Karl Rove Destroyed My Life

Last week, Al Gore sent an email message urging supporters to give money to Don Siegelman's legal defense fund. Gore is the latest in a string of high profile supporters to suggest Siegelman, the former Governor of Alabama, was the victim of a Republican plot when he was found guilty of bribery, conspiracy and fraud in 2006, and sentenced to seven years in prison.


http://www.alternet.org/rights/115526/?page=entire

Now, in the waning days of the Bush administration, Siegelman is trying to win back his freedom -- not to mention his good name -- in a courtroom in Atlanta. Earlier this year, an appeals court granted his release after he had served nine months, saying the Governor's appeal had raised "substantial questions" about the case against him. Siegelman's cause was helped by a bipartisan group of 54 former state attorneys general from across the country who filed a federal appeals brief supporting his bid to overturn the conviction. Republican insiders have also come forward to say Siegelman was unfairly targeted by Rove and his circle.



Making it in prison depends on one's level of tolerance. I'm used to mopping in my wife's kitchen. It was just a bigger floor.



Siegelman's appeal was heard earlier this month and the verdict will determine whether he returns to prison to finish out his sentence, or goes free.



How did a former governor -- and a rising star in the Democratic Party -- end up in a situation like this?



On June 29, 2006, Siegelman and Richard Scrushy, the CEO of HealthSouth, a chain of medical rehabilitation services with facilities both in the United States and abroad, were found guilty by a jury in Montgomery, Alabama, of federal bribery charges. A year later, Judge Mark Fuller, who had clear conflicts of interest in the case -- a company in which he holds a major stake received a $175 million government contract at one point during the legal proceedings -- sentenced Scrushy to almost seven years in prison. Siegelman got 88 months.



There was one central transaction that sent these men to prison for all this time. Not long after Siegelman had been elected governor in 1998, he convinced Scrushy to contribute $500,000 to a political action committee, which was supporting the establishment of a lottery in Alabama to pay for higher education. At the same time, he talked Scrushy into serving on a state hospital regulatory board on which he had already served three times -- appointed by both Democrats and Republicans -- and from which he had recently resigned. To US attorney Leura Canary, the wife of William "Bill" Canary, the close friend and former business associate of Karl Rove, the act constituted bribery, for which she charged the two men. Among the many other charges, dismissed by the jury, this was the one that stuck.



QUESTION: First, was the act for which you and Richard Scrushy convicted actually a crime?



SIEGELMAN: Fifty-four state attorneys general filed a friend of the court brief stating that it has never been a crime in America for a politician or a public official to appoint a contributor to anything, whether it's ambassador or cabinet member or a member of a board or an agency. The only thing that is a crime is if you swap a position for money. And there has got to be an express agreement that's provable. Otherwise, the United States Supreme Court says it's an infringement on a person's first amendment right to freely associate and make contributions.



QUESTION: The case with you and Scrushy seems especially weak.



SIEGELMAN: Scrushy had just recently resigned from the board and the person I had defeated, Job James, had appointed one of Scrushy's vice presidents to the position. When I got elected I called Scrushy and said, "I want you to serve in my administration like you did in three previous administration." And he said, "Oh, Governor, do I have to? I just resigned from that board. Can't I get you the name of somebody?" I said, "Nope, it's either you or nobody." So he went onto the board reluctantly. And this poor guy is still in prison today.



QUESTION: Many observers believe he is because he would not cooperate with the prosecution to convict you.



SIEGELMAN: In an effort to get me, the prosecution went to Scrushy before they indicted him and said, "Just tell us Siegelman extorted the money; just tell us he twisted your arm." He said, "I can't do that because that's not what happened." They went to him after he was indicted and said, "Okay, we will give you another chance. Tell us Siegelman twisted your arm and tried to extort money." He said, "I can't say that because that's not what happened." During the trial, he was sitting at the defense table, and they came and got him again and gave him a third chance to throw me under the bus by lying for the prosecution and he wouldn't do it. This is not the way the justice system in this country is supposed to work.



QUESTION: Describe what happened to you after you were sentenced.



SIEGELMAN: Scrushy and I were taken from the courtroom less than thirty seconds after the gavel came down in handcuffs, shackles, and chains around our waist and ankles. We were put in the back of a police car and driven to Atlanta where we were taken to a maximum-security prison and put in solitary confinement. Then they moved me around the country from prison to prison until I ended up in the swamps of Louisiana.



