I have the feeling that all hell will be breaking loose out of this. As much a stir as the Daniel Ellsberg Papers caused.

Will the prosecutor appeal the release?

This should help to reenergize the DOJ hearing and to hopefully move the ball forward somewhat in that regard.

Commenting on hardwick's post above....the idea that this could only happen in Alabama is dead wrong.

In fact, the state Republican party, though quite slimy, had little to do with the Siegelman prosecution.

If you watched the 60 Minutes expose, you know that this was orchestrated directly by Karl Rove himself.

And the blackout in Huntsville? Turns out that station is owned by a conglomerate with close ties to both Texas politics and GWB.

So yeah, maybe Alabama provided fertile ground for this coverup. But a lot of us progressives in Alabama have been working very hard to make sure that these dirty tricks were uncovered. Siegelman's release today vindicates some of that work.

However, don't think for a minute that this is only an "Alabama problem," that this could never happen in your state. This wasn't orchestrated by the people who "run" Alabama. This was the Bush Administration's doing, all the way. And they will reach into any state, at any time, with their nasty tricks.

Oh, and PS -- the Siegelman segment on the "60 Minutes" broadcast was blacked out in Huntsville.

It aired fine, however, here in Birmingham. Please check your facts a little more carefully before you slander an entire state!!

I am so happy to read this news. This story affected me so deeply--and I'm not really sure why it did more so than the other daily assaults (global warming, the ongoing war, outing CIA agents, complete corruption of the justice department, lack of proper funding for education, health care, road repairs, etc.) Anyway, after reading all of the good investigative journalism--particularly by Harper's Scott Horton and Raw Story's Larisa Alexandrovna (I hope I got her name right) and watching the 60 minutes segments and following Dan Abrahm's coverage, I am just so encouraged by this outcome and hope that true justice will prevail, the bad guys end up in jail or losing their positions of power and that the department of justice is salvageable next year when (if?) the Dems take over.

With all due respect to those who would see the Siegelman case as a liberal cause celebre: you should learn some of the facts about this case first.

Siegelman, whatever his party affiliation, has long had a reputation as an unscrupulous -- I'm putting that gently -- politician. In the case at hand, he sold off a seat on the state hospital board to Richard Scrushy for a $500K campaign donation. His defense is that since the money didn't go to him directly, it's not a "bribe." Please. This was an explicit quid-pro-quo; give me the board position and I'll give you the money. That's what happened. Scrushy wanted the seat to advance his business interests; Siegelman was happy to give the fox run of the public's hen house -- for cash.

Now: Scrushy, to remind you, is the former massage therapist-turned-sociopathic CEO who founded HealthSouth, and then ran the company like it was own private till -- with two sets of books, no less -- bringing it to the brink of bankruptcy, costing hard working and honest people their jobs and savings in the process. Despite guilty pleas from many of his underlings, he was acquitted of criminal charges in that case -- to the shock of just about everyone, including, I'm sure, himself -- after quickly finding Jesus, going on TV to preach to largely black audiences and giving away large sums of his probably ill-gotten wealth to black churches (all after his indictment -- not before). His quick-found largesse was cynically aimed at winning the good graces of the city's (justifably aggrieved) black population (Scrushy's white), one that just happened to make up the lion's share of the jury pool. Sadly, that snake oil ploy worked. It was Alabama's OJ case. The guy maybe a charlatan, but he's a talented one. After all, the company he micromanaged conned Wall Street with two sets of books for years. Word to the wise: Scrushy didn't give a damn about the poor folks of Birmingham then; and he doesn't give a damn about the Rove-haters whose sympathies he's soliciting now. Caveat sympathizor.

The kicker on the Siegelman case is that the so-called star witness and former Republican "operative" has changed her testimony, or rather, embellished it at every telling. The story went from her saying she heard the current Republican governor's son say that he'd let "his girls" (the local US attorneys) take care of the case -- possible -- to, much later, her claim on 60 Minutes that Karl Rove had her working to get naked pictures of Siegelman in bed with a woman-not-his-wife. Maybe that's a job for some hard-nosed, sneaky set of FBI sleuths (ahem, Mr. Spitzer). But it is NOT a job for a heavy-set Rainesville, AL attorney with big hair and a penchant for eyeball-searing flowery dresses. This is a woman who couldn't sneak up on a taxidermied catfish, much less tiptoe into a motel room to snap pictures of the governor and a mistress making the beast with two backs. It's absurd.

Now: Rove may have had it in for Siegelman, but he didn't need to go to such desperate lengths as risking his political hide by hiring a middling Rainesville lawyer for a job Jake Gittes couldn't pull off. And by the way, if he had put her up to that level of skullduggery, I'm sure she would have mentioned it when she first went to the press with her story OR perhaps when she testified on Capitol Hill -- not months later, when she finally "remembered" it for 60 Minutes.

