Update on "60 Minutes" segment on the conviction of former governor of Alabama Don Siegelman

You can watch it here.

Action Alert: Watch CBS's "60 Minutes" this evening

This evening at 7 pm (PST/EST) I will be watching the “60 Minutes” segment on "GOP Operative: Rove Sought to Smear Dem."

I’ve been following the tragic story of the imprisonment of former governor of Alabama, Don Siegelman, since June of last year, posting about it on June 30th, “Where is the outrage?”, July 1st , "Read Rove's lips," and July 15th, "Keep your eyes on the Siegelman case."

Scott Horton, who blogs for Harper's at No Comment, has done the best job of keeping up with the Siegelman case, with his 2007 posts available here. He also covers the conviction and incarceration of Siegelman in "Vote Machine" in the March, 2008 issue of Harper’s.

If you think Rove is out of the picture now that he’s no longer Bush’s advisor, think again. On April 10, 2007, TPMuckraker post included Rove’s responses to questions after his speech on "voter fraud" to the Republican National Lawyers Association convention in April of 2006:

QUESTION: In 2008, what states do you think are going to be the swing states?

ROVE: You know, I think in 2008, there will be a number of states which will be competitive that are familiar states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, maybe not Florida, Colorado, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nevada, Iowa, New Mexico….

“So a lot in American politics is up for grabs…. [This is an understatement: think of the consequences to the Bush Administration if the executive branch and Congress are in Democratic hands and we citizens put pressure on both of them to hold Bush's cabal accountable.]

“I intend to observe it with a great deal of interest….”

I suspect Rove is going to do a lot more than observe the 2008 presidential election.

(photo of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman: That's Politics)

Keep your eyes on the Siegelman case

Why, you may be asking, should you be following the Siegelman case? Former Alabama governor Don Siegelman (photo) is in prison, serving a seven year sentence. In my opinion, it is one of the most important cases because:
1. It is a perfect example of political profiling by the Department of Justice;
2. There’s compelling evidence of voting fraud, which the Department of Justice ignored;
3. Karl Rove is involved. See my June 30 post and Scott Horton’s posts, below.

The best source of information about the Siegelman case is found at Scott Horton’s No Comment. On July 13, he posted a lengthy article, Noel Hillman and the Siegelman Case. Additionally, since June 17, Horton has posted about the Siegelman case (in reverse chronological order) here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

1. Political profiling: Horton provides the detail in his July 13 post. While the Siegelman case was being developed, Noel Hillman was head of the Public Integrity Section (PIN) within the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division. “His unit had responsibility for the prosecution of elected and appointed public officials at all levels of government—state, federal and local. It also had responsibility for criminal action involving elections officials….

“It seems reasonably clear that one of Rove’s key levers at Justice throughout this period was the Public Integrity Section (PIN). This is both because PIN had responsibility for prosecuting corrupt politicians and because of its key role in the elections process….”

Horton references the study done by Professors Shields and Cragan, which shows that seven cases were opened against Democrats for every one case against a Republican. since Hillman became head of PIN in 2001. The professors conclude, “the current Bush Republican Administration appears to be the first to have engaged in political profiling.”

2. Voting fraud: In his July 13 post, Horton devotes a section to "Election Fraud in Baldwin County" (Alabama). Another “cast of characters” is introduced here, but the bottom line is that in 2002 when Siegelman was running for governor, “…6,000 votes inexplicably shifted from Siegelman’s column to Riley’s [the Republican candidate] due to a 'computer glitch.'" When the results were studied, the conclusion was that there should have been a recount. However, the last resort for supporting Siegelman’s request for a recount was the Department of Justice, and Hillman, in charge of the Public Integrity Section which was responsible for the elections process, did nothing.

3. Karl Rove: Well, what more can I say?

(photo: USA Today)

Read Rove's lips

In April, 2006, while the Justice Department and the White House were planning the firings of the US Attorneys, Karl Rove (photo) gave a speech in Washington at the Republican National Lawyers Association convention. He ticked off 11 states that he said could be pivotal in the 2008 elections. Bush has appointed new U.S. attorneys in nine of them since 2005: Florida, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Arkansas, Michigan, Nevada and New Mexico. U.S. attorneys in the latter four were among those fired. As reported in the March 23, 2007 article, New U.S. attorneys seem to have partisan records, Rove told the lawyers at the convention, “A lot in American politics is up for grabs."

Yes, a lot in American politics is up grabs. Imagine how much more we could learn about Bush and his cronies if both Congress and the Executive Branch ended up in the Democrats’ hands! And the next appointment to the Supreme Court is made by a Democratic President.

Based on Rove’s track record and by reading his lips, I’ve decided that he is going to do everything he can to affect the outcome of the 2008 election.

Let’s just look at what Rove has done in Alabama, then project that onto the nine states where new U.S. attorneys have been appointed since 2005.

Yesterday I posted Where is the outrage? about the former governor of Alabama, Don Siegelman, who this past week headed off to prison for seven years and four months for doing something that happens every single day in the American political environment.

Who gave Siegelman his send-off? According to Scott Horton, in his June 24 post, “…Dana Jill Simpson, a Republican lawyer who previously worked on a campaign against Siegelman, decided to blow the whistle. Her affidavit [a must-read] described William Canary, a legendary figure in the Alabama GOP, bragging that “his girls” would take care of Siegelman. Canary’s wife is Leura Canary, the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama. Alice Martin, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama is a close confidante of Canary’s. He referred repeatedly to “Karl,” assuring that “Karl” had worked things out with the Justice Department in Washington to assure a criminal investigation and prosecution of Siegelman. Canary is a close friend of Karl Rove, and I have documented their long relationship in another post.”

