AmericanCrossroadsWatch.org, a group of national watchdog organizations dedicated to clean elections and corporate accountability, launched a new campaign this week to try to stop Karl Rove from using dirty tricks and dirty corporate money to manipulate the mid-term elections by buying candidates who will support Big Business and deregulation.

Rove created American Crossroads (“AC”) several months ago in a sort of hostile takeover of the Republican National Committee, and funded it by joining forces with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a cabal of billionaire corporate barons opposed to any common sense regulation, health care, environmental protection or financial accountability, according to the group. AmericanCrossroadsWatch.org filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission and Department of Justice based on AC’s questionable activities.

“We are fighting back on behalf of the 87 percent of Americans who do not want corporations buying politicians and controlling our government,” said attorney Kevin Zeese, the group’s spokesman. “We are telling Karl Rove to keep his dirty politics and dirty money out of our elections.”

The chamber’s chief counsel, Steven Law, was named AC’s CEO. AC plans to amass more than $50 million from companies making secret donations, and spend that money to influence elections and buy candidates, the group claimed in a press release.

AmericanCrossroadsWatch.org says that AC’s hostile takeover of the duties of the RNC without the concomitant regulatory accountability appears to be “illegal on its face.” Also, the secret funding of AC from corporate CEO’s, without board or shareholder approval and without disclosure, “smacks of money laundering” and campaign finance violations.

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Let Tebow Cry…

Glynn Wilson

Paul “Bear” Bryant’s image casts a shadow over Tuscaloosa and all of Alabama. One spot stands open on the walk of fame, for the next coach to win a national championship. Will it be Saban? This year?

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

Class. It’s been awhile since we’ve heard that term used in the way Florida quarterback Tim Tebow did, through his tears Saturday night after losing the Southeastern Conference championship game, to describe the University of Alabama and its football team.

He was not using the term as a noun to talk about a group of students or an economic or social class of people. He was using it as an adjective to describe a world-class program characterized not only by its drive for “success” through “excellence,” but also by the way Alabama got the job done this year, with determination, practice and perseverance yes, but also with style, integrity, dignity and yes character, humility and grace.

That is a lesson we all should learn, if possible. It’s not easy. But life never is, is it?

While sports and American culture have both been diminished by “trash talk” over the past couple of decades, and our politics has been diminished by partisan rancor, the Georgia Dome Saturday night was the site of a remarkable departure from that nastiness. Tebow deserves credit for that, although some Alabama fans have not shown the same class toward him, which just goes to show you that class does not always trickle down to the masses.

Due to the way the Alabama defense shut down Tebow, and due to Mark Ingram’s dominance on the field, he will now most likely win the coveted Heisman Trophy for NCAA player of the year. He fully deserves it not only because of how many yards he gained or the number of touchdowns he ran. He deserves it because of his personal character and class in the way he handled it.

He never once said on camera he deserved the award. The same was true for Nick Saban, until that brief TV interview Saturday night, when he once again downplayed it by placing an emphasis on “the team.”

In case this is a burning question on the minds of people all the over the country and the world today, as I suspect it is judging by the remarks on my Facebook home page, here’s an essay on class I’ve been thinking about writing for some time. This is not just about football or sports in general. It is about life, which includes journalism and politics.

It is a story of why Nick Saban is the quintessential college football coach and was never suited to the pros. The short answer? Saban is at heart a teacher. By the time the players get to the pros, they can’t be taught anymore. By then, they either have it or they don’t.

It is a story also of why the United States became the greatest country the world has ever known, and the story of why the New York Times became the greatest newspaper ever published.

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Karl Rove has been the mastermind of a new movement called the Shift of Blamers — or SOBs — who have replaced the birthers, deathers, Tenthers, and teabaggers as the most successful anti-Obama group thus far.

Satire by R J Shulman

NEW YORK, (PTSD News) — Karl Rove announced today on Fox News that the Republican strategy to shift the blame for all of America’s woes from anything the Republicans may have caused to Obama and the Democrats is a complete success. “Our goal as Republicans, which was so eloquently spoken by Rush Limbaugh, is not to be the party of ideas or solutions, but the party that makes Obama fail. And the best way to do that is to shift blame for everything we Republicans screwed up to the current president.”

Rove has been the mastermind of a new movement called the Shift of Blamers — or SOBs — who have replaced birthers, deathers, Tenthers, and teabaggers as the most successful anti-Obama group thus far. The SOBs are made up of prominent Republicans, Fox News and the vast majority of talk radio.

“We needed to defeat or water down any health care reform that would cut into the profits of our friends who run the health care industry,” said Rove, “and luckily for us, the Democrats haven’t learned that lies always trump facts and that every congressman has his price.”