QUESTION: What was prison like?



SIEGELMAN: You can just imagine. But making it in prison depends on one's level of tolerance. I'm used to mopping and sweeping floors in my wife's kitchen. It was just a bigger floor and I had to mop it every day.



Seriously, all my life I've worked to try to correct and perfect our system of government to make it more fair, and here I was in the middle of something that wasn't fair. If God had a purpose in this, it was for me to see how the system is flawed so I can do something about it. There are some things I'd like to see corrected -- flaws in the system that can result in innocent people going to prison. When I get out of this situation for good, I'll be back before the Judiciary Committee advocating changes.



QUESTION: You have claimed Karl Rove was a driving force behind your prosecution.



SIEGELMAN: We know from documentary evidence and from testimony that Rove was involved in the firing of the US attorneys [at the start of Bush's second term] and he's been identified at the scene of the crime in my case. We know that others worked with Rove to carry out his conspiracies to subvert our system of justice and to abuse the power of his office and to misuse the power of the Department of Justice for political purposes.



QUESTION: Some people believe Rove wanted your political career damaged because of your standing in the Democratic Party.



SIEGELMAN: I had endorsed Al Gore in 2000 -- the first governor to do so -- and it wasn't long after that that they started the investigation. I had made plans after my 2002 re-election -- which I ultimately lost because of the bad press generated by these investigations -- to hit the primary states. I had been secretary of state for eight years, attorney general for four years, lieutenant governor for four years, and governor for four years -- I had all these friends around the country -- so I thought I could gin up a campaign not for me but against George W. Bush, against his war, against his economic policies, and against his education policies.



There is no question in my mind that Rove played a key role in what happened to me. From the beginning, the investigation was started by Rove's client, the state attorney general Mark Pryor; then the prosecution was carried out by the wife of Rove's best friend and his former business partner. [They had previously worked as political consultants together in Alabama.] We have a live witness who claims that Bill Canary -- Rove's partner -- said Rove had taken my case to the Department of Justice. Now it's up to Congress -- and the House and the Senate judiciary committees -- to bring Rove before the House Judiciary Committee.



QUESTION: Actually, the House Judiciary Committee has already subpoenaed Rove to testify and he has refused to appear.



SIEGELMAN: That's why it's so important for the House and the Senate to hold Rove in contempt of Congress and exercise their inherent authority to enforce that subpoena by sending the Capital police to go get him and bring him in or by pursuing the thing through litigation. But one way or the other, it is critically important that the subpoena be upheld. Otherwise, it sends the message to all his accomplices that they are free to carry out their mischief in the future with impunity because nothing is going to happen to him.



QUESTION: Do you believe your case will be taken up by the Obama administration?



SIEGELMAN: There are lots of good fights, and I know that Obama is looking to end the war in Iraq, to provide health care to all Americans, to fix the economy, and to deal with global warning -- there are so many important issues that are out there -- but restoring people's faith and trust in the government, assuring people the Department of Justice will no longer be used as a political weapon in this country, is vital. We are not going to allow the torture of prisoners in Guantanamo, nor are we going to permit the torturing of witnesses until we get the correct testimony to put political enemies in jail in this country.



A lot of Americans are aware of the injustices that have been going on in the Bush administration. They need to know that the Obama administration is not going to tolerate these kinds of injustices. I am hopeful that the Obama administration will work with an interested House Judiciary Committee (and hopefully a Senate Judiciary Committee) in finding the truth.



QUESTION: Do you hold George W. Bush accountable for what happened to you?



SIEGELMAN: All I know if that for a long time Karl Rove held himself up as a co-president with George Bush. He bragged about being his drinking buddy, his kicking-around buddy in the White House. They shared good times together. He was Bush's "brain." He was the genius behind Bush. For a long time, I thought they were inseparable. They were as close as close can be. I don't know what Rove told President Bush. But we need to find out.



I've already spent nine months in prison and the guy who gave the money is still in jail for making a contribution so I could persuade the people of Alabama to vote for an education lottery so their children could go to college for free. We need to know how far my case goes up in the Bush administration.



QUESTION: Tell me about the charge of obstruction of justice for which you were convicted.



SIEGELMAN: The obstruction of justice charge is ludicrous. Honda Motor Company offered to give me a motorcycle. Now if I had taken it, they may have had a case -- Siegelman took a motorcycle, an unpaid gift -- but I said no to Honda and bought the motorcycle. The prosecution in my case ended up convicting me for accepting a campaign contribution to a lottery and paying for a free motorcycle.



