Locust Fork News and Journal editor Glynn Wilson will give a talk in Birmingham June 18 for the Greater Birmingham Democracy for America chapter and Progressive Democrats of America. The title of the talk will be:

How the Political Prosecution of Don Siegelman was Confirmed: The Role of a Whistleblower and the Independent Web Press

See you at Jim and Nick’s BBQ’s Back Room on Southside from 7-8 p.m. There will be a Barbeque Buffet and non-alcoholic drinks will be provided, although the bar will be open : )

Dessert and gratuity paid by sponsor, although a helpful donation of $12 would be appreciated.

RSVP Required by 12 Noon June 18. Space Limited – Call Janis @ 205-492-1976 or e-mail her at: jmartens01@aol.com

A more detailed profile:

How the Political Prosecution of Don Siegelman was Confirmed: The Role of a Whistleblower and the Independent Web Press

Glynn Wilson has been a reporter, writer and photographer for almost 30 years. He spent nine years in academe, holds two degrees from the University of Alabama in journalism and communications, and has done stints as a free-lance writer for The New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Dallas Morning News, UPI and some of the best alternative weeklies in the country. For the past 12 years he has experimented with publishing on the Web Press and pioneered in the field of Independent online journalism.

www.linkedin.com/in/glynnwilson

When the story of Jill Simpson’s affidavit broke about Karl Rove’s manipulation of the Department of Justice, Wilson was the only reporter in Alabama really equipped to get the whole story. He tracked down Ms. Simpson and did the first on-the-record, in-person interview with her for eight hours in Rainsville, Alabama, reviewed the key documents, and broke a 5,000 word five part series in the Locust Fork Journal.

Jill Simpson’s Affidavit May Help Justice Prevail in the Siegelman, Scrushy Case

A few days later, New York attorney and writer Scott Horton, who had recently started blogging on the law for Harpers.org, picked up on the story. Then it came to the attention of The Nation Institute. Wilson was awarded a grant from the institute’s investigative journalism fund and published a 2800 word version of the story on The Nation magazine’s Website, which some still say is the definitive investigative news feature summarizing the entire sorted affair.

The Nation: A Whistleblower’s Tale

He also published another version of the story in the Progressive Populist newspaper out of Texas.

Justice Off the Tracks in Alabama

Wilson continues to cover the story as editor and publisher of the Locust Fork News and Journal on the Web at LocustFork.Net.

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

TUSCALOOSA, Ala., June 5 – Global warming gave us a break this spring in Alabamaland with plenty of rain and way cooler temps than last year. But the global pendulum is now swinging hard toward summer, and it’s hot as hades in T-Town.

On the national political front, in spite of some hand-wringing over the past few weeks, now that Barack Obama is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, a new poll shows that he holds a six point lead over Republican nominee John McCain. Obama leads McCain 48 percent to 42 percent among registered voters, according to a CBS poll.

Obama Leads McCain

I’m still betting the Yuengling 12-pack that those numbers will grow after the parties hold their conventions this summer and that Obama will win in a landslide in November, especially if Karl Rove is kept on the sidelines.

And it looks like he is being kept on the defensive by the House Judiciary Committee.

Facing pressure from the committee, the Bush Justice Department is now admitting that its Office of Professional Responsibility has launched investigations into accusations of ethics lapses and potentially illegal conduct on the part of the U.S. attorneys offices in Alabama behind the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy.

Read the letter in PDF format here

Then, the pendulum is also swinging down in Montgomery.

Federal prosecutors are no longer seeking stiffer prison sentences for Siegelman or Scrushy, and they are not even bothering to explain why, according to Associated Press reporter Bob Johnson. It makes one curious to know what happened to the cozy relationship between Johnson and U.S. Attorney Louis Franklin, since Franklin has changed his tune and now says he will deal with the appeals case in court, rather than in the press.

Maybe the gag order is still in force that was issued by Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who took over the Justice Department after Alberto Gonzales had to resign last August at about the same time Rove was forced to depart the White House.

Siegelman must be happy with how the pendulum is swinging, now that his prosecutors have filed a motion with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals asking that their appeals for a longer prison terms be dropped.

“The government has elected not to proceed with its cross-appeal as to either defendant,” the filing says, with no explanation.

Prosecutors End Siegelman, Scrushy Sentence Appeal

Hmmm. I guess all that talking to the press last year just didn’t do as much good as they thought, especially in the face of Chief U.S. Judge Mark Fuller’s oversized hammer that pounded Siegelman on the head for doing some talking of his own. And that is in part the basis of why a bipartisan group of 54 former state attorneys general from across the country have filed a brief with a federal appeals court asking that Siegelman’s conviction be reversed. He was sentenced to extra time for discussing the ethics of the court in public with the press.

