Joyce White Vance has already been confirmed as the new U.S. Attorney for Alabama's Northern District and Kenyan Brown's nomination for the Southern District is on it's way to the full Senate for a vote, but there's still no nominee for the Middle District, a post currently held by Leura Canary. What's up with the delay? Danny offered a good explanation at the Political Parlor last week.
He points out that Rep. Artur Davis's advisory committee on appointments initially put forth the names of Michel Nicrosi and Joe Van Heest for this slot. Sen. Jeff Sessions voiced some sort of objection to Nicrosi and Sen. Richard Shelby is opposing Van Heest's nomination. Since these appointments must be confirmed by the Senate, even one Senator can block them -- that isn't the president's fault, it's a fact of life under Senate rules -- so the appointment is languishing.
Our source familiar with the process believes that there is a very good chance that the matter will be resolved in a matter of weeks in one of three ways in this order of likelihood: 1) Shelby will release the hold on Van Heest, 2) George Beck will be nominated, or 3) the Obama Justice Deparment will send in a career person from outside the state, similar to what George W. Bush’s Justice Department did when it sent Deborah Rhodes to the Southern District of Alabama.
A deal to keep Bush appointee Leura Canary? That’s not what we hear.
Of course, not everyone agrees this delay isn't some kind of secret deal to keep Leura Canary in office and, like so many things these days, it's really all Artur Davis' fault.
Today is the last day of the Legislative session. It probably won't end with a punch this year, but prepare to be disappointed. Some good legislation is going to die, again.
AL-04: Democrats focus their fire on Aderholt, not on each other. Some more prominent Democrats could learn a few things from Greg Warren and Nick Sparks.
Jill Simpson, with her testimony pointing toward Rove meddling in the Siegelman prosecution, is being viewed a real threat by the right wingers. How do I know this? Hindrocket doesn't waste this much effort trashing unimportant people. Lot's of innuendo there, but no meat.
Legal Schnauzer thinks the Simpson attack is a sign she's onto something, too.
For the good of the country, Glynn Wilson is giving up golf until George W. is out of the White House. In a burst of patriotism and solidarity, I will also give up golf until we get a Democrat at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Please, don't make me play golf, even then.
Okay. I feel it's my personal duty to remind people of the kind of man we're dealing with as we assess Karl Rove and his histrionic 5 page letter to Dan Abrams. Turd Blossom is cracking, and I'm pretty giddy about. Rove pretends he's a journalist or attorney rifling off about 60 questions he thinks Abrams should have asked in the Siegelman case.
Karl Rove is a nasty man. That's a fact. So, here's what you personallly wager in the case of Turd Blossom. Study the "Karl Rove is a Dirty Bastard" Probability Square. The only way you lose is if you doubt Karl Rove's guilt!
Karl Rove Guilty
Karl Rove Not Guilty
Living as if Karl Rove Guilty
You knew it!!! Karl Rove is a dirty bastard.
Not Guilty does not equal "innocent." Karl Rove is a dirty bastard.
Living as if Karl Rove Not Guilty
Are you friggin' nuts??? Karl Rove is a dirty bastard.
Not Guilty does not equal "innocent." Karl Rove is a dirty bastard.
It's embarassing to have one of the largest papers in the state doing damage control for the Republican party. The Mobile Press-Register is spouting GOP talking points today, trotting out a list of all the poor Republian politicians who have ended up in jail in recent years as evidence that DOJ is not engaged in political prosecution.
But a look at the record of the Justice Department strongly suggests that either the president's former adviser didn't interfere in law enforcement matters -- or that federal prosecutors didn't get his memo about targeting Democrats.
Exhibit A in the defense of the integrity of Justice Department employees is this line from an Associated Press story, published in June: "A half dozen federal investigations into the activities of Republican lawmakers are raising new worries for GOP leaders who hope to regain the House majority they lost last fall."
Either the Press-Register's editors didn't read Dr. Donald Shields' study asserting political profiling by the DOJ or they didn't understand it -- I'll leave it to the reader to decide if the are just stupid or deliberately misinterpreting it. This is from Shields' updated report:
The central hypothesis of this study is that an elected officials' party affiliation (Democrat, Republican, and Independent/other) would be distributed in a fashion equal to the party affiliation of the population of elected officials as a whole. In 2002, the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University surveyed 17,023 elected officials in Congress, states, state legislatures and local governments, asking them whether they considered themselves a Democrat, Republican, Independent, or something else? Fifty percent of respondents reported being Democrat, 41% Republican and 9% Independent or Other.14 From these estimates, it can be hypothesized that distribution of investigations or indictments of elected officials should mirror these percentages.
