Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman will be released on bond pending appeal, according to a ruling by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta today, the Associated Press is reporting.

In the ruling, the three-judge panel said Siegelman had raised “substantial questions of fact and law” in challenging his conviction.

Also today, the United States House Judiciary Committee asked the Justice Department to allow Siegelman to be released so he can testify before Congress about possible political influence over his prosecution, according to the AP DC bureau.

Committee Chairman John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, believes Siegelman “would have a lot to add to the committee’s investigation into selective prosecution,” said Melanie Roussell, a spokeswoman for the committee.

More details later…

The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that the FCC is launching an investigation into an Alabama CBS affiliate’s mysterious signal loss during a 60 Minutes segment investigating allegations former Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman was railroaded by the Republicans in the Justice Department.

According to an advance leak of the text:

FCC chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican, told reporters on Tuesday that the commission received several complaints about the 12-minute blackout of Huntsville station WHNT-TV’s broadcast in Feb. 24. The blackout occurred at the beginning of the broadcast of the 13-minute segment.

“I have instructed the staff to handle this like we do all the other complaints,” Martin told reporters. “We got some 20-odd complaints about it. I’ve asked the staff to send a letter with the complaints attached asking them to respond to it.”

WHNT general manager Stan Pylant told the Associated Press that despite claims that the blackout was a GOP-engineered conspiracy, that the problem was caused by a malfunctioning receiver at the station.

“The receiver failed at the worst possible time, and there’s nothing I can do to make some people believe it,” he told the AP. The showed the story again in its entirety during a newscast later Sunday and again Monday, he said.

Siegelman was governor of Alabama from 1999 to 2003. He was convicted on six bribery-related and one obstruction of justice charge in 2006. He began serving a sentence of more than seven years last June.

Federal prosecutors accused Siegelman of naming HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy to a hospital regulatory board in exchange for $500,000 in donations to Siegelman 1999 campaign for a state lottery. Scrushy was also convicted and is serving a prison term.

The “60 Minutes” story suggested Republican politics was behind Siegelman’s prosecution and imprisonment, a claim prosecutors deny.

It was unclear just what action the commission can take as it has little say in content outside of indecency issues. Still, Martin said he there was enough concern to get the station’s managers to tell the commission what occurred.

“I think it’s important to get the broadcaster to come forward and explain what happened in this particular incidence and not get into speculation,” he said. “The commission in all kinds of contexts asks for broadcasters to respond to complaints the public might have about the way their running their station, and anything can be brought up under license renewal.”

The Hollywood Reporter: FCC Looks Into ’60 Minutes’ Blackout

by Glynn Wilson

The long-awaited transcript from the Bush Justice Department show trial of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy is “substantially ready,” according to Siegelman’s lawyer Vince Kilborn of Mobile.

As soon as the official certification arrives from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, which could be today, he said, Siegelman’s legal team can proceed with writing the full appeal brief. That could take up to 40 days.

The transcript from the two-year old trial has been arriving in bits and pieces as the new court reporter in Montgomery works on it, Kilborn said, although much of what has already been transcribed and submitted to lawyers has to do with “acquitted conduct.” The parts of the trial transcript having to do with the RICO statutes has already been submitted, he said, which is not of interest in this case because those 25 counts were dropped.

He said they do have former Siegelman aide Nick Baley’s testimony already, which will be a major part of the appeal.

When asked about the long delay and whether he thought Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller had anything to do with it, he said no.

“I don’t think judge Fuller is purposely delaying anything,” he said. “A delay is understandable under the circumstances, when a court reporter dies. The problem is Governor Siegelman should not be in prison for a delay that is not his fault.”

But he has heard nothing from the 11th Circuit Court clerk on the motion to release Siegelman until his appeal can be heard.

There is no way for the attorneys to judge how long it will take for a ruling on the appeal.

“They could rule instantly or take forever, there’s no time limit,” he said. “I do expect them (the three judge panel) to give it serious consideration and rule promptly.”

He indicated the legal team doesn’t think the CBS “60 Minutes” show or all the attention on the Web of late will have much of an impact on the appeals court’s thinking. But then, what would you expect a lawyer to say?

As for Governor Siegelman’s frame of mind in that Louisiana prison, where he has been housed now on toilet cleaning duty for the past 8 months and counting, Kilborn said the governor was always upbeat on the phone. The hardest thing, he said, is having no contact with his constituency.

“The total lack of contact with his constituency,” Kilborn said, “has got to be killing him.”