Their friend of the court filing on Siegelman’s behalf says the prosecution and sentencing of Siegelman “raised serious First Amendment concerns” and asks the appeals court to overturn Siegelman’s conviction, a ruling legal experts say could come by the end of the year.

“To permit a conviction to stand in the absence of such an explicit quid pro quo” (for Siegelman’s appointment of Scrushy to the hospital board in exchange for a donation to the lottery campaign), the brief states, “would mean that a prosecutor has the power to indict and convict any politician and any donor whenever a donation was made and the politician took an action consistent with the donor’s desire, while aware of said desire.”

Ex-Attorneys General File Brief Suppporting Siegelman

Former New York Attorney General Robert Abrams, one of the authors of the brief, said the conviction of Siegleman, a Democrat, could have “a chilling effect” on democracy and make people afraid to make donations to political campaigns. He said: “The U.S. government cannot punish people for questioning or criticizing the actions of federal officials.”

Now we need to get that message about the pendulum swinging over to King George W. and the boys over at the Homeland Security Department, especially here in Alabama at the state version of same, where the Google Earth-Virtual Alabama system is scanning critics of Bush and the GOP as we write.

It’s hard to find the time and personal space to keep up with the criticism on a daily or weekly basis, especially when it becomes clear that these bastards have now managed to get to the programmer who has helped us keep this site up for the past three years. But no worries. We’re moving to a new server soon where politics and religion don’t matter and the hackers and spammers can’t shut us down again.

With your help, we will endure.

“And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress … by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.”
- Revelation 14:19-20

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

When John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath in the 1930s, the United States was on the verge of coming apart due to the Great Depression, caused largely by run-amok corporate capitalism and an attitude on the part of Big Business, including Big Oil, that workers had no rights except as serfs in their kingdom.

Since we now face another Great Depression thanks to king Bush and his corporate cronies, perhaps it is time to revisit the Biblical theme of the grapes of wrath. Especially since the right-wing Republican attack machine keeps eluding to it and, as usual, in a way that shows they don’t know what the fuck they are talking about.

Glynn Wilson

Jill Simpson seems to have the ability to bring Republicans and Democrats together. She is shown here with two people you will never see in the same picture again, a couple of the biggest political opponents in Dekalb County. That’s the local dentist in the cap, Marvin Barron, the brother of the powerful Democrat in the Alabama Legislature Lowell Barron. On the other side, that’s a Republican rabble rouser who is trying to get the Bush Justice Department to investigate Barron, Jimmy Dan Kilgore. He drives around town in a pickup truck with a sign in the back that says, among other things, “Anybody But Barron.”

It’s also coming up on the one-year anniversary of the filing of the now famous affidavit of Alabama lawyer Jill Simpson that is now part of an ongoing probe into how the Bush administration turned the U.S. Justice Department into a full-blown election wing of the Republican National Committee.

And then there’s the news that Bush’s evil brain Karl Rove, who left the White House under a cloud of disgrace last August, was finally subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee this past week, followed by a new appeals court filing by former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman asking that his political conviction be thrown out.

Former Bush Aide Karl Rove Subpoenaed in Probe

Siegelman Asks Appeals Court to Throw Out Conviction

If you have been keeping up with the headlines, you knew that.

But if you have been depending on the corporate media in this country for news, you may not have heard about how the right-wing attack machine is still doing everything it can to try and discredit Ms. Simpson as a bona fide Republican whistleblower.

The darling blogger of the right-wing nuts leading this attack is a so-called conservative lawyer named John H. Hinderaker, who is best known for attempting to debunk the human causes of global warming and Darwin’s theory of evolution – in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence. He constantly takes up Rush Limbaugh’s tired and false theme that the American press has a “liberal bias.”

On Monday, May 19, Hinderaker promoted himself, a hit piece he wrote for the Powerline blog and a story on the Website of the conservative Weekly Standard on one GOP blog by calling Jill Simpson a “lunatic conspiracy theorist (and darling of the nutroots).”

Just so you will know, “nutroots” is a term coined by the Election 08 blog on March 10, 2006. It is a play on the name commonly used for liberal grassroots groups known as the Netroots.” Once used strictly by conservative blogs in reference to their liberal counterparts, the term entered the formal political lexicon when Sen. Orin Hatch used the term on the Senate floor on September 12, 2007, to describe MoveOn.org’s “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” advertisement in the New York Times.

