Comments from Left Field: The White House is set to release an IG torture report. Dem Congressional staffers tell me this report is the “holy grail,” because it is expected to detail torture in unprecedented detail and to cast doubt on the claim that torture works — and its release will almost certainly trigger howls of protest from conservatives.

TAPPED: Offensive remarks?  Oh wait.  Wanda Sykes didn't say these things, Rush Limbaugh said them about Obama and other Dems, and he wasn't kidding.

Legal Schnauzer: As Texas Governor, Bush did the same thing that landed Don Siegelman in prison

Where’s the Outrage? Say what? Health Care Industry pledging $2 trillion in cuts

Pharyngula: Elephant's Wings (h/t Vagabond Scholar)

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: Just wondering...Hard Hitting journalism always provides a megaphone for frauds...Waiting for CNBC...A world without Newspapers...Clear Channel reaping the whirlwind...Newspaper Narcissism...Fire this assh*le...NYT finally prints the word 'torture'...Mustard...Play Misty for me...EFCA for very slow reporters....Kindle to the rescue... Interview with Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher Magazine...How much was Fox paid to shill Bush's War Crimes?

Dominating the discussion at this weekend's Netroots Nation conference in Austin was the urgent need to restore the rule of law now under withering assault by the Bush administration. From the suspension of habeas corpus and detainee torture to warrantless wiretapping and the politicization of the Justice Department, session after session detailed the unaccountable lawlessness of the Bush White House. And to be sure, no speaker made that case more personally than former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.

Siegelman, sentenced to 7 years in prison on trumped-up bribery charges brought by the Rove-directed DOJ, came to Netroots Nation with a simple message. Just days after Bush's Brain was a no-show before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the matter, Siegelman insisted Congress must hold Rove in contempt:

"If you believe all roads lead to Rove, this is the shortest route to get there."

On Friday, I had the opportunity to catch up with Governor Siegelman after his main-stage interview with Air America Radio host Sam Seder. Throughout our conversation, Siegelman was clear about the stakes:

"This is not about Don Siegelman. It's about restoring justice and protecting our democracy."

Continue reading »

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

You knew it was going to happen. For all his big talk about being happy to talk to the House Judiciary Committee looking into the conviction and incarceration of Don Siegelman, when push came to shove, you had to know that Karl Rove would never, ever freely respond to the HJC subpoena. CQPolitics:

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, cited executive privilege as the reason that the former White House adviser would not appear before the Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee on July 10.[..]

"Mr. Rove will respectfully decline to appear before the Subcommittee on July 10 on the grounds that Executive Privilege confers upon him immunity from process to respond to a subpoena directed to this subject," Luskin wrote.

Luskin renewed an offer that would have Rove submit to an off-the-record, untranscribed interview or answer written questions about the Siegelman case, but not the broader issue of the politicization of the Justice Department.

Not even man enough to stand up for his actions. Hear that, Karl? Not even man enough. Dan Abrams brings NYU Law School Professor Michael Waldman and former HJC counsel Julian Epstein to discuss the latest in Bush League (In)Justice:

Abrams: Okay, Michael, let me start with you: it is clear, Karl Rove is not coming. I mean, the House Judiciary Committee can say as much as they want, we're still hoping, we're still encouraging him to come, we're still insisting that he come, he's not coming. So what do they do now?

Waldman: Well, it's really quite remarkable, as you say, you can just say no to a lawful subpoena from Congress. Congress has a bunch of tools they can use. They can, of course, throw him in jail. There's a jail in the basement of the Capitol. That's probably the extreme remedy. There's all kinds of other things. They can cut off funding, they can hold up nominations, they can bring a lawsuit as has been the case in the Miers...the Harriet Miers contempt case. But what Congress has to have when it looks in its toolbox is not any of these tools but some backbone. Congress is a co-equal branch of government and it needs to stand up for its rights in this.

Backbone in Congress? What's that? I'll believe it when I see the perp walk.

Don Siegelman sat down with Air America's Thom Hartmann yesterday and made very specific allegations of election fraud against Karl Rove and the Bush administration not covered in his interview on 60 Minutes. (h/t S for audio)

(37 minutes)

[Thom Hartmann]: Right. Now, in our conversation you have suggested that the original election that you lost to Bob Riley by a few thousand votes in the middle of the night may have been stolen. That is a part of the story that has been treated as if it was radioactive by the corporate press. It has, to the best of my knowledge, I have never heard that in any of the official corporate news reports. Have you asserted that before, have you been saying this all along, or is this...

[Don Siegelman]: Well yes, we have been saying it, we have been saying it since the night of the election. I mean, we won the election, the votes were counted and were declared and then in one county which is controlled by Republicans the, after midnight when everybody went home, when the poll workers were sent home, when the media was gone, they decided to electronically recount these votes and shifted the votes and certified the vote illegally the next day. The, interestingly, Karl Rove's client sepped in, the attorney general stepped in and said, 'if anybody tries to hand count these votes we're going to put them in jail'. We initially had a green light from the local Republicans in this one area that we could come in and hand count these ballots where the electronic shift occurred.[..]