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps is seeking an inquiry into the blacking out of a politically charged segment of the CBS News magazine “60 Minutes” by a local television station in Alabama, according to Reuters.

Copps compared the blackout to the 1960s, when civil rights footage was blacked out, and asked the chairman of the FCC to open an inquiry into the February 24 incident at WHNT in Huntsville.

“The FCC now needs to find out if something analogous is going on here,” Copps said at a luncheon with media watchdog groups. “Was this an attempt to suppress information on the public airwaves, or was it really just a technical problem?”

Copps is one of two Democratic appointees on the five-member FCC. The chairman, Kevin Martin, a Republican, said he would look into the matter but did not indicate whether he would issue a form letter of inquiry to the station.

The “60 Minutes” segment centered on the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, who was convicted in 2006 on charges of corruption, and jailed in 2007 under suspicious political circumstances. The program made the case that Siegelman had been wrongly convicted on the basis of a politically motivated case built by Republican prosecutors and White House political adviser Karl Rove.

The blackout of the segment in Huntsville prompted an editorial in The New York Times the following week raising comparisons between the incident and systematic efforts by a Mississippi TV station to suppress information about the civil rights movement during the 1960s.

The station management has denied the blackout was politically motivated and said it had failed to get the segment on the air because of an equipment failure at the station that cut off the feed from CBS. The problem was corrected a minutes or two before the end of the segment.

In a posting on WHNT’s Web site, the station’s news director, Denise Vickers, said the station had been “bombarded” with complaints and accusations that the station had sabotaged the broadcast for political reasons.

“But I assure everyone that the notion is patently false,” Vickers wrote. “Who would invite such a public relations nightmare on themselves?”

WHNT was sold along with eight other stations by The New York Times Co. last year to the private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners.

Station managers requested and received permission from CBS to re-air the segment twice in the following days.

Copps said on Monday the FCC should move quickly to “determine the facts” surrounding the incident.

“If the decision was intentional, who made the decision and why?” Copps asked. “The FCC needs to get to the bottom of this.”

It Does Happen in America

by Paul Craig Roberts

Don Siegelman, a popular Democratic governor of Alabama, a Republican state, was framed in a crooked trial, convicted on June 29, 2006, and sent to Federal prison by the corrupt and immoral Bush administration.

The frame-up of Siegelman and businessman Richard Scrushy is so crystal clear and blatant that 52 former state attorney generals from across America, both Republicans and Democrats, have urged the US Congress to investigate the Bush administration’s use of the US Department of Justice to rid themselves of a Democratic governor who “they could not beat fair and square,” according to Grant Woods, former Republican Attorney General of Arizona and co-chair of the McCain for President leadership committee. Woods says that he has never seen a case with so “many red flags pointing to injustice.”

The abuse of American justice by the Bush administration in order to ruin Siegelman is so crystal clear that even the corporate media organization CBS allowed “60 Minutes” to broadcast on February 24, 2008, a damning indictment of the railroading of Siegelman. Extremely coincidental “technical difficulties” caused WHNT, the CBS station covering the populous northern third of Alabama, to go black during the broadcast. The station initially offered a lame excuse of network difficulties that CBS in New York denied. The Republican-owned print media in Alabama seemed to have the inside track on every aspect of the prosecution’s case against Siegelman. You just have to look at their editorials and articles following the 60 Minutes broadcast to get a taste of what counts for “objective journalism” in their mind.

The injustice done by the US Department of Justice (sic) to Siegelman is so crystal clear that a participant in Karl Rove’s plan to destroy Siegelman can’t live with her conscience. Jill Simpson, a Republican lawyer who did opposition research for Rove, testified under oath to the House Judiciary Committee and went public on “60 Minutes.” Simpson said she was told by Bill Canary, the most important GOP campaign advisor in Alabama, that “my girls can take care of Siegelman.”

Canary’s “girls” are two US Attorneys in Alabama, both appointed by President Bush. One is Bill Canary’s wife, Leura Canary. The other is Alice Martin. According to Harper’s Scott Horton,a law professor at Columbia University, Martin is known for abusive prosecutions.

What was the “crime” for which Siegelman and Scrushy were convicted? Scrushy made a contribution to the Alabama Education Foundation, a not-for-profit organization set up to push for a lottery to benefit secondary education in Alabama, to retire debt associated with the Alabama education lottery proposal. Scrushy was a member of Alabama’s Certificate of Need board, a nonpaid group that oversaw hospital expansion. Scrushy had been a member of the board through the terms of the prior three governors, and Siegelman asked him to serve another term.

