These organizations, representing hundreds of thousands of members, have a strong track record of spurring action on crucial issues. The coalition has sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, available on the Restore Justice At Justice website, requesting that he quickly investigate and identify those targeted, and vacate their convictions, beginning with Alabama ex-Governor Don Siegelman and Attorney Paul Minor.

The coalition asserts that under the Bush administration, the Department of Justice was driven by ideology, and prosecutions were often used to settle scores and intimidate the opposition. The GOP, at the direction of Karl Rove, used the DOJ to target political enemies including Democratic contributors and those who were a threat to GOP electoral gains and big business interests. The Department was used as an arm of the White House to destroy these Democrats. This political profiling resulted in the criminal prosecution of many on the GOP list, including Siegelman and Minor.

“Last week, Attorney General Holder ordered the dismissal of charges against Senator Ted Stevens because of prosecutorial misconduct,” said coalition spokesperson Brad Friedman. “Because targeted political prosecutions also constitute prosecutorial misconduct, AG Holder should apply the same standard to Siegelman, Minor, and all the others identified as targeted by the Bush DOJ,” said Friedman. “Siegelman and Minor were targets of political profiling, which is as unjust as racial profiling. President Obama and Attorney General Holder promised to return justice to the Justice Department and free the Department from politics. We demand that they do so.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the signers at RestoreJusticeAtJustice.com, has stated publicly that “Paul Minor is an innocent man” who was targeted by Karl Rove, prosecuted by “crooked Justice Department prosecutors,” and sentenced to “a breathtaking 11-year sentence for non-violent, white collar crimes he did not commit,” while Minor’s wife of 41 years lies in a hospital dying from cancer, unable “to utter the word l-o-v-e to her husband.”

Kennedy summarizes the case this way: “Karl Rove’s crooked henchmen at the U.S. Justice Department have turned this dignified gentleman’s life into a horrible ordeal that is a disgrace to American democracy.”

**Late Monday, Sylvia Minor died without her husband by her side after the DOJ opposed Minor’s bail pending appeal and a compassionate furlough.

The campaign is spearheaded by VelvetRevolution.us, a national non-profit affiliated with over 150 organizations. The coalition urges other organizations that care about justice to sign on to this campaign by sending an email to RestoreJusticeAtJustice(at)velvetrevolution.us. Individuals can sign on at RestoreJusticeAtJustice.com.

Here at the Locust Fork News-Journal, with our extensive coverage of the Siegelman case and long-standing editorial opposition to Bush administration’s policies on this and other issues, join in the campaign today and urge readers to sign on as well.

Restore Justice