But there is a real question about who the real nuts are in this story. The headline to Hinderaker’s hatchet job on Ms. Simpson was: “A Conspiracy So Lunatic…”

The evidence suggests, however, that Hinderaker is among the lunatic fringe, not Jill Simpson.

In the lead smear, Hinderaker calls Ms. Simpson “an unusual woman” and describes her, based supposedly on unnamed sources, as “a very strange person” who “lives in her own world.”

It is obvious what he is trying to accomplish with this nonsense. But we suspect anyone who knows Hinderaker might say the same thing about him. Does he claim that he is a normal, mainstream model of good behavior who lives in the world of reality? Of course not.

He doesn’t believe in science at all, apparently, which may make him normal in various religious cults operating on the fringes of American society, but not in the educated world where facts matter.

He says Ms. Simpson “has scratched out an uncertain living in DeKalb County, Alabama.”

Any cursory check of her career shows she has done quite well as a lawyer over the past 20 years, not only representing the good people of her part of the world in divorces, bankruptcies and Social Security cases, but also representing clients with multi-million dollar contracts who work directly with federal emergency officials to clean up after major storms such as Hurricane Katrina.

Ms. Simpson is also described as “the daughter of rabid Democrats,” which is such a patently stupid lie that any cub reporter could check and find out not to be true. As I reported in the five part series I did telling Ms. Simpson’s story almost one year ago, her father was a Democrat who knew George Wallace well, but her mother’s entire family were lifelong Republicans.

I have sat at the dinner table with Ms. Simpson’s mother and listened to family stories and talked politics, so I happen to know she is a huge fan of Republicans such as Tom Delay to this day, who awarded her the National Leadership award for the National Republican Congressional Committee in 2003. She was somewhat shocked to read that she was considered such a “rabid Democrat,” Ms. Simpson said, considering that she also sat on the RNCC Business Advisory Counsel as a special adviser and honorary chair.

This lawyer blogger, who has no training or credentials as a journalist, claims Ms. Simpson was “rarely if ever been known to participate in politics as even a low-level volunteer” and this whopper: “Those who know her in DeKalb County scoff at the idea that she is a Republican at all.”

Well, it just so happens I was present at Jill Simpson’s property auction two weeks ago and interviewed about 20 people who have known her all her life who said she was a die-hard Republican who volunteered to work for GOP candidates in races all the way back to the 1980s, including the races of Governor Bob Riley. As I have reported before, she never claimed to be a paid staff member of those campaigns, so there is no credence to the attack on her on that front. Like many lawyers who are politically active, there is ample evidence her volunteer work as an investigator and her army of volunteers who post political signs has made a difference over the years.

But that does not deter Hinderaker’s libelous attack on her.

He goes on to say Ms. Simpson’s “house and law office were on the auction block. Rumor has it that she is leaving DeKalb County for good and heading for the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Jill Simpson, who barely got by in Alabama, is now toasted by the national Democratic party and featured on network and cable news. All this because she has testified – without a shred of supporting evidence – to a conspiracy so vast as to be not just implausible, but ridiculous.”

Ms. Simpson has openly admitted that turning against the Bush and Riley political machines hurt her law business for the past year, which is not surprising when you study the cases of whistleblowers in other cases – especially those who take on the Bushes and Karl Rove.

Siegelman still clings to the idea that his support of Al Gore in 2000 and his opposition to Bush was behind the initial investigation of him. Considering the evidence of a Justice Department turned rogue now coming up in cases in state after state, this should not come as a shock to anyone. So why does it still elude the understanding of right-wing bloggers and the corporate press in Alabama?

The grapes of wrath indeed.

As a matter of fact, Ms. Simpson held an auction of some of her extensive property holdings in order to buy a house and open a law office in Washington. She sold her burned down house for $57,000, not bad in a depressed market. And she sold her law office and an out building next door, along with the land next to the Rainsville City Hall and a city park, for $300,000. Not exactly a pauper’s return on her investment of about $65,000 a number of years ago. The city wanted the land anyway to fill out it’s growing municipal complex. Her office building may very well be used for the new Dekalb County satellite courthouse.

She rejected the bid on a 38-acre farm she still owns with a $150,000 lake on it. And she is keeping the house in Rainsville where she still lives with her mother and three children. When she is away working in DC, her secretary will still be working full time on her practice in Rainsville.

Yet without ever having met Jill Simpson, Hinderaker goes on to attack her mental health and the work of CBS’s “60 Minutes” on the story, all while defending the disgraced Karl Rove. He repeats the myth perpetrated by the Birmingham News that she has somehow changed her story several times over the past year.