Federal prosecutors claimed that Scrushy’s contribution was a bribe to Siegelman in exchange for being appointed to the Certificate of Need board. In the words of federal prosecutor Stephen Feaga, the contribution was “given in exchange for a promise for an official act.”

Feaga’s statement is absolute nonsense. It is well known that Scrushy had served on the board for years, felt he had done his duty, and wanted off the board. It was Siegelman who convinced Scrushy to remain on the board. Moreover, Scrushy gave no money to Siegelman. The money went to a foundation.

As a large number of attorneys have pointed out, every US president appoints his ambassadors and cabinet members from people who have donated to his campaign. Under the reasoning applied in the Siegelman case, a large number of living former presidents, cabinet members and ambassadors should be in federal prison_not to mention the present incumbents.

How in the world did a jury convict two men of a non-crime?

The answer is that the US Attorney used Governor Siegelman’s indicted young assistant, Nick Bailey, to create the impression among some of the jurors that “something must have happened.” Unbeknownst to Siegelman, Bailey was extorting money or accepting bribes from Alabama businessmen in exchange for state business. Bailey was caught. Presented with threats of a long sentence, Bailey agreed to testify falsely that Siegelman came out of a meeting with Scrushy and showed Bailey a $250,000 check he had accepted in exchange for appointing Scrushy to the Certificate of Need board. Prosecutors knew that Bailey’s testimony was false, not only because they had Bailey rewrite his testimony many times and rehearsed him until he had it down pat, but also because they had the check. The records show that the check, written to a charitable organization, was cut days after the meeting from which Siegelman allegedly emerged with check in hand.

It is a crime for prosecutors to withhold exculpatory evidence. The Washington Post reported on February 26 that Siegelman’s attorneys have called for a special prosecutor after CBS quoted prosecution witness Bailey “as saying prosecutors met with him about 70 times. He said they had him regularly write out his testimony because they were frustrated with his recollection of events. The written notes, if they existed, could have damaged the credibility of Bailey’s story, but no such notes were turned over to the defense, as would have been required by law.”

In video documentaries available online, Bailey’s friend, Amy Methvin, says that Bailey told her that he was going to parrot the prosecutors’ line, “pay for play,” “quid pro quo.” Methvin says Bailey went into a speech about money exchanged for favors. “You sound like a robot,” Methvin told him. “You would have it memorized, too, if you had heard the answers as many times as I have heard the answers,” Bailey replied.

The prosecutors also had help from some jurors. On a WOTM Special Report hosted by former US Attorney Raymond Johnson, Alabama lawyer Julian McPhillips produced emails from two jurors about influencing other jurors in order to achieve a conviction. Jurors are not supposed to discuss a case outside the court or to consider information other than what is presented in court and allowed by the judge. The outside communication among the jurors is sufficient to declare a mistrial.

However, Federal District Judge, Mark Fuller, a George W. Bush appointee, ignored the tainted jury. Fuller’s handling of the case suspiciously favored the prosecution. He bore a strong grudge against Siegelman. Fuller had been an Alabama district attorney before Bush made him a federal judge. Fuller’s successor as district attorney was appointed by Siegelman and produced evidence that suggested that Fuller had connived with his former senior assistant in a “pension spiking” scheme, which some viewed as a fraud or attempted fraud against the state retirement system.

Despite his known animosity toward Siegelman, Fuller refused to recuse himself from Siegelman’s trial. According to the WOTM Special Report, Fuller owns a company that was receiving federal money during Siegelman’s trial. Fuller did not disclose this conflict of interest. The charges raised by 60 Minutes cast the trial as Karl Rove’s effort to rid the Republicans of the candidate they could not beat. The strange conduct of the presiding Republican judge, who had recently become a rich man as the company he owned was awarded a mass of discretionary federal contracts, only raises more very troubling questions.

The Justice Department’s answer to the accusation that it framed Siegelman is that Siegelman was indicted by career prosecutors and convicted in a fair trial by a jury of his peers. These claims are no more truthful than anything else the DOJ says. Horton reports that career prosecutors advised against the case, concluded it was a political vendetta and walked away from it. Canary’s “girls” were “flailing about trying to find loyal troopers who would shut up and do what is expected of them,” a category into which Scott Horton says Louis Franklin and his deputy Stephen Feaga fell. The jurors were presented with what Bailey’s and Methvin’s testimony indicates to be Bailey’s perjury suborned by the US Attorney’s office and misled about what the testimony actually meant.