Continue reading »

Download | play Download | play (h/t BillW) *video fixed

Dan Abrams, who has been outstanding about keeping the Don Siegelman story at the forefront of his show, had Siegelman on to speak out about his incarceration and the fight in front of him to get Congress to investigate his prosecution and uncover the corruption and White House tentacles that railroad Democrats but ignore Republicans.

SIEGELMAN: We have got to seek out the truth. And I want to, again, commend you and Bush League Justice for pushing this issue forward. This case and these circumstances will make Watergate look like child`s play if Congress will dig into these things. You brought up something right before the break about two prominent Republicans who were exposed during the course of this investigation but were not pursued.

Remind me again, what was it that Congress forced to do when the details about the Watergate break in started to leak out to the general public?

Transcripts below the fold

Continue reading »

Download | play Download | play

On his new show, Verdict, Dan Abrams celebrates the court reversal on hearing Don Siegelman's appeal and his subsequent release from prison in Alabama on Friday.

Showing that he is undaunted by his time in prison, Siegelman apparently spoke to Dan Abrams by cell phone on his drive home and fingered Karl Rove as the man behind this political hit job. This appeal should be something to watch to see if Bush's Brain actually gets held accountable.

C&L Contributer Heather has put a longer version of Abrams' segment on Siegelman, with Rep. Artur Davis and journalist Scott Horton of Harper's up on YouTube.

Legal Schnauzer (h/t Scarce) brings up a point that should convince you of the power of the larger blogging community and grassroots efforts to effect change:

Siegelman's release is a testament to the power of alternative media. Without the work of blogger/journalists like Scott Horton of Harper's, Glynn Wilson of Locust Fork News, and Larisa Alexandrovna of at-Largely/Raw Story/Huffington Post/Hustler, Siegelman would have little hope of being released any time soon. Without the work of Pam Miles and her e-mail listees, Siegelman would have remained in prison for the foreseeable future. It's impossible to overstate the impact of CBS and its 60 Minutes story on the Siegelman case. But that "old media" story would not have happened without the work of folks working in the "new media."

Click for larger

DailyKos:

All roads lead to Rove. That was the message scrawled as an afterthought in the lower left-hand corner of the envelope I received in yesterday’s mail. It contained a letter from an old and dear friend of mine. His name is Don Siegelman. He is the former governor of Alabama and he is being held as a political prisoner of the Bush administration in a Federal prison in Louisiana.
They don’t allow Don the luxury of stationary so he must write his letters on whatever he can find. He wrote me on a xeroxed article he wanted me to see. [..]
When I first heard of Don being prosecuted for corruption my heart sank. I didn’t know what to think. It had been years since we’d spoken and the press made it sound awful for Don (what else?). Of course I had no idea what was really going on. Now that I do I am horrified...and furious.

Don is a formidable force in Alabama politics. His friends are loyal and his supporters enthusiastic. They re-elected him Governor in the midst of a bogus corruption trial engineered by the Bush Justice Department at the behest of Karl Rove who takes orders from you-know-who. Don campaigned for re-election throughout the early phases of the trial. On election night he was declared the winner, but Karl Rove’s minions stole the election overnight by manipulating the ballots in Baldwin County. It was classic Rovian/Republican election theft. They did it with computers and electronic voting machines. Don went to bed the re-elected Governor of Alabama, and woke up an unemployed defendant. [..]
Something that has not been reported is that they have been physically beating Don. I don’t know the extent of his injuries or exactly how many times it has happened – but it has been multiple times.
There are no words for the fury I feel. This is an outrage. And it is the most un-American thing I have ever heard. I cry bitter tears of frustration and rage.

Please everyone. We have to help Don, and we have to crush these thugs and put them out of the business of perverting our democracy. We must investigate and prosecute the responsible parties, not for political reasons, but to actually serve the interest of justice. The cause of justice calls upon us to hold these criminals accountable. We must bring them to justice and stop such travesties from ever again happening in our United States of America.

A new review of evidence suggests that an aligned group of Republican interests were pressing for -- and seeking to profit financially from -- the trial of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman on charges of bribery, according to Sam Stein of HuffPo.

Please contact Rep. John Conyers and Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairmen of their respective Judiciary committees and ask them to appoint an Independent Investigator. You can also donate to Siegelman's Defense Fund.

Maybe because I've been following the Don Siegelman case closely, but when I heard about Elliot Spitzer's pending indictment, something just didn't past the smell test. While he's admitted to involvement with a prostitution ring and I'm by no means absolving him or trying to diminish the charges, there are more than a few unresolved aspects of this that keep me from calling for his resignation.