QUESTION: What are your feelings about your appeal?



SIEGELMAN: I am not worried one way or the other. I hope and believe that the Eleventh Circuit will see through this and reverse and rescind, which means they'll acquit me of the charges. If not, it's another fight the Good Lord has put me into and there's a reason for it. There are enough people in America made aware of Rove's shenanigans in this case, we'd have a good fight on our hands.



QUESTION: Will you run for public office again?



SIEGELMAN: I don't think so. I'm at a point in my life where I'd like to help others. Everyone says, "Never say never," but at this point I do not see it in the cards.












Paul Alexander is the author of Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove and Man of the People: The Life of John McCain, among others. His journalism has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, The Nation, New York, The Village Voice, Salon, George, The New York Observer, The Advocate, Men’s Journal, The Guardian, and Rolling Stone.

Get yr US Border Patrol Cap!!!

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I can't copy this page because of a code in the page that crashes my browser.

Operation Weed and Seed

http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/md/Community-Programs/Weed%20and%20Seed/index.htm

Gulf War Illness Confirmed

Ok, now which wing of the political party do you suppose was behind the suppression of Gulf War Illness?  Is this what the Republicans call supporting the troops?  If I were a troop, I would probably not vote for Republicans, knowing that if I got sick because I served, that they would not take care of me. -O.L.

Thomas D. Williams

Panel: Gulf War Illness Confirmed

http://www.truthout.org/111808A

Thomas D. Williams, Truthout: "A federal health panel released conclusions Monday that evidence strongly and consistently indicates hundreds of thousands of US troops in the first Gulf War contracted long-term illnesses from use of pills, given by their own military to protect them from effects of chemical weaponized nerve agents, and from their military's pesticide use during deployment."

The Russell Trust Association

http://www.politicalfriendster.com/showPerson.php?id=2046&name=Russell-Trust-Association

The coming Obama "Stock Market Crash"

http://w3.newsmax.com/a/jun08/?promo_code=2A89-1

Go here and read about how the Obama administration is going to make the stock market crash.  (Holding sides in hysterical laughter.)

The Republican policies of borrow, spend, and being "soft" on corporate crime put us here.  Somehow, they think that more of the same is going to solve the problem.

I can't take time to articulate the misrepresentations in this article now.  A project for later, when I have caught up on my real work, the work that puts food on my family.

Right-wing "best sellers"

Ever wonder how these dreadful fascist screeds reach the best-seller lists? Organizations such as Newsmax give them to readers, who are only asked to pay shipping, as in this case:

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The "Out of Control Left Wing Agenda"

http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/chambliss_georgia_senate/2008/11/17/152348.html?s=al&promo_code=7188-1


Chambliss Warns: 'Out of Control' Congress at Stake in Georgia Race

Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss, who faces a runoff election against Democrat Jim Martin in Georgia, tells Newsmax that Senate Democrats will promote an “out-of-control left-wing agenda” if they gain a 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority.

This claim is largely based on his opponent's opposition to a massive tax cut in the State of Georgia. When Zell Miller was governor, he wanted to take the taxes paid by all Georgia citizens for the betterment of the state, and clean out the Treasury by giving citizens those "feel good" rebates. These are nothing more than a form of political bribery that leads to massive deficits and crippling denial of state services.

Shame on Saxby for hate-mongering and fear-peddling. Obama is a right-centrist. Not a Marxist, not a Communist, and most certainly not an out-of-control leftist.

The White Power Scum Perspective

http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/index.html

From the Editor

The 2008 US Presidential Election

The election of Barack Obama as president of the United States is a good thing for white nationalism.

Whites will regain control over our nation and our destiny only when we have a change of consciousness. First, we must again think of ourselves as a distinct ethnic group with distinct interests—interests that often conflict with those of other ethnic groups. Second, we must again believe that we are entitled—nay, obligated—to take our own side when our interests conflict with those of other groups.

The National Review Continues to Sink: 'Frightened' Frum Resigns

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/107459/

The magazine began by the man who claimed to be a "conservative intellectual," William F. Buckley, Jr., has descended to the level of a supermarket tabloid. Some of its erstwhile contributors can no longer stomach what it has become.