Horton says the case was “pressed forward with brute political force.” According to Horton, Leura Canary refused to recuse herself despite her obvious conflict of interest. After she was forced to recuse herself, she continued to control the case from her office. In Horton’s words: “Her husband was managing the campaign against Siegelman and leaks from the investigation were emanating from someone at his address. But beyond this, her husband, Bill Canary, had a long, well established, close working relationship with Karl Rove covering work he did in Washington and Alabama over a period of more than 17 years. Leura and Billy Canary were close friends of, and socialized with, Karl Rove.”

On his Bush League Justice program, MSNBC’s Dan Abrams reported that a Republican attorney said under oath that “key Republicans on [Republican candidate for governor Bob] Riley’s team discussed talking to Karl Rove about the case, quoting one of them who said, “Not to worry, that he had already gotten it worked out with Karl, and Karl had spoken to the Department of Justice.’”

The Bush Justice Department first went after Siegelman during his 2002 reelection campaign. When Siegelman was first elected in 1998, the Republican Alabama Attorney General, William Pryor, began investigating Siegelman. There was nothing to investigate, but his “investigation” was the entry for Leura Canary, who federalized the “investigation.” Politically motivated leaks from the “investigation” were used in an effort to defeat Siegelman’s reelection.

It almost worked, but Siegelman narrowly won.

Unable to defeat Siegelman even with leaks from a phony investigation designed to smear him, the Republicans decided to steal the election. After all districts had reported the vote count, Siegelman thanked the voters for reelecting him and went to bed. During the night the Republicans, with no Democratic voting officials present, “recounted” the ballots in Baldwin County. Six thousand Siegelman votes that had been reported disappeared in the recount. The next morning Republican Bob Riley declared himself the winner.

The theft was so hastily arranged that the thieves forgot to change any of the other vote outcomes on the ballots. All other races had the same totals as originally reported, a statistical impossibility had there actually been a computer glitch as the election thieves claimed.

The Republican attorney general Pryor refused a recount. The Bush Justice Department and Republican federal judges looked the other way, as did the Republican propaganda sheets that masquerade as news media in Alabama.

President Bush rewarded William Pryor for his service by making him a federal judge in a recess appointment as he could not be confirmed by the US Senate.

According to MSNBC and other reports, a prosecution witness against Siegelman also made charges against Pryor and US Senator Jeff Sessions (R, AL), but neither of the Republicans were investigated.

The case against Siegelman was drawn out in the media for two more years in the hopes of smearing him forever. When Leura Canary’s false case was finally brought to court, Federal District Judge U.W. Clemon threw it out of court. Clemon cited an assistant US Attorney and an assistant state attorney general for contempt of court. All charges against Siegelman and his co-defendants were dropped on October 5, 2004.

Vindicated, Siegelman began his campaign for recovering the governorship in 2006. The word came from Washington to “take another look at the case,” a phrase that could well be understood as “get Siegelman at all costs.” Siegelman was indicted a second time on October 26, 2005, costing him the Democratic primary. The jury twice deadlocked and was twice sent back by Siegelman’s adversary, Judge Fuller. With charges of jury-tampering in the air, Siegelman was acquitted of 25 counts and found guilty of “pay for play.” Judge Fuller had Siegelman handcuffed and manacled and immediately whisked off to prison for a seven-year sentence. Normally a non-dangerous person is left at liberty while the case is being appealed.

The Siegelman case makes it clear exactly what Bush, Rove, and the disgraced Bush flunky Alberto Gonzales intended by firing the eight Republican US Attorneys. These eight refused to politicize their office by falsely prosecuting Democrats in order to achieve a Rovian political agenda. Apparently, there were only eight honest persons among the 1,200 Republican US Attorneys. Bush, Rove, and Gonzales had no problem with the other 1,192. Professors Donald Shields and John Cragan report that the Bush Justice Department has investigated seven times more Democratic than Republican officials.

Former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Terry Butts said that justice in America today is about political agendas, “not about convicting real criminals.” Butts said that Siegelman’s attorneys and allies expect reprisals from the US Attorney’s office and Alabama’s Republican establishment.

Siegelman has been in prison for over a year. His appeal cannot move forward, because Judge Fuller’s court has not produced a transcript of the trial needed for appeal. In other words, Republicans are preventing Siegelman from being released on appeal by a higher court.

Karl Rove refused to testify about the case before Congress.

On February 25, 2008, Fox “News” gave Karl Rove airtime in which to deny the accusations and evidence against him, which he did.

The Department of Justice refuses to release Siegelman trial documents to Congress. It won’t even let Congress see what Leura Canary had to say to her bosses about the ethics challenges brought against her, which they swept under the carpet.