“Health care was just the start,” Rove said, “we’ve turned Bush’s blunder in Afghanistan into Obama’s war in which if he sends more troops in, he’s a warmonger, and if he pulls out, he’s a gay French chicken. It took Bush eight years to completely mess up the economy, but we have taken less than eight months to blame the entire mess on Obama, bank bailouts and all.”

“When it comes to women’s right, traditionally a Democrat issue,” Rove said, “we have been able to pin the sexist label on the liberals for their harsh treatment of Sarah Palin and Carrie Prejean. This is surely some of my best work since I was able to convince millions of Americans that George W. Bush should be in the White House rather than the nut house.”

“With the help of all of those SOBs, we will regain Congress and the White House in no time,” Rove concluded. “Remember, it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you shift the blame.”

Originally published by Citizens for Legitimate Government

Alabama’s Supreme Court Continues to Screw Citizens

Guest Column
by Roger Schuler

The Alabama Supreme Court apparently was not content to cheat the public with the outrageous ExxonMobil ruling. It pulled pretty much the same fraudulent stunt again the other day, with a few slight variations.

In late 2007, the Alabama Supremes stunned many observers by overturning most of a $3.6 billion jury verdict in a fraud case against oil giant ExxonMobil. That decision robbed state coffers of badly needed funds at the outset of the Bush recession.

The high court was at it again recently, overturning a $274 million verdict in a fraud case against three pharmaceutical companies. The Supreme Court found that AstraZeneca, Novartis, and GlaxoSmithKline did not defraud the state in pricing Medicaid prescription drugs.

This issue goes well beyond Alabama. Similar lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies are pending in other states, including Mississippi, South Carolina, Utah, Hawaii and Alaska.

How did the Alabama Supreme Court come to its conclusion? The key issue was “reliance,” one of four elements in a fraud case. Essentially, the high court found that the pharmaceutical companies tried to cheat the Alabama Medicaid Agency (AMA), but AMA did not “rely” on the misrepresentations, so a fraud did not occur.

That is like saying: “I tried to steal $500 out of your wallet, and I had my hand on the cash and was pulling it out, but you caught me — so I didn’t do anything wrong.”

If you think there is something wrong with that reasoning, join the crowd.

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One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

Here’s a story about a psychological theory perhaps only a political animal like Karl Rove could love. I’m sure he’s familiar with the story of the invisible pink unicorn.

In Tuesday’s New York Times, there is a perfectly fine social science story interpreting a perfectly fine little academic study advancing our knowledge of learning by one baby step.

How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect

But the overall effect is the equivalent of the story of the frog in the well, or what Lenin called, one step forward two steps back.

Yes, as the article reiterates, “researchers have long known that people cling to their personal biases more tightly when feeling threatened.” Think of Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine.

Furthermore, “After thinking about their own inevitable death, they become more patriotic, more religious and less tolerant of outsiders.”

And yes, when insulted, people profess more loyalty to friends. When told they’ve done poorly on a trivia test, people even identify more strongly with their school’s winning teams.

That should come as no shock to anyone observing the behavior of people in places such as Alabamaland, where a winning football team is sometimes about the only thing that keeps a people going.

The newspaper article summarizes a series of new social science papers in the journal Psychological Science by Travis Proulx, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Steven J. Heine, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia.

The authors argue that their findings are variations on a familiar theme: How humans attempt to maintain meaning or coherence in their lives in spite of the appearance of disorienting chaos. The brain evolved to predict, in other words, and it does so by identifying patterns. Check.

The studies are part of a long line of research that shows how people in the grip of the uncanny, as Freud called it, tend to see patterns even sometimes where none exist. They are more prone to conspiracy theories, in other words, since the drive to find order satisfies itself — regardless of the quality of the evidence.

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Guest Column
by Rep. John Conyers

In the Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove says that I — and others — owe him an apology for allegations that have been made about him during the course of the House Judiciary Committee’s investigation into the dismissal of United States Attorneys and related issues about the politicization of the Department of Justice.

Mr. Rove’s self-serving assertions on this subject are simply inconsistent with the documents that the Judiciary Committee recently released and his claims have been discredited by the analysis of the documents and reporting on these matters by credible news outlets across the country. Anyone interested in the truth can read the documents for themselves (here) or the reporting on these matters from the top papers in the U.S. — The Washington Post (here) and The New York Times (here) — as well as alternative, independent news sites such as The Locust Fork News-Journal (here).

Mr. Rove’s points are largely a repeat of his prior discredited statements, and the purpose of this post is not to rehash Mr. Rove’s rehash.

What may be of broader interest is the apparent editorial decision of the Wall Street Journal to prominently feature Mr. Rove’s self-serving assertions in its editorial pages, while burying and redacting the original story documenting the facts contained in these documents in the news pages.