On the sentencing issue, the former Gov. has a legitimate gripe; there's no reason he should've been packed up the river the day he was convicted. But judges can do dumb things, or even unethical things, without Karl Rove being there to work the strings.

Progressives do themselves no favors in painting Don Siegelman and his sleeze-bag money man Richard Scrushy as innocent victims, particularly on the testimony of a fantasist. His lawyers are quite cleverly playing on the political distrust of Rove to get their client's case reviewed -- good for them -- but progressives should be more skeptical and less eager to submit to getting used by such opportunists. There may be plenty of arenas to skewer Rove (the US attorneys scandal seems as good as any). But the Siegelman case isn't one. As they say down south, this particular dawg. don't. hunt.

Like I wrote upthread, "Rove & Co are no doubt feverishly working on a massive spin effort to explain away the truth coming out during that testimony."

Good job, asdf2.
Must have had that already in the can- sure didn't take long.

We've got a couple folksy sayings here in Savannah that could describe this situation, too, but I won't use them on a public blog thread.

asdf2 -
I'm sure Seigelman is an Alabama poltician, but a lot of what you have said is either incorrect or misleading as stated.

For some better background, start with any of these Horton posts:
http://harpers.org/search?q=Siegelman

Scrushy is sleazy. As a matter of fact, that is, as noted in the issues raised about the case - pretty central to the decision to try to find a way to try Seigelman in a case WITH Scrushy since the non-Scrushy efforts failed.

The $500,000 was not given to Seigelman's campaign, it went toThe basic charge is that businessman Richard Scrushy gave $500,000 to the Alabama Education Foundation, an entity Siegelman created to try to get a state education directed lottery in place. So the issue is not over a "bribe" to Seigelman directly, or a "bribe" to Seigelman's campaign, but rather a contribution to something that Seigeleman thought would help the state and from which there is no good way to show he got any direct benefit of any kind. That pretty much opens up the season for making it a crime for companies to, for example, donate to a park or a education fund, etc. etc. if a politician asks them.

You mention the changing stories of the REpublican operative and at first I thought you meant Nick Bailey - but since it is about Simpson and the Rove issue, Horton and others have pretty much completly debunked the talking point (for example, from Horton, "Simpson made the claims during the summer to four reporters I have identified so far, requesting that they not be used, apparently because CBS was promised an exclusive on the story. She also discussed them with a Congressional investigator. All facts suppressed by the writer"), whether ever word of her story was published contemporaneously with the telling of it or not.

With respect to Bailey, the input seems to have been that when he was caught, he was told he would get a light sentence if he could help them pin anything on Seigelman (not that there was any investigation of the Scrushy contribution to the Alabama Education Foundation and they interrogated him about that contribution)

So they decided to go after someone first, then tried to use threats and carrots regarding a criminal prosecution to get the defendant in that unrelated prosecution to come up with something for them on someone they did want to prosecute.

And for Bailey, it is clear that his testimony DID CHANGE, over and over, to where he was being directed to write it over and over so he could memorize and deliver "one" version. And the version he sold - that the check was handed off at the meeting - seems to be pretty conclusively false. The check was written later and sequentially.

It also seems that Gary White was pressured to provide false testimony. Moreover, the "appointment" (to the Alabama Certificate of Need Board) was one that Scrushy had received on numerous occassions, from THREE OTHER Govenors. If I understand correctly, the board makes determinations about hospital expansions and HealthcareSouth had no business before it when Scrushy was appointed. I'm also pretty sure there as no allegation that Scrushy received some business benefit, as you stated, from the appointment.

As I say in Kentucky - which may not be southern enough for you - just because a dog won't hunt, doesn't mean it won't bite.

Interesting "co-incidence", if true, that Rove reportedly was seeking infidelity dirt on Seigleman, since that same trick was used on Spitzer.
And the guy who dropped the dime on Spitzer is/was a long time Republican dirty tricks player..Roger J. Stone.
Very co-incidental.

asdf2

Bitter to the end in support of BirdTossum, or was that ThirdBosom. Sorry, that was TurdBlossom.

Well, you have directed us to a non-existent page with your link, and even if were not, you point us to a page maintained by a student, staff member or teacher at the Arts Faculty, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia. That is amazing!!! Your research skills are as honed as the ability that you have attributed as lacking for Attorney Simpson in Alabama.

STOP BEING A TROLL for these evil-doers. I can only wait for this to be over, and for Rove and his minions to be exposed for their crimes against justice and decency in America. Siegelman! Plame! The 2000 South Carolina Push Poll against McSame's adopted daughter! SBV Without Truth!

As that commercial said several years ago, STOP THE INSANITY (and Sean Hannity while you're at it)

asdf2...Believe me, folks, I'm no apologist for Karl Rove. I've just been following the Scrushy and Siegelman matters in the Birmingham News...