Siegelman’s family home was broken into.

Siegelman’s attorney’s office was broken into and ransacked.

Jill Simpson’s house had a mysterious “electrical fire” and her car was run off the road.

Is a justice system that functions in this way worthy of respect? Can we believe any convictions obtained by federal prosecutors?

Reprinted with permission. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Author’s note: Scott Horton, Harper’s Online, has reported extensively and courageously on the frame-up of Don Siegelman. The “60 Minutes” broadcast is available from YouTube as is the WOTM Special Report. Brad Blog provides good coverage including a MSNBC broadcast on the Siegelman prosecution which traces it back to Karl Rove. Ernest Partridge’s Online Journal account provides additional information including the study by Professors Donald Shields and John Cragan. See also Glynn Wilson at The Locust Fork Journal and The Nation.

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman’s attorney Vince Kilborn released his three page letter today to United States Attorney General Michael Mukasey calling for a special prosecutor to look into legal irregularities in the case. You can read the letter in pdf format here.

Here’s the AP story the other day, in case you missed it on the news page: Siegelman Attorney Calls for Special Prosecutor

Kilborn will be on MSNBC tonight on the Dan Abrams show at 8 p.m. CST.

Curran Screed Part 2

We’re still waiting on that next Eddie Curran screed out of Montgomery to hit the “Internets.” We’ll post it on the news page as soon as it does…

Ad 1: What the heck. It just hit the Montgomery Independent at al.com.

Did Siegelman Get a Fair Frial? Curran, Horton Square Off

Ad 2: OK. Read it, sort of … Not much there but a mad rant at nothing. If I was any kind of a book editor, I would look at Curran’s screed askance : )

And the editors at the Mobile Press-Register still trust this guy as an investigative reporter? I mean they editorialized on his behalf…

CBS Show Guilty of Bad Journalism?

Ad 3: The more we think about this snowy saga, the more sense Roger Shuler makes. We link this on the news page under Editorials. But for context here, how about an extra booster shot against the Montgomery Brain Flu?

Deconstructing Eddie Curran

Eddie Curran and Scott Horton Go At It

Montgomery Independent Editor Bob Martin Ain’t Buyin’

Rove Admits Meeting with Jill Simpson

More Distortions Hit The Web in Siegelman’s Case

Under the Microscope

by Glynn Wilson

Sometimes in winter, even when there is rare snow on the ground in Alabama, it is better to sleep late. If for no other reason than to give the other Web publishers time to get their acts together before it’s time to put up the morning headlines.

There are some people in the South who have so little regard for what our esteemed president likes to call “the Internets,” however, that they bungle not only the online version of things, but the print edition too.

Knowing in advance that the Birmingham News was going to try one more time today to attack poor little Jill Simpson, a former life-long Republican from North Alabama, and kiss the ass of disgraced former Bush political adviser Karl Rove, I poured the coffee and began searching al.com for the headline. This is what I found:

Internet headline goes here

Upon the final click for the print version, poor Internet readers who take the time to figure it out finally get to this headline in the Opinion section: Siegelman’s Siege. It’s sort of like the Great Tennessee Valley Blackout of 2008. Obscure the story for the people who are not savvy enough or connected enough to get it.

Glynn Wilson

Don Siegelman on trial in Montgomery

But before we deal with that alternate reality, there are a couple of headlines we need to get to first.

The little Birmingham News reporters have gotten themselves a big time interview with Karl Rove, that mastermind of Bush politics who managed to take over the Alabama Supreme Court a few years back – by fooling the Birmingham and Mobile newspaper reporters with assertions of “jackpot justice” and such. You know, the same Karl Rove they used to call “Bush’s brain” – before we figured out he didn’t have one.

Rove denies lawyer’s Siegelman assertion

They bought it hook line and sinker then, and they are still buying it now. Since they don’t read things on the scary new “Internets,” they didn’t follow the story about Rove having to resign from the White House in disgrace last August in an attempt to avoid facing a subpoena to testify under oath before Congress in a host of national scandals.

Surely they ran an AP story about that in the print edition, but perhaps they were too busy to read it.

Foremost among the charges, the one that most directly affects Alabama, you know, the Birmingham News’ home turf, was the very idea that the Bush administration would fire federal prosecutors and even put former governors on trial for purely political reasons. That just couldn’t happen in the, pure as the driven snow, American judicial system, could it? And right here in honest little Alabama?

Scott Horton at Harpers.org does a fine job of refuting these stories, but we are wondering if the good people of Alabama are reading it. You see, it’s only printed on the “Internets.”