No doubt that Buckley was bright, and a skilled debater. What I doubt is his claim to adherence to scientifically verifiable facts. It was Buckley's bloviating rhetoric which allowed such suit-and-tie fascists as David Duke to receive national attention. Hate-mongers like Duke, aping Buckley's pseudo-intellectual cover for greed as a force for human advancement, keep fascism alive and well in the USA.

Buckley's ability to provide a sheen of respectability to ideologies that we thought we had conquered during WWII has created a lot of human suffering. Bah, Buckley. Don't rest in peace. -O.L.

The National Review Continues to Sink: 'Frightened' Frum Resigns

Christopher Buckley was pushed out for praising Barack Obama; Kathleen Parker is persona non grata for failing to praise Sarah Palin, and the shake-ups at the National Review continue with David Frum's resignation.

...David Frum, a prominent conservative writer who enmeshed himself in a minor dustup during the campaign by turning negative on Governor Palin, is leaving, too. In an interview, he said he planned to leave the magazine, where he writes a popular blog, to strike out on his own on the Web. [...]

Mr. Frum said deciding to leave was amicable, but distancing himself from the magazine founded by his idol, Mr. Buckley, was not a hard decision. He said the controversy over Governor Palin's nomination for vice president was "symbolic of a lot of differences" between his views and those of National Review's.

"I am really and truly frightened by the collapse of support for the Republican Party by the young and the educated," he said.

I can't honestly say I've found Frum's perspective compelling, but I can acknowledge that he's been one of the magazine's better writers, and has been willing to at least question the party line from time to time.

Noting the recent departures, Andrew Sullivan added:

"[W]e are left with adolescent bilge from Kathryn-Jean Lopez and spittle-flecked postings from Mark Levin and Andy McCarthy and Mark Krikorian and Mark Steyn, it may indeed be time to call the era of National Review as a repository for intellectual debate over."

This has almost certainly been the case for quite a while, but if one were inclined to note the day and time the notion of intellectual debate at the National Review ended, I'd say it was around noon on Oct. 3, when Rich Lowry, an NR editor, explained that he sat "a little straighter" when Sarah Palin winked at the camera during a nationally televised debate, because it was "so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing." Lowry concluded, "It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America."

I'd stopped taking the magazine seriously long before then, but this was the proverbial nail in the coffin.

The New York Times noted the magazine "may" have lost its "reputation as the cradle for conservative intellectuals." You don't say.

White rage: The rednecks out to kill Obama

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/white-rage-the-rednecks-out-to-kill-obama-1017497.html

When millions watched Barack Obama give his history-making victory speech in Grant Park on election night, one thing stood out starkly – the bulletproof screen surrounding him. But just how serious is the threat of assassination to the President-elect?

By Andrew Gumbel

Sunday, 16 November 2008

Shawn Adolf and his cousin Tharin Gartrell fancied that 28 August, 2008 would be a good day for the next president of the United States to die. They had the guns – Gartrell was later caught with a Ruger Model M77 Mark II bolt-action rifle with an attached scope and bipod, and a Remington Model 721, also with a scope. They were believers in a radical white supremacist ideology that gave them the motivation they needed to risk their own lives, if necessary, to prevent a black man from entering the Oval Office. (Or, as a friend reported Adolf as saying: "No nigger should ever live in the White House.")

Tharin Gartrell and his cousin Shawn Adolf were arrested after plotting to assassinate Obama in August

And they had at least the outlines of a plan. They checked into the downtown Denver hotel where they believed Barack Obama was staying, and talked about the ways they could try to gun down the Democratic nominee on the day he was due to accept his party's nomination at an outdoor sports arena before an adoring crowd of more than 70,000 people.

Like many assassins before them, both the successful ones and the idle fantasists, Adolf and Gartrell took their inspiration from popular culture. They considered hiding a rifle inside a hollowed out television camera – an idea they borrowed from the Kevin Costner-Whitney Houston vehicle The Bodyguard. (It is also similar to the way al-Qa'eda operatives posing as a news crew assassinated Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, on 9 September, 2001, but it is far from clear whether Adolf and Gartrell had any notion of this.)

They toyed with the idea of hitting Obama from as far away as 750 yards, using one of their high-powered rifles; according to their friend Nathan Johnson, who may or may not have been part of the plot, they had in mind the conspiracy theory that President Kennedy was not shot by Lee Harvey Oswald from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building, but rather by professional assassins stationed on the "grassy knoll" above Dallas's Dealey Plaza.