Since I told the whole story based on an on the record interview almost a year ago, I can attest to the fact that the story has never changed. It’s just a complicated story with a host of characters, and different news outlets pick up on different aspects of the story in the retelling.

My favorite line in Hinderaker’s uninformed rant comes near the end, when he says, “Simpson’s story is unbelievable and contradictory on so many levels that it cannot bear a moment’s inspection.”

So that’s why he is spending so much time and space trying to debunk it?

Then, in his defense of “the architect” of Bush’s elections and the man who turned the Alabama Supreme Court into part of the right-wing conspiracy, he says with a straight face, “Karl Rove has become the man who cannot be libeled.”

As a lawyer, Hinderaker should know better. He knows that Karl Rove is a public figure and a former high-level public official and therefore would face a high bar in claiming libel in any court of law in this land.

Ms. Simpson, on the other hand, was unknown to the general public one year ago and has never held a government post, so it would be much easier for her to claim that he is libeling her – and win.

Of course that’s not the real issue here. No one is suing anyone for libel, at least not yet.

There is an all out fight going on for the political soul of the country, however. And from this vantage point, where facts matter, it looks like Hinderaker and his ilk better look out for true believers like Jill Simpson, as well as the power of the pen from real journalists, bloggers or otherwise.

And they might want to look out over their shoulders for the wrath of God. Somehow we don’t think if Jesus were to come back today he would be hanging out with the liars and thieves who have been running this country into the ground for the past seven and a half years. Let the river of blood flow – with their blood.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
- Battle Hymn of the Republic

Now for a suggestion from Jill Simpson on how to compel Karl Rove to testify about his knowledge of White House involvement in the political prosecution of Don Siegelman.

Perhaps House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers should send out the Sergeants at Arms of the House to arrest Rove and drag him before the committee. It would constitute a new use for the office to be sure. But in these uneasy times, why not turn to the Constitution itself to save it?

Those of us in the “reality-based community” are tired of seeing the letter and the spirit of the Constitution shredded in the name of corporate monarchy. Holding Rove and Bush accountable are essential steps to restoring the world’s trust in pluralistic democracy.

“The truth is still marching on,” Ms. Simpson said, as she said it would last summer when she was humming the Battle Hymn of the Republic when the first attacks on her hit the press.

“I’ve marched myself to Washington, now we’re going to march Karl Rove up there to testify,” she said in an interview Sunday. “We’re not going to give up until the truth marches on.”

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. of GoLeft TV and Air America’s Ring of Fire talks with former Alabama governor Don Siegelman about the political motivations behind his prosecution.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, the Michigan Democrat, and Committee Members Linda Sánchez (D-CA), Artur Davis (D-AL), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) announced three critical actions today in the Committee’s investigation into allegations of selective or poltiically-motivated prosecution in the Justice Department.

The Members today invited Karl Rove to testify before the committee, urged the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate those allegations and demanded that Attorney General Michael Mukasey provide additional documents in the case.

Today’s actions result from the Committee’s majority staff report, also released today, which details the cases, interviews and documents they have reviewed since the Committee began its investigation last year.

“There continue to be numerous complaints of selective or politically motivated prosecution since our investigation began last year,” Conyers said. “The actions we are taking today, including calling Karl Rove to testify, are an effort to get to the bottom of this matter.”

Today’s announcement stems from the Committee’s 2007 oversight hearing on selective prosecution, during which testimony was heard and documents were entered into the record regarding cases from Alabama, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. Since the hearing, majority committee staff has continued its investigation with interviews and document collection about additional cases across the country.

“While this report is extensive and significant progress has been made in our investigation, many facts remain unknown,” Conyers said. “The Justice Department has simply not been forthcoming and I feel the only way to move this investigation forward is to seek further independent investigation and testimony from Karl Rove, who appears to be the missing link in a chain from the White House to the Justice Department.”

More information is available on the House Judiciary Committee’s Website.

Attorney Doug Jones Advises Against It

by Glynn Wilson

It looks like Don Siegelman is going to Washington in May after all.

In spite of all the advice to the contrary by House Judiciary Committee member Aurtur Davis, Birmingham’s representative in Washington, and his former lawyer Doug Jones, Alabama’s only former governor to be imprisoned says he is willing to testify under oath before Congress anyway.

When asked by Dan Abrams on MSNBC’s legal show “Verdict” whether he was still willing to go, Siegelman said, “I’m ready to go to Capitol Hill and give them whatever information I can. This is not about me. It’s about America.”