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Glynn Wilson

Judge U.W. Clemon criticized The Birmingham News and the Bush Justice Department at The National Press Club

by Glynn Wilson

WASHINGTON, D.C. — One of the most significant problems corrupting American society and politics over the past eight years is finally getting the public spotlight it deserves in the nation’s capital. You can’t run a successful democracy without an honest system of justice that is removed as far as possible from politics, according to a panel of experts who spoke at one of the most venerated institutions in the United States, the National Press Club.

Some of the people who came from as far away as Alaska, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia were a bit disappointed when it was announced that former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers were not able to make it.

But Elliot Mintzberg, chief counsel for oversight investigations of the House Judiciary Committee, who came in Conyers’ place, insisted that all the investigations are continuing full bore into the politicization of the justice system by the Bush White House and Department of Justice — in spite of a certain camp in Washington who would rather “look forward, not back.”

Glynn Wilson

House Judiciary Committee investigator Elliot Mintzberg

He said the investigation into the firings of U.S. attorneys and the improper interference of Bush’s White House staff, including political aide Karl Rove, “is not yet done.”

In response to my direct questions about when Karl Rove will be called to testify and the controversy over whether his testimony will be fully on the record and subject to contempt laws, Mintzberg said a date has been set, but he could not reveal it. He insisted the committee will fully probe Rove on the record in a transcribed deposition that will make him subject to perjury if he lies to Congress. He insisted the deposition will be released to the public when the time comes just like the testimony of other witnesses, including Alabama attorney Jill Simpson’s, who made the trip to Washington for the forum. And he said that might very well lead to public hearings.

Mintzberg said investigations are continuing on several fronts.

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Guest Column
by Roger Shuler

When commentators call for investigations of possible wrongdoing by members of the Bush administration, the discussions usually have an international focus. Subjects such as torture, illegal detentions, and spying tend to carry the day.

But a recent Gallup poll shows Americans are concerned more with domestic wrongdoing, such as politicization of the Justice Department, than with international issues, as reported by the Locust Fork News-Journal Feb 13.

The poll showed that 71 percent of respondents favored a criminal investigation or independent probe of possible attempts to use the Justice Department for political purposes. By contrast, 62 percent favored investigations into torture and 63 percent on warrantless wiretaps.

While national opinionmakers tend to focus on war crimes, folks in the heartland seem to be more concerned about the notion that Bush officials have prosecuted and imprisoned people for political reasons, not because they committed crimes.

And so we take time here at Legal Schnauzer to send this vital message: We must not forget our political prisoners. And we must take all necessary steps under the law to see that they are vindicated — and that the appropriate people are held accountable for their suffering.

I can think of no better way to remember the victims of the Bush “justice” system than to spotlight a recent three-part documentary produced by Project Save Justice. It is titled “The Political Persecutions of Karl Rove,” and it is compelling viewing. My hope is that every American, in one forum or another, will see it and be moved to action.

The documentary opens by noting that many Americans have heard about the apparent political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. But most Americans do not know that the U.S. House Judiciary Committee has received information about roughly 1,000 questionable prosecutions. And of the 700 investigations conducted by the Bush Justice Department since 2001, about 87 percent targeted Democrats.

Here is Part I of “The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove:”

Part II focuses on the methods used by the Bush DOJ, noting the critical role played by Republican-appointed judges and compliant mainstream news outlets. It also notes that supporters of Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John Edwards were frequent targets. One Edwards supporter, Michigan attorney Geoffrey Fieger, notes that his office was raided by 100 FBI agents. “You could rob a bank and murder someone and get maybe two or three agents on your tail,” Fieger says. The raid on his office, he says, was “unprecedented in American history.”

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Glynn Wilson

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman in Atlanta for his appeal hearing Dec. 9, 2008

by Glynn Wilson

The ancient, conservative judges on the decidedly Southern Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta surprised me with their ruling in the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman last Friday, while we were setting up camp totally off the grid in the Great Smoky Mountains.

So it has taken me several days of catching up on other work and some rest after 12 days on the road to get around to reading and evaluating their 68 page screed, which basically upholds all but two of the guilty verdict counts against Sieglmen and HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy issued by Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Fuller in Montgomery.

I must say for all the balderdash in the ruling about Siegelman’s actions on some motorcycle cover-up conspiracy theory undermining confidence in government, certainly by any objective standard a minor distraction not worthy of the tax dollars and the federal court’s time in this case, I came away with less confidence in the one branch of government I have come to trust the most over the years: The federal courts.

Growing up in the South in a state where Governor George Corley Wallace ruled with an almost totalitarian fist for most of my childhood and early adult life, my confidence in state government has never been great. Nor did Republicans Guy Hunt or Fob James inspire much confidence in my home state government either, and forget the Alabama legislature. Goat Hill has been a joke my entire life.

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