Jane Hamsher has summed up these little niggling questions very well:

1. Why would the bank tell the IRS and not Spitzer himself if there was a suspicious transfer? Spitzer is a longtime client, a rich guy and the governor. We're talking thousands of dollars here, not millions. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense that they spotted a "suspicious transfer" made by the governor, and that this is how things began. It's possible it was just ordinary paperwork the bank had to file with the government whenever some particular flag was raised, but if that's the case, why did the DoJ go to DefCon 3?

2. What is a USA doing prosecuting a prostitution case? This isn't normally what the feds spend their time with.

3. Mike Garcia is a Chertoff crony. Sources familiar with the investigation say that he sent a prosecution memo to DC two months ago asking for authority to indict a public figure (Spitzer). Which means they had their case made long before the wire tap of February 13. Why did they then include this line from that conversation in the complaint?

LEWIS continued that from what she had been told "he" (believed to be a reference to Client-9) "would ask you to do things that, like, you might not think were safe -- you know -- I mean that...very basic things...."Kristen" responded: "I have a way of dealing with that...I'd be like listen dude, you really want the sex?...You know what I mean."

This salacious detail does not seem like it's necessary to make their case, and appears to be added for no other purpose than to destroy Spitzer's career.

Scott Horton (who covers the Siegelman case extensively) and Digby have similar questions, while Glenn Greenwald notes the double standard between the breathless media coverage of Spitzer's scandal and David Vitter. And Will Bunch looks at the incredible history of the Mann act.

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

With any luck, the attention that Dan Abrams has committed to bring to the Don Siegelman case will manifest itself into pressure on the Alabama State Attorney General to move towards examining this miscarriage of justice. On last night's show, Abrams spoke with former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods, who was interviewed for the 60 Minutes piece and is one of the 52 current and former Attorneys General who have signed a letter raising concerns of politicization in this case. Woods again pointed out some of the red flags that have that bipartisan group calling for a special investigation:

I think our main point is there’s a million red flags on this case. And that doesn’t necessarily mean it will all come to something, but it means there’s just too much out there for it not to be investigated. For context, you should remember that the governor, when he ran for re-election, went to bed having been declared by everybody the winner, he was awakened a few hours later and said, “oh, um, you know, there was some…a foul up in a rural county and uh some votes were switched, so now you lost.”

Now we flash forward a few years, he’s going to run to try to get back into office and they bring charges against him and they go to trial. Pretty big deal, charge a former governor who is getting ready to run again. And the prosecutor gives his opening argument and the judge dismisses the case after the opening argument. That just doesn’t happen. That’s how bad that case was, and they still don’t give up. So they go after him again, and have now a different prosecutor, as you mentioned, the wife of one of the people who have been working for years politically against him and then I think Mr. Kilborn has said that they were all assured that nothing was going to come of it, that the charges were no good. All of the sudden there’s a top to bottom review and charges are brought.

If you would like to send Siegelman your support, his address is here. If you'd like to call for an investigation, you can contact the Alabama State Attorney General's office here. Larissa Alexandrovna has much, much more...

To be sure, the real outrage in the scandal surrounding trumped up charges against former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (D) are the charges themselves. Local Republican officials, in apparent conjunction with Karl Rove, railroaded a sitting governor because he was a Democrat. It was political corruption at its most pernicious.

But if we also take a moment to consider the Alabama media, the decisions of WHNT, the CBS affiliate in northern Alabama, are almost comical in their ineptitude.

In 1955, when WLBT-TV, the NBC affiliate in Jackson, Miss., did not want to run a network report about racial desegregation, it famously hung up the sign: “Sorry, Cable Trouble.” Audiences in northern Alabama might have suspected the same tactics when WHNT-TV, the CBS affiliate, went dark Sunday evening during a “60 minutes” segment that strongly suggested that Don Siegelman, Alabama’s former Democratic governor, was wrongly convicted of corruption last year.

The report presented new evidence that the charges against Mr. Siegelman may have been concocted by politically motivated Republican prosecutors — and orchestrated by Karl Rove. Unfortunately, WHNT had “technical problems” that prevented it from broadcasting a segment (the problems were resolved in time for the next part of the show) that many residents of Alabama would no doubt have found quite interesting.

After initially blaming the glitch on CBS in New York, the affiliate said it learned “upon investigation,” and following a rebuke from the network, that “the problem was on our end.” It re-broadcast the segment at 10 p.m., pitting it against the Academy Awards on rival ABC, before Daniel Day-Lewis won the best actor Oscar. As public criticism grew, it ran it again at 6 p.m. on Monday.

WHNT’s president and general manager assured viewers that “there was no intent whatsoever to keep anyone from seeing the broadcast.”

No, of course not, it was only the most remarkable set of coincidences in modern broadcast history.

Continue reading »