Karl Rove may be relegated to Fox News appearances and hoping to avoid prosecution once President Bush leaves office -- but the political career of one of his proteges, Tim Griffin, may just be getting started.

The Associated Press reports that Griffin, a former White House and RNC staffer, is mulling a run for the US Senate from Arkansas against Democrat Blanche Lincoln in 2010.

"I am certainly thinking about it," Griffin told the AP. "I'm going to spend some time going around the state and talking to folks and getting an idea of the interest level. ... I'm going to try and hit all 75 counties as soon as possible and I know that's a tall order trying to hit all of those in the next few months."

A DOJ report released this fall found that the department improperly fired Bud Cummins as US Attorney for the eastern district of Arkansas in order to make room for Griffin, thanks in part to pressure from the White House political office. Wrote Kyle Sampson, the DOJ point man for the round of politically motivated firings of which Cummins' was a part: "Getting [Griffin] appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc."

Griffin served six months as interim US Attorney but was never confirmed by the Senate.

Griffin has a long trck record as a partisan political knife-fighter. He has been accused of participating in a scheme to cage black voters in Florida in 2004, and was paid by the RNC to dig up dirt on both John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama this year.

After leaving the interim U.S. Attorney job last year, a tearful Griffin said public service was "not worth it" and that he had no plans to return to politics.

He appears to have reconsidered. And as someone who, the evidence suggests, consistently puts partisan advantage over the public interest, Griffin should fit right in with his Senate GOP colleagues if he wins the seat.

Lawyers for Don Siegelman -- the former Alabama governor who was convicted in 2006 on corruption chrages, despite evidence that the prosecution was politically motivated -- have made their first oral arguments in their appeal.

The Associated Press reports that the the defense lawyers are leading with a different argument, that the conviction should be overturned "partly because jurors communicated with each other during the trial."

It continues:

Siegelman attorney Sam Heldman also told the panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta that prosecutors did not prove Siegelman had a "quid pro quo" agreement to appoint [HealthSouth CEO Richard] Scrushy to a hospital board in exchange for contributions to a state lottery campaign.

As we've told you before, the US Attorney in the case continued to advise prosecutors even after formally recusing herself becasue her husband is a GOP operative and Karl Rove ally.

The Department of Justice has reopened an investigation into crucial allegations made by a whistleblower in the Don Siegelman trial, according to documents submitted last week by prosecutors in the case.

Siegelman, the Democratic former governor of Alabama, was convicted in 2006 on corruption charges. (He is appealing the conviction). The whistleblower, who works in the US Attorney's office in Alabama, has claimed that, during his trial, there were inappropriate contacts between members of the jury and the prosecution, including messages passed by jurors revealing that some jury members had developed a romantic interest in an FBI agent attached to the prosecution team.

A DOJ investigation of the claims, launched after the whistleblower came forward and carried out by two US Attorneys, concluded that no such contacts had occurred. But in a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey last month, Rep. John Conyers, whose judiciary committee has been looking into the issue, questioned the thoroughness of that probe, noting that investigators had not contacted the jurors themselves, or the federal marshals who allegedly passed notes between the jurors and the prosecution team.

In the recent court filing -- which responds to a filing made previously by Siegelman's defense lawyers in connection with his appeal -- prosecutors referred to that DOJ investigation, then added in a footnote:

Out of an abundance of caution, the Department of Justice recently reopened the investigation into this matter in response to concerns raised about the completeness of the investigation ... It remains the case that we are not aware of any improper contacts.

In other words, DOJ appears to agree that Conyers' concerns have merit, and has reopened the investigation into whether inappropriate contacts between jurors and the prosecution team did indeed occur. That could be good news for Siegelman as his lawyers seek to have his conviction thrown out on appeal.

Almost from the start, there has been evidence that the prosecution of Siegelman was politically motivated. Among other things, documents recently surfaced showing that the US Attorney on the case, Leura Canary -- who had recused herself because her husband is a GOP operative and Karl Rove associate who ran the campaign of Siegelman's opponent for governor -- continued to advise prosecutors on the case. DOJ has been notably unwilling to aggressively look into this and other evidence of politicization.

In a recent interview with TPMmuckraker, Siegelman accused Canary of "outrageous criminal conduct."