The Alternate Reality of the Birmingham News

The Net vs. The Web

Before I get into a more detailed refutation myself, let me first try one more time to explain to people the difference between the Internet and the Web. It is important, whether you get it or not.

I know this causes the folks at the Birmingham News much grief, because they are not in charge of their own Web site. They just crank out the print edition like they always have, and then turn it over to Advance Communications programmers to stick on the Web with what I like to call “shovelware” software at 4 a.m.

Since they have so little regard for the “Internets,” they don’t bother to check their headlines like they would for the newspaper. Thus the headline glitch. Sorry, but I’m still laughing: Internet Headline Goes Here, Insert Anti Siegelman Headline Here, etc.

Just so you will know, the Internet (singular) is the series of wires and computers hooked up by phone lines and cable lines all over the world that make it possible to do things like check e-mail – and get on the World Wide Web to read things like the online version of newspapers. The only way to read anything on the “Internets” is to pull up a Website in a Web browser. So the headline should have been: Web headline goes here.

Or better yet, they should have just put the actual story headline in their like everybody else : )

Since it’s obvious the programmers over at Advance don’t know the difference, and don’t care, that’s what you get.

But I suppose that is a minor thing and a difference that is lost on most people, so let’s get to the other headline.

Alternate reality goes here.

Since you can read the alternate story yourself, there’s not much need to quote from it at length. Let’s just summarize.

The poor little reporters at the Birmingham News, who are mostly relegated to writing unglamorous local stories about two-year colleges and the minor shenanigans of city councilmen in small towns and such, must get their adrenaline going pretty good when they have a chance to talk to someone as “big time” as Karl Rove. I mean he worked for THE PRESIDENT in that big White House in Washington and he is REAL IMPORTANT.

Talking to him might even get you on the front page, so why bother to ask a tough question? Just pick up the phone, hold the receiver and listen as God speaks. Take down what he says and print it as gospel.

And to heck with the word of one of our own little Alabama citizens, a lawyer no less, who HAS gone to Washington and testified under oath.

There was a time in the newspaper business when sworn testimony mattered. It was considered more believable in a “she said, he said” dispute.

Not anymore, apparently. This is the age of the “Internets,” when you can’t believe anything unless the Christian Republicans say it IN PRINT.

Nevermind also that Karl Rove is a Machiavellian atheist, and probably gay, not that there is anything wrong with that : )

But in this alternate reality, as long as our would-be king George W. Bush still loves him, Rove’s word is still as golden as the Good Book itself.

This is for the record and disputes the main allegation in the story against Ms. Simpson, to wit:

Simpson’s latest allegation that she met with Rove is one she had not made publicly before the “60 Minutes” interview, either in published reports, her affidavit or testimony before congressional lawyers.

This sentence, like another one in another Birmingham News story the other day, which I pointed out myself to editors there to no effect, is aimed like a charge at Ms. Simpson as if she did something wrong.

Simpson raised claims she has not made in previous interviews, in an affidavit or in sworn testimony before Congress.

Republican questions case against Siegelman

What are they thinking? Do they think Congress wanted to wade into the “gay” mine field on this story? With allegations floating around about Sen. Larry Craig in a Minnisota airport mens room? Of course not : )

It’s as if in this alternate print reality they live in down in that new newsroom of theirs in downtown Birmingham, they just can’t get their heads around the fact that Karl Rove worked his evil politics in Alabama just as he did in Washington.

The politics of Bush and Rove got us into this ill-conceived and costly war in Iraq and now has our economy teetering on the brink of a recession. It’s an Orwellian brand of politics that has the grand reputation of America on the ropes around the world for our willingness to go along with secret CIA prisons and torturing prisoners. And, it’s a type of politics that is willing to destroy the great American criminal justice system by using the courts to eliminate political opponents, even if they have to lie and cheat to pull it off.

There was a time when these things mattered in the newsrooms of America, and Alabama. It’s obvious now that the almighty dollar has completely taken over.

For the record, and I’ve already indicated my willingness to testify to this, I have heard from Ms. Simpson all about her dealings directly with Karl Rove, over and over again and late into the night on the telephone on many occasions. I have seen the documents which back them up.

But Ms. Simpson and her lawyer in Montgomery are not going to release any more documents until Karl Rove and the other participants in this scandal, including assistant U.S. Attorney Louis Franklin, are called to testify under oath. And for good reason. They have a pretty good case building up that might land some people around here in legal hot water themselves, including the new head of the Alabama Republican Party, and Mr. Franklin at the so-called Justice department down in Montgomery.