In an extensive interview with Doug Jones, the former Siegelman attorney who testified before the House Judiciary Committee last year about the political nature of the prosecution by the Bush Justice Department, he said it might not serve Siegelman’s best legal interests to go.

“He can’t really shed any light on the political end of it, except for who he is, and everybody knows that,” Jones said.

He says Davis is right in raising the risk of what the Republicans might ask about the legal case in the open forum of a Congressional hearing.

“We have to be careful that we not confuse the political part of this with what’s in Don Siegelman’s best interest,” Jones said. “There are certainly the political battles being waged by you and others, and I think that’s great. I think it’s had a tremendous effect, ultimately, on shining a spotlight on this, and on the final outcome.

“But,” he said, “at the end of the day, though, this matter is really about Don Siegelman and his life and his family’s life.”

Jones said he hopes folks will sit back and start looking at the Siegelman issue “with an eye to what is going to be in Don’s best interest.”

He talked about the way the Republicans on the committee treated him and former Attorney General Dick Thornburg.

“They don’t want to ask questions,” he said. “They just want to make speeches.”

Jones is now representing a couple of state legislators in the continuing grand jury probe of the two-year college system in Alabama led by U.S. Attorney Alice Martin, a Bush appointee.

The case seemed to fall apart a few days back when a number of legislators refused to voluntarily testify about their jobs in the community college system.

Jones advised them to consider whether they trust the U.S. attorney and the grand jury to treat them fairly, as he would advise Siegelman in deciding whether to face the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee.

“Do you trust these folks to treat you fairly?”

“If you trust them to treat you fairly then you should go,” Jones said. “If you don’t trust them to treat you fairly, you’ve got to figure that this is some kind of trap, that they are trying to whipsaw you against other statements that other people have made.”

He said a number of legislators have exerted their Fifth Amendment right not to testify against themselves before the grand jury in Birmingham, he said, “Because they don’t trust people to be fair.”

Jones said Alice Martin’s investigation has not completely fallen apart, yet.

“They are over there issuing subpoenas again this week,” he said. “Who knows who will end up testifying and who won’t. But there is just great danger with this Justice Department, I believe.”

He said there is “great danger” for Siegelman as well, when, according to Jones, “He really can’t add anything to the political facts.”

The only people now who can do that, Jones said, are former Bush political adviser Karl Rove, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez – and the people in the Public Integrity division of the Justice Department who were in on crafting the case against Siegelman.

“And they are refusing to testify,” Jones said, although WSFA in Montgomery is saying today in an uncomfirmed report that Rove issued a statement saying he would testify before the House Judiciary Committee.

Jones said he was unsure why committee chair John Conyers, the powerful Michigan Democrat, issued the statement on the day Siegelman was released asking that he be freed so he could testify, and he said Davis must not have been “in the loop” on that announcement.

“I don’t think they were thinking it through,” he said. “I think they would like to have additional hearings on this, to keep the spotlight shining,” Jones said. “I really do believe they don’t want this to die down, after the ’60 Minutes’ thing, MSNBC, the blogs and all.”

But he said the committee doesn’t have many more places to turn.

“There’s only so much you can do without getting Don and some of the other folks involved,” he said.

Conyers is still obviously pissed at Rove and other White House aides who have refused to testify in the contempt investigation, and because the Department of Justice has failed to turn over all the documents sought in the case, including thousands of lost e-mail messages that would shed a tremendous amount of light on just how politically motivated the Bush White House was about every public policy decision made.

“That’s where the real issue is going to be,” Jones said. “The failure to testify is as significant as this administration deciding it’s OK to destroy e-mails and hard drives that contained e-mails. That’s just outrageous. It’s unbelievable.”

Was it coincidence that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta announced Siegelman’s release the same day?

Jones said he thinks it was coincidence, since the court finally got the trial transcript and the full appeals briefs, which he called “outstanding.” Although he said the publicity could have sped things up some and he acknowledged that lawyers often talk about how the public spotlight can make a difference in a close decision and on the timing of things.

Jones said Siegelman’s legal team met every legal test for his release on appeal, while Scrushy’s case did not, because of his boat ride in Florida awhile back.

And Jones was far more willing than he was last summer to be critical of Chief U.S. Judge Mark Fuller. He said the problems on appeal all go back to Fuller, when he refused to make findings and incarcerated both defendants, and then refused at first to comply with the circuit court’s demand for a more detailed explanation of his ruling.