I think we've identified one of your problems there.

The Alternate Reality of the ‘Birmingham News’

Your assurances that come from 'following the story in the Birminham News' leaves me with tears of mirth rolling down my cheeks...and averting my eyes in embarrassment for you.

You're presenting canned stuff here. Yeah. Right. You're an Obama supporter OK.

You'd better take a break here and see if Bill and Leura can give you better material. Dude...you're fooling nobody.

And read through the clips at www.thetruthaboutdon.com if you want to get an idea of what sort of guy you're advocating.

Don Siegelman had an official policy that his administration would not speak to a respected Mobile Register investigative reporter (shades of Jesse Ventura...)

He instituted a policy whereby his lawyer vetted all public documents to be released to the media -- even George Wallace didn't do that.

He doled out tax breaks, no-bid contracts and other shady deals to his political cronies, triggering ethics investigations. (Hardly the first politician to do so, I know; but that's not a good defense when you get caught.)

After telling taxpayers he received "not one penny" from tobacco legislation, Siegelman later had to admit -- when reporters uncovered it -- that he had in fact received $800K.

And on and on. Does any of this make him guilty in the Scrushy case? Of course not. But it does suggest that his getting in bed with Scrushy would have been par for the course, not an abberation. As his own law partner told the Register, "Don has never been shy about asking for money."

"None of that changes the fact that Siegelman shook down a sleaze-ball business man for $500,000." - asdf2

Fact? Based on what exactly? Lanny Young and Nick Bailey's testimony? Testimony given in exchange for reduced sentences by individuals facing serious prison time? Nick Bailey's testimony is built entirely upon his recollection of a private meeting in the Summer of 1999 between Scrushy and Siegelman and the $250,000 check Bailey claims Siegelman showed to him after that meeting admitting it was a bribe, payment for a seat on the CON board. Unfortunately, Mr. Bailey’s statement had a fatal flaw in that it was inconsistent with the documented, objective
evidence that the $250,000 check had not been issued until a week or so after the
Siegelman/Scrushy meeting.

Siegelman may or may not be a crook but Franklin is an ACTING U.S. Attorney. Why does this sound so familiar?

http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/12_week.gif

Notice how this drought began to fade the week Abrams amped up the news coverage of Siegelman's incarcaration?

Go back to when it really started, to the week that the black spot of historically unprecedented drought first formed, and you will be at the week Siegelman was hauled away in chains.

I'm just sayin'...

January 20, 2009... one minute after swearing in, they all need to get fired.

"None of that changes the fact that Siegelman shook down a sleaze-ball business man for $500,000."

The effort to vilify Siegelman for this standard political procedure was much more egregious than anything Siegelman has done. That seems to be the point Rove's minions want us all distracted from, that Siegelman's flirting with political legal barriers is somehow worse than Rove's overt lawlessness.

Rove used our own legal system against itself. That is the real issue underlying all of this, not whether Siegelman is a bona fide politician who does ewxactly what politicians do for a living.

Everyone needs to stop listening to ANYONE who is stil dogpiling on Siegelman, and we all need to start looking more closely at the buddy system between DOJ and the WH that created this travesty in the first place.

Siegelman is just the gateway here for a complete unveiling of Rove's machiavellian machinations. And once Rove is under the microscope he put Siegelman under, we will start to see which rats jump off that sinking ship.

But one thing is for sure, Siegelman's political sins are much more forgivable than Rove's, and anyonw who is still leaning on Siegelman instead of Rove at this juncture might easily be considered one of Rove's "minions."

Apply the same brute legal prejudice to Rove that Siegelman suffered, and maybe we will all see him hauled off in chains, surrounded by detractors with no hope of redemption.

How many of you reading this can even imagine how Siegelman felt at that moment? Rove deserves much worse.

I think the Hindus call it Karma.

Jesus calls it The Golden Rule.

C'mon - we have to admit it when our *&%$ stinks. Saying that certain crimes are not as bad as GOP crimes makes us look like 8 year olds. It is as bad as the continuous refrain of "Well, look what Bill Clinton did" by GOPers. Yes Rove is a dirtbag, and I have to believe he will get his someday, whether through lawsuit, defamation, or criminal charges. But if one of our own is dirty, we've got to call him on it. Don't give the opposition ammunition.

Dear TPM Muckraker...

Could you please do a little investigation to tamp down the flame-war going on here.

The ever glib, and extraordinarily well prepared with talking points, and quick rebuttals asdf2 is being subjected to incredible amounts of abuse. Could there possibly be any justification for the accusations of his being a troll?

From what IP address does asdf2 post from?

If the accusations are correct, his posts are as despicable as the original prosecution.

Can we get some help here, please?