The House Judiciary Committee has many of the documents already. And the members, including Rep. Artur Davis of Birmingham, thought enough of them to call a hearing and not only get Jill Simpson to testify. Respected Birmingham attorney Doug Jones testified under oath as well, pointing out a series of important key events that the poor readers of the Birmingham News still do not know. He said the Department of Justice had indicated there was no case against Siegelman and that the charges were going nowhere, until someone in Washington ordered a top down review of the case – after Mr. Siegelman decided to run against Bob Riley in the 2006 election.

Could that simply be coincidence? Not likely.

Coup de Grâce

Somehow that is all lost on the Birmingham News staff, including the editorial section, where we can now get to the coup de grâce.

Then there was Dana Jill Simpson, a Rainsville lawyer who has been lobbing would-be bombshells for months about the Republicans’ alleged vendetta against Siegelman. On “60 Minutes,” she claimed Republican strategist Karl Rove personally asked her in 2001 to try to get evidence Siegelman was cheating on his wife.

A word about this: It’s not as if Rove hasn’t dabbled before in Alabama politics, and it’s certainly not as if Rove is above playing dirty.

The problem is Simpson. She has dribbled out damaging allegations in such a way as to undermine her credibility….

Well, I guess someone down there finally got onto the “Internets” and figured out that yes, Karl Rove had been here, in Alabama. And yes, he’s a dirty, sleaze ball political dirty trickster who would make George C. Wallace’s campaign bag men look like kindergarten bullies.

But it still doesn’t matter, right? Let’s just treat is as a funny, insignificant fact…

But the problem is Ms. Simpson, they say, who “dribbled out” damaging allegations? Undermined her credibility?

I mean she told the New York Times, Time magazine and me about them last June, ad nauseum. And she laid them out in the fall in documents presented under oath before Congress. It’s just that no one has reported that particular part of the story until now, and of course the Birmingham News never tried. It’s because of how the national television news media works.

The CBS News magazine show “60 Minutes” liked the part of the story about how Mr. Rove wanted Ms. Simpson to look into Don Siegelman’s sex life. It was what we call in the business “something new” or a “new angle” or “advancing the story” or “new details.” It’s not only sensational and scintillating. It’s downright sleazy. And of course it helped get the national audience interested, and I’m told it worked. The show’s ratings were off the charts – except in that part of North Alabama and Southern Tennessee where it was blacked out, of course : )

Gay Rumors

Quite frankly, I did not want to report on that part of the story because it opened the door to bring out all of the other Karl Rove allegations about Mr. Siegelman, a tactic he’s used in every political race he’s ever been involved in. That is to say, what the “60 Minutes” story points to, without revealing it, was that what Rove wanted Ms. Simpson to investigate was this: Whether Don Siegelman was gay.

In political reality, as opposed to science reality, it didn’t make any difference if the allegations were true or not. The rumor can be enough in politics.

Rove did it to Ann Richards in Texas when he was running George W. Bush’s first campaign for governor, and it worked on her. Bush won. That is well documented.

He has already done it to Hillary Clinton.

And this part is lost on the reporters and producers in New York. The same sort of rumor in Alabama helped George Wallace defeat George McMillan in the 1982 race for governor, the next closest election in the state before the 2002 race between Siegelman and Riley. If memory serves, Wallace won by something like 30 votes per precinct in Alabama’s 67 counties. I know for a fact the gay rumor was floating around about McMillan from the Wallace crowd, because I heard it myself and even repeated it to then Birmingham News managing editor Tom Bailey.

But apparently, in addition to just not liking Mr. Siegelman, the Birmingham News and Mobile Press-Register reporters actually believed the rumors. And maybe they still do. I heard those rumors in the bars of Montgomery myself back in 2004 while researching Bush’s time in Alabama in 1972, when he was AWOL from the Air National Guard and working for Red Blount’s campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Another reason I didn’t report it initially was because it is a long and complicated story with way too many characters to get down in a newspaper or magazine story. It would take a book to document Don Siegelman’s story – and now Jill Simpson’s role in it.

The other reason is that Ms. Simpson failed to find any evidence of a homosexual relationship between Mr. Siegelman and his long-time aide Nick Bailey. So why bring that to light at all?

When the New York Times and Time magazine first broke this story on June 1 of last year – based on two leaks, not investigative journalism – the focus was on the new affidavit itself that brought out sworn evidence for what Mr. Siegelman had been saying all along: It was a political prosecution directed from Washington.