He said the legal community was surprised at Fuller’s ruling to shackle them and put them in jail – and not surprised at the appeals court’s ruling to release him.

It is still unclear whether Siegelman’s legal team will use North Alabama lawyer Jill Simpson’s affidavit in his appeal in May, although Scrushy’s legal team has already raised the issue of a conflict of interest on Fuller’s part, since he was a defense contractor doing business with the federal government while hearing the case in Montgomery.

On the appeal itself, Jones said there are substantial issues to be raised about the alleged quid pro quo – Scrushy’s appointment to the hospital regulatory board in direct exchange for contributions to Siegelman’s education lottery campaign.

While the case law does not raise the direct quid pro quo issue, he said, the way the jury was charged by the judge did raise it, considering the specific facts alleged in the indictments and since it was the only real way to prove a corrupt benefit in this case.

He said the way Siegelman was charged under the witness tampering issue raises a serious question, along with the repeated Allen charges from the judge, “where the court really seemed to wrest a verdict out of the jury.”

He also said there is a substantial question about improper jury misconduct that was never fully investigated by the judge – the allegations that some jurors read news coverage of the case online and discussed the case by e-mail.

“I don’t believe Judge Fuller did as adequate a job as he should have investigating whether those e-mails were real, and whether there was misconduct,” he said. “Perhaps the court could reverse on that. But if it’s that issue alone, they are more likely to send it back for the judge to conduct a more thorough investigation. If it gets reversed on other issues, they may not even address that issue.”

As for the ongoing federal investigations in the state, Jones said he thinks the Bush Justice Department is “overreaching” in not backing down some from the political prosecutions in Bush’s final months in office, although he’s not surprised, “Not with this administration.”

“I am thoroughly convinced that they are trying to realign the (state) House and Senate in favor of the Republican Party. I didn’t believe that for a long time,” Jones said. “But I really believe that now.”

It won’t even matter if no convictions are obtained, he said. But it will go on, “to just taint people as if they are criminals – for having a state job and also being a member of the legislature, as if that was a crime,” he said. “That’s just crazy.”

The grand jury subpoenas are just fishing expeditions to see how people got their jobs and if they worked at their jobs – “and if they can prove it,” he said, placing the burden of proof on them rather than the federal prosecutors.

He pointed out that state Attorney General Troy King had to recuse himself from aiding in the investigation because of his conflict of interest in trying to get someone hired at a community college, yet he is a loyal Republican so he is not being asked to go before the grand jury.

The few Republicans who are being looked at are those who have been at odds with the Bush and Riley party lines at times, he said.

And, he said, “The manner they are going about it, to me, is just incredible.”

The CBS News magazine show “60 Minutes” will air an interview with former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman on Sunday night’s broadcast, according to a spokesman for the network.

Siegelman was released from jail last week on an appeal bond after serving nine months in federal prison. The House Judiciary Committee is investigating Siegelman’s case as part of an ongoing probe into allegations that the Justice Department under President George W. Bush pursued prosecutions for political reasons.

Here’s the show’s blurb:

Correspondent Lesley Stahl reports on the world’s fifth largest sovereign-wealth fund. Over the winter, the fund was part of a multi-national bailout of Wall Street. In his first interview as the new president of China’s government-controlled $200 billion China Investment Corporation, Gao Xiqing says his fund’s intentions are purely financial when it invests in companies and countries. “It is our policy not to control anything,” Gao says. Calling himself a passive investor, Mr. Gao vowed China will not buy controlling stakes in any company or use its investment to exert influence or steal technology. He also promises the fund will be transparent and not secretive. Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers applauds the new openness Gao displays, but tells Stahl, “As Ronald Reagan said, ‘trust and verify.’ I think this is an issue our government does need to pay close attention to.”

Next, the question of why the U.S. went to war and one Pentagon insider’s answer may surprise you. “What we did after 9/11 was look broadly at the international terrorist network from which the next attack on the United States would come,” says Douglas Feith, the former under secretary of defense for policy and the No. 3 person in the Pentagon’s hierarchy from 2001 to 2005. “Our main goal was not merely retaliation for the 9/11 attack, it was preventing the next attack.” Feith tells correspondent Steve Kroft, “In an era where weapons of mass destruction can put countries in a position to do an enormous amount of harm, the old idea of having to wait until you actually see the country mobilizing for war doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Then, NASA is proposing to go where no man has gone before: Mars. There have been pictures and analysis of the planet from robots, but scientists say a man could do in a minute what takes a robot a day. Correspondent Bob Simon reports on the obstacles to this mission that must begin with a return to the moon to test new equipment and systems astronauts will need for the longer, more dangerous flight to the red planet. Landing on Mars will be quite a challenge, says scientist and Mars expert Steve Squyres. “The accuracy with which you need to target a landing site on the surface is like throwing a basketball from New York to Los Angeles and having it go through without touching the rim.”