Sidebar: According to Horton, After Simpson’s intention to speak became known, her house was burned to the ground, and her car was driven off the road and totaled.

That Rove will go to any lengths to assure that Republicans win is described in Joshua Green’s 2004 Atlantic Monthly article, Karl Rove in a Corner: “…[N]o other example of Rove's extreme tactics that I encountered quite compares to what occurred during another 1994 judicial campaign in Alabama. In that year Harold See first ran for the supreme court, becoming the rare Rove client to lose a close race. His opponent, Mark Kennedy, an incumbent Democratic justice…was no stranger to hardball politics….This August, I had lunch with Kennedy near his office in Montgomery….When his term on the court ended, he chose not to run for re-election. I later learned another reason why. Kennedy had spent years on the bench as a juvenile and family-court judge, during which time he had developed a strong interest in aiding abused children….At the time of the race he had just served a term as president of the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect. One of Rove's signature tactics is to attack an opponent on the very front that seems unassailable. Kennedy was no exception.

“Some of Kennedy's campaign commercials touted his volunteer work, including one that showed him holding hands with children….some within the See camp initiated a whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile….what they tried to do was make him look like a homosexual pedophile. That was really, really hard to take."

(photo: BendingLeft.blogspot.com)

Where is the outrage?

“Where is the outrage?” On November 15, 2003, well within President George W. Bush’s first term, Cornel West asked this question of those who were attending the annual convention of the Democratic Socialists of America, held in Detroit that year.*

Three and a half years later, I’m asking “Where is the outrage?” I’m trying to stay calm, but this morning’s post by Scott Horton, Delivering a verdict on a corrupt prosecution has resulted in a “outrage critical mass” that I don’t think I can quell any longer.

The victim is the former Governor of Alabama. It has Karl Rove’s (photo) fingerprints all over it. As reported by Horton, “On Thursday, [June 28] United States District Judge Mark Fuller sentenced former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman to prison for a period of seven years and four months—a sentence of unprecedented harshness and severity. Ruling that appeals had no prospects for success, he also ordered the former governor to be handcuffed and led off to prison immediately in front of television cameras.”

Horton’s June 1 post, U.S. Attorney Scandal - Birmingham, Cont'd, which opens with “Something’s rotten in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Heart of Dixie Edition,” does an excellent job of pulling together the evidence that Karl Rove was “…[T]he White House operator who called the shots to line up a prosecution of Governor Siegelman….”

Horton’s June 24 post, Justice in Alabama, lays out the pattern of Karl Rove’s meddling in Alabama politics: “The Siegelman prosecution was commenced as the result of a plan hatched between senior figures in the Alabama Republican Party and Karl Rove. This connection is not coincidental, because Rove was once fired by the first President Bush and then had to rehabilitate himself. Rove did this in spades, and the place where he worked his political magic was in Alabama. He put together a campaign to engineer the Alabama GOP’s capture of the state’s judicial machinery. It worked brilliantly. And Rove has retained tight connections with the Alabama GOP ever since. Rove and the Alabama GOP leaders set out to destroy Siegelman’s political career and thus smooth the path by which the Republican Party could secure and retain political control of the Alabama statehouse…. Key to this plan was the use of the machinery of the Department of Justice for its completion – involving the U.S. attorneys offices in Birmingham and Montgomery, and the Department of Justice in Washington. Rove was in a position to make this work and he did so.”

What did Siegelman do? Horton explains the charges in his June 24 post: “The main accusation is that he appointed HealthSouth’s scandal-ridden CEO to a state oversight board, and in exchange a donation was made to a not-for-profit education foundation which was supporting Siegelman’s efforts to secure a lottery to fund the state’s education system. You might very well ask what would be corrupt about this, and you would be right to ask. This is almost exactly the sort of accusation that the federal prosecutor in Milwaukee, faced with Rove’s threat to fire him, brought against Thompson – and that the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals labeled as “preposterous.” [see my April 21 post by guest blogger, Janie Sheppard].

"And indeed, it’s the sort of thing that transpires in the American political environment every single day. For instance, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared on a Donald Trump television program recently, and Trump made a payment of ten thousand dollars to help Schwarzenegger “retire his campaign debts.” Was that corrupt? Added to this is the fact that HealthSouth had no interest in anything before the oversight board in question, and its CEO had been appointed to the same board by three prior governors. This is corruption?”

If you’ll take a few minutes to read Horton’s posts of June 1, 24, and 30, you too may be outraged. If you're looking for a blander opinion about Siegelman’s conviction, read today’s New York Times editorial Questions about a governor's fall.

The Siegleman vendatta is not the first of Rove's dirty tricks. Put your feet up and read the November, 2004 Atlantic Monthly article, Karl Rove in a Corner.

Then ask yourself, “Where is the outrage?”

*I was in Detroit, attending Camp Wellstone, which I posted about here. The other speakers at the Democratic Socialists of America convention (held at the Hotel Pontchartrain where I was staying) were Rep. John Conyers, Holly Sklar, and Harold Meyerson.

(photos –Karl Rove – CarryOnAmerica.com)