The Whistleblower

Here was a Republican lawyer acting basically as a whistleblower, willing to swear that it was true, and that neither Mr. Siegelman nor Mr. Scrushy got a fair trial under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Now that is a big story, even in Birmingham, Alabama, which is why I got involved in covering it from that day forward. That weekend, I went to Rainsville and interviewed Ms. Simpson for eight hours and poured over boxes of documents and came away convinced that what she was saying, under the threat of perjury, was true.

The Birmingham News staff, or more likely the management, still don’t believe it, in part because they did not bother to investigate the story from day one. They got beat on the story by the “liberal” New York Times and the little Locust Fork Journal, published on the “Internets.” And they were not going to back down from supporting “you the man” Bush and Gov. Bob “Cowboy Boots” Riley, who have been so good for the state’s economy.

And even in the face of an extensive investigation by the producers at “60 Minutes,” they will not take a good long peak into the reality box. They have to stay in their unreality box, handed to them by loyal Bushie Republican operatives, because it is the economic box that supports them.

There’s really no other way to interpret the delusional reporting that goes on around here, except for maybe the snow. I know for a fact that some of those folks learned a better form of journalism in the universities of the South. But for the sake of the money, they will go on reporting it wrong, either because they have convinced themselves it is right. Or because their conservative bosses demand it.

The Locust Fork News-Journal will take the stand as the first news organization – and perhaps the only one in Alabama – to call for a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of the Alabama wing of the Bush Justice Department’s corrupt and political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.

Today, the Alabama Democratic Party called for a special prosecutor in a press release, along with Siegelman’s attorneys in an AP story.

Siegelman Attorney Calls for Special Prosecutor

And, the Alabama Democratic Party is also calling for a special FCC investigation of the blackout of the CBS News “60 Minutes” show last night all over North Alabama.

The release:

The Alabama Democratic Party today called on the US Justice Dept. and the US House Judiciary Committee to appoint a special prosecutor into the allegations of the political prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman after the facts and interviews were released by CBS Television Network in their 60 Minutes program this past Sunday night.

Executive Director, Jim Spearman says there is too much smoke and too many facts for DOJ and Congress to ignore. “Abuse of the federal prosecutorial system for partisan political gain must be taken very seriously. The accusations by the 52 former state attorneys general, including the former republican AG from Arizona Grant Woods should be taken into account by the US Attorney General”, Spearman says. Congress should not delay in taking the next step to call witnesses and to hold those not answering supeanoes in contempt of Congress.

For the Alabama Republican Party to issue its statement yesterday prior to the airing of the 60 Minutes segment trying to discredit CBS even before the program airs shows that indeed republicans may have something to hide. “How can the ALGOP really try to discredit a former republican AG who is now a co-chair of their US Presidential Nominee’s Arizona campaign effort,”Spearman notes.

Also today, Alabama Democratic Chairman Joe Turnham says he will send a letter to the Federal Communications Commission asking for a formal inquiry into the CBS Huntsville affiliate black out of the the Siegelman airing. It has come to the attention of many Democrats in North Alabama that the principal owners of WHNT are Bush Pioneers and major republican donors. Many suspect that enormous pressure was put on CBS to not air the Siegelman story. If CBS received political pressure to stifle the first amendment rights of the network or affiliate, the FCC and Congress should take appropriate oversight into the matter.

The blackout is highly suspicious, in spite of comments posted below in previous entries from the station blaming a technical glitch.

Station Owners’ Close Ties to Bush?

The CBS magazine show “60 Minutes” showed that the Siegelman prosecutors suppressed exculpatory evidence and lied about it to a federal judge, according to a key lawyer who reviewed the evidence in advance.

“This is devastating,” he said. “For the DOJ to fail to deny accusations of serious prosecutorial misconduct is a BIG DEAL. This is beyond smoke, it’s a raging five-alarm fire.”

Certain sources are urging people to send mails to CBS news congratulating them on running this piece and asking for more from the extensive outtakes. They can send notes to CBS using the “Contact Us” comment function at the bottom of this CBS Web page.

The transcript can be found in the comments section on the previous post.

If you have comments about the show, the blackout of the show in North Alabama or questions for Glynn Wilson, fire away…

Since Scott Horton at Harpers.org does not take comments, if you want to comment or ask about his piece:

CBS Alleges More Misconduct in Siegelman Case

Or, if you have comments or questions on Jill Simpson’s appearance on Dan Abrams’ legal show on MSNBC, post them here and help us set the record for blog comments in Alabama…

Or Scott Horton’s latest piece here:

The Great Tennessee Valley Blackout

Feel . . . free . . . to . . . comment . . . here . . .