These stories today, along with an update on “The Prosecution of Governor Siegelman”, and Andy Rooney does a drive-by on this Sunday’s 60 Minutes.

April 6 on ’60 Minutes’

Also today, the New York Times ran a national news feature on the Fear and Loathing in Alabama’s State House, about the continuing political prosecutions planned by Bush’s appointee to the U.S. Attorneys office in Birmingham, Alice Martin.

I am working on a story about both of these cases based on an extensive interview with Birmingham attorney Doug Jones. And, I’m thinking about a Sunday column on “Victory Gardens” and “Victory Gin.” Check back in a little while for more…

Picasso’s Don Quixote

Fox 6 News in Birmingham had the story Sunday on the broadcast at 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. on how the independent Web Press influenced the case of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.

A news team interviewed me and Roger Shuler of the Legal Schnauzer blog this afternoon in Picasso’s Blog Bunker, a.k.a. “The Bunker.”

The sign on the door is a print of Picasso’s depiction of Don Quixote. If you don’t know what that means, well, do some Google research.

Siegelman Released from Prison; Did Bloggers Play a Role?

The reporter seemed interested to learn about how blogs work, and especially the comment feature. The post we did on the great “60 Minutes” black out in the Tennessee Valley got 99 comments, in case she or anyone else is interested. This has to be close to a record for blog comments in Alabama…

Siegelman Prosecution Questions Answered on ‘60 Minutes’

House Judiciary Panel Moves Forward on Political Justice Investigation

by Glynn Wilson

Glynn Wilson

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman on trial

Don Siegelman will be free at last Friday morning after spending nine months in a Louisiana prison, and he will be on his way to Washington in early May to testify before Congress about the politics behind his prosecution at the hands of a Justice Department that has been called “out of control,” where politics mattered more than justice under President George W. Bush and his political brain Karl Rove.

Chances are Siegelman will see no more jail time in a case that should have ended in a mistrial in 2006, when jurors violated their oath against the standard charge by Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller and based their decision on reading online news reports and pressure from improper communications carried out by e-mail.

Writing for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, judges Susan H. Black and Stanley Marcus, just days after finally obtaining the long-awaited transcript from the two year old trial, ordered his release saying he proved he was not a flight risk and there are significant questions worthy of a full hearing on appeal.

“After a thorough review of this complex and protracted record, we conclude Siegelman has satisfied the criteria set out in the statute, and has specifically met his burden of showing that his appeal raises substantial questions of law or fact,” they wrote in the four page order.

Mobile attorney Vince Kilborn told a Montgomery TV news station he was at a loss for words at the surprisingly quick announcement, coming on the heals of an inquiry by U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, after touring a Louisiana prison, asking the Justice Department to release Siegelman so he could testify about the politics behind his prosecution.

Kilborn then said Siegelman would be released sometime Friday and the legal team will continue working on briefs to get Siegelman’s conviction reversed.

“His wife and his daughter, Dana, are driving out to get him,” Kilborn said. He called it “a big win in a very long war. It’s a good feeling. He’s an innocent man and he’s been in prison for nine months.”

The House panel has been investigating claims Rove was involved in the dismissal of at least nine U.S. attorneys, as well as the prosecution of at least three Democrats who served as public officials, including Siegelman, who served as Alabama’s governor from 1999-2003.

The tainted jury convicted him and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy of bribery, conspiracy to commit mail fraud, mail fraud and obstruction of justice, but acquitted him of other charges, including racketeering and extortion.

While Siegelman maintained that the case against him was political for months leading up to his trial and then his sentencing in June 2007, it was a signed affidavit in May 2007 and later sworn testimony by North Alabama Republican lawyer Jill Simpson that became the key evidence bringing the case to national attention.

That story hit the New York Times and Time magazine in June. Then, following an in-depth report in the Locust Fork Journal days later, New York lawyer and writer Scott Horton began blogging about the case at Harpers.org. The story made its way finally onto the CBS investigative magazine show “60 Minutes” last month, and was then picked up by hundreds of bloggers.

Rove resigned from the White House last August, days after Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez also walked away in the wake of Ms. Simpson’s agreement to testify under oath in Washington. Rove has since declined to answer questions under oath before Congress and faces an ongoing perjury probe for his failure to appear along with former White House legal counsel Harriet Miers and Josh Bolton, Bush’s chief of staff.