None of these plans was ever remotely realistic, however. Adolf and Gartrell may have had some fearsome weaponry, and a vague affiliation with a white supremacist biker gang called the Sons of Silence, which disavowed them the moment they were arrested. But they were also rank amateurs living in a crystal methamphetamine-induced haze of paranoia and race hatred. (One can't help thinking Adolf's name went to his head, at least a little, as he fingered the swastika ring on his finger.) They had no clue how to circumvent the security surrounding Obama – prosecutors who examined their plans laughed them off as ludicrously naïve. And they couldn't even figure out what every half-interested member of the press corps knew, that Obama was not staying at the Hyatt Regency, the temporary HQ of the Democratic National Committee, but at a different hotel altogether.

Four days before Obama's acceptance speech, Gartrell was pulled over for drunk-driving in the Denver suburb ' of Aurora after a patrol officer spotted his rented Dodge Ram truck swerving erratically, and the whole plot, such as it was, fell apart almost instantly. Certainly, the officer found plenty inside the truck to sound alarm bells – the two high-powered rifles, a silencer, a bulletproof vest, camouflage clothing, and three fake identification cards. But it was also clear that Gartrell was high on meth as well as drunk. The truck contained enough drug-making equipment to be considered a mobile meth lab.

Gartrell ratted out Johnson and Adolf almost as soon as he was taken in and photographed for his singularly striking mugshot. (With his bleached blonde hair, heavy silver earrings and pierced lip, he looks like the neo-Nazi from central casting.) Johnson was in the room at the Hyatt Regency, and wasted no time in talking himself – insisting he had no idea about any assassination plot while almost simultaneously telling the world Adolf was planning to "go down in a blaze of glory" and take Obama with him.

Read the rest here...

Naomi Klein: The Borderline Illegal Deals Behind the $700 Billion Bailout

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/107458/

Naomi Klein: Well, there's a few elements now that are being described as illegal that we're finding out. First of all, the equity deals that were negotiated with the largest banks and also some smaller banks, representing $250 billion worth of the bailout money, this is the deal to inject capital into the banks in exchange for equity. The idea was to address the so-called credit crunch to get banks lending again. The legislation that enabled this was quite explicit that it had to encourage lending. Barney Frank, who was one of the architects of that legislation, has said that it violates the act if the money is not going to that purpose and is instead going to bonuses, is instead going to dividends, going to salaries, going to mergers. He said that violates the acts, i.e. it's illegal. But what we know is that it's going precisely to those purposes. It is going to bonuses. It is going to shareholders. And it is not going to lending. The banks have been quite explicit about this. Citibank has talked about using the money to buy other banks.




Then there's other aspects of this that are borderline illegal. We found out that in the midst of the crisis, the Bush Treasury Department pushed through a tax windfall for the banks, a piece of legislation that allows the banks to save a huge amount of money when they merge with each other. And the estimate is that this represents a loss of $140 billion worth of tax revenue for the US government. Many tax attorneys who were interviewed by the Washington Post said that they felt that the way in which the Treasury Department went about this by unilaterally changing the tax code was illegal, that this had to include Congress. Congress only found out about it after the fact.



There's another piece of this puzzle that is also borderline illegal, which is that in addition to the $700 billion that we are discussing, the $700 billion bailout, there's another $2 trillion that's been handed out by the Federal Reserve in emergency loans to financial institutions, to banks, that actually we don't really know who they're handing the money out to, because, apparently, it's a secret. They could be handing it out to a range of other corporations -- I think they are -- but they're saying that they won't disclose who has received these taxpayer loans, because it could cause a run on the banks, it could cause the market to lose confidence in the institutions that have taken these loans. Once again, that represents an additional $2 trillion.



The other thing that the Fed won't disclose is what they have accepted as collateral in exchange for these loans. This is a really key point, because, of course, at the heart of the financial crisis is -- are these so- called distressed assets. The value of these assets is enormously controversial. They may be worth very little. So if the Fed has accepted distressed assets as collateral in exchange for these loans, there's a very good chance the taxpayers aren't going to be getting this money back. So Bloomberg News has launched a lawsuit in federal court to find out who has received the loans and what has been accepted as collateral, because they believe that this lack of transparency is illegal. So that's why we're calling this the "trillion-dollar crime scene" or the "multi-trillion-dollar crime scene." And they're really challenging lawmakers to call them out, the Treasury is.