Figure 1 and Table 1 summarize the 820 publicly reported grand jury investigations and/or indictments of elected officials or candidates by the DOJ's U.S. Attorneys between January 2001 and September 16, 2007. Figure 1 shows a dramatic increase in investigations during the Bush administration compared to 2001. Table 1 shows the sample includes 631 (77 percent) investigations of Democrats, 142 (17 percent) investigations of Republicans and 47 (6 percent) investigations of Independents/Other office holders or candidates.
The disparity between investigation and/or indictments of Democrats in relation to Republicans is statistically significant and could have occurred by chance in less than one in 10,000 samplings.15
For those too lazy to follow the link to the study, I'm reproducing Table 1 below. I don't see how the Republicans Press-Register can deny that Democrats have been investigated/indicted in far greater numbers than Republicans. Accident? I doubt it.
Democrats are out-investigated 631 to 142, which is pretty overwhelming to be accidental. As for all those "half dozen" Republican congressmen under investigation, the editorial failed to mention that one of them was Randy "Duke" Cunningham. He was investigated and convicted by U.S. Attorney Carol Lam who was later fired by Alberto Gonzales. From TPM:
In an e-mail dated May 11, 2006, Sampson urged the White House counsel's office to call him regarding "the real problem we have right now with Carol Lam," who then the U.S. attorney for southern California. Earlier that morning, the Los Angeles Times reported that Lam's corruption investigation of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., had expanded to include another California Republican, Rep Jerry Lewis.
Cunningham is currently serving an eight-year prison sentence in Arizona. Lewis has not been charged with any crime. Lam was forced to resign.
In a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he wants to know whether Lam was fired for the Cunningham case or because "she was about to investigate other people who were politically powerful." Lam declined to talk publicly about her dismissal.
Sound like convicting a Republican Congressman and opening an investigation on another one was pretty career limiting for Ms. Lam.
Glynn Wilson has a very good article in The Nation today. The Siegelman case has a lot of twists and turns, but this article lays it all out in an easy to follow narrative. If you have ignored this case because you thought it was just a can of worms -- give it one more chance and go read this article. He provides more background info on Jill Simpson than I have seen anywhere else.
"The reason I did what I did is because I believe everybody has a Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial," she said then. "I did not believe Mr. Siegelman or Mr. Scrushy got a fair trial."
Since Simpson came forward in May, she has not exactly been embraced as a truth-teller by the local press in Alabama--and she has been isolated and assaulted by the very Republicans she once helped. In September she told House Judiciary Committee staff that her law practice and her family members have suffered a backlash. "It has been very stressful," she testified, "and it's been difficult for my family." She says business at her law firm has dried up since she went public about political collusion in the prosecution of Siegelman.
It's hell being a whistleblower -- especially when you are going up against the folks who control the state and federal governments. It's nice that some people are conscientious enough to make the sacrifice, even when they know they'll be slammed if they speak out.
The Locust Fork News and Journal today ran a video of a Klan rally in Scottsboro, Alabama, from Nov. 16, 2002. The video corroborates part of North Alabama lawyer Jill Simpson's story about White House manipulation of justice, a story which she will be telling to the staff and legal counsel for the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Friday, Sept. 14.
Members of the LeftInAlabama blog community got to see portions of this video on their last meet up in Huntsville.
To watch the video and read all about it, go to the Locust Fork Journal permalink:
To follow all the coverage at the Locust Fork News and Journal, hit this archive link that goes all the way back to when Editor and Publisher Glynn Wilson was covering the Scrushy trial in Birmingham for the New York Times.
A letter made public this week by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., confirms that the U.S. House Judiciary Committee staff and legal counsel will interview North Alabama lawyer Jill Simpson Friday, Sept. 14, in Washington as part of an ongoing investigation into the political corruption of the judicial system by the Bush White House and Justice Department.
For more on this story and to keep up with all the latest news as Jill Simpson goes to Washington to testify in the Siegelman investigation, go to the independent news outlet The Locust Fork News and Journal.
Editor and Publisher Glynn Wilson will be the only journalist making the trip with her to get the inside story.
Okay. I feel it's my personal duty to remind people of the kind of man we're dealing with as we assess Karl Rove and his histrionic 