The Alabama Democratic Party, which was reluctant to get out front in support of Siegelman in his election bid in 2006 while he was under the cloud of indictment, put out a press release today welcoming the news of his release.

“This is the correct step that should have been taken many months ago by Judge Fuller,” party executive director Jim Spearman said. “Fortunately the 11th Circuit is righting this wrong. The people of Alabama and this nation need to be reassured that justice is truly blind.”

Party chair Joe Turnham said he supports the House Judiciary Committee’s call for Siegelman to testify about the possible political influence within the Department of Justice.

According to House Judiciary Committee spokeswoman Melanie Roussell, “The chairman has determined it would be appropriate to hear from Mr. Siegelman himself and believes he would have a lot to add to the committee’s investigation into selective prosecution.”

“Hopefully today’s call for Governor Siegelman to testify by the House Judiciary Committee is the first step to investigate charges of partisan justice in the U. S. Attorney’s Alabama offices,” Turnham said. “We renew our call for the U. S. Attorney General to name an independent investigation to look into these serious allegations of all current political prosecutions so as to reassure the people of Alabama that the justice system is not being influenced by partisanship at any level.”

The appeals court denied former Healthsouth CEO Richard Scrushy’s request to be released pending his appeal, indicating he failed to prove he was not a flight risk.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Louis Franklin, who prosecuted Siegelman and Scrushy, told the AP he was “absolutely” surprised by the court’s ruling, but added the government would continue to contest Siegelman’s appeal.

“We lost this battle, but we’ll still fight for the conviction,” he said.

Mike Hubbard, chair of the Alabama Republican Party, told the AP he was disappointed in the ruling.

“The former Governor’s release pending appeal does not change the conviction by a jury of his peers,” he said. “It would be premature to turn this development into anything other than a formality.”

Jill Simpson said Hubbard’s response was surprising, treating the issues at stake as mere politics and not worthy of a full investigation.

“These are very serious issues,” she said. “Everyone should respect a person’s right to a fair trial under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. What he said was just distasteful and classless.”

At stake, according to Hiram Eastland of Greenwood, Mississippi, lead counsel for Siegelman, are “profound issues that should concern every American, Republican or Democrat” regarding political expression through campaign contributions.

Experts, including 44 U.S. attorneys, have said the alleged quid pro quo of Scrushy’s donations to help pay off the debt on Siegelman’s lottery for education campaign appear to be no more than typical campaign contributions, in part because none of the money went into Siegelman’s pocket.

Another Siegelman attorney, David McDonald of Mobile, said his client is “emphatically” eager to appear before the House committee.

“We welcome the inquiry,” McDonald said. “We will continue to cooperate in every way.”

No matter what happens before the House Judiciary Committee, and what ruling the 11th Circuit makes in the case, chances are Siegelman will never see another day of jail time, and may be poised for a political comeback with his newfound fame, some sources say.

Siegelman would most likely be pardoned by either Democratic candidate in the presidential race, University of Alabama political scientist Bill Stewart told the AP, if they are elected in November.

“If he’s out until January and we elect Clinton or Obama,” he said, “I expect he will be pardoned just like Scooter Libby.”

Bush commuted the sentence of Libby – the former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney – just days after Scrushy and Siegelman were hauled off to jail in shackles last summer without the benefit of 45 days to put their affairs in order before self reporting, which is typical of white collar defendants in federal court.

That drastic action fired up Siegelman’s supporters to begin a campaign to get him freed by raising a cry that echoed all over the Internet and the World Wide Web, calling Siegelman, “America’s number one political prisoner.”

The e-mail lists and blogs lit up with hundreds of comments today as the news spread of Siegelman’s release.

“When I read your e-mail I actually started to tear up,” said Butch Lambard of the South Baldwin County Democrats, a regular reader of The Locust Fork News and Journal and a member of our e-mail list.

“If we, or anyone, can organize a ‘Welcome back, Don’ party, I want to be there,” he said.

“Hopefully, there will be a homecoming celebration of some sort,” said a commenter on another list. “There should be huge fanfare for his homecoming.”

After reading all the coverage of the case today, Ms. Simpson said the 11th Circuit Court made the right decision based on the evidence and the law. And she said it was gratifying to see the House Judiciary Committee move forward with the investigation by taking testimony from Siegelman.

“He will be the best witness,” she said. “And I believe Scrushy and Siegelman will be vindicated in the end. They did not receive a fair trial, and it was political.”