In yesterday's poll something happened which I haven't seen done in such an obvious and blatantly stupid way in any other poll before. The voting on the next Sec. of the Interior was pretty much done, maybe a vote here and there was still coming but it was pretty much over. Then I noticed how the vote total for Les AuCoin (who had somewhere between 5 and 8 votes before this started) was slowly rising. At first it looked as if someone just wanted him to surpass Olypia Snowe who was in second place with 11 votes at that time. But that person didn't stop there. While the vote count for everyone else remained pretty much stagnant (Robert Kennedy, Jr.'s went from 60 to just 63 in this time frame), Les AuCoin's went from the single digits to a total of 42 votes. So, one person actually took the time to vote for him more than 20 times to get him into a runoff with Robert Kennedy, Jr.

So I know that many of you that read this site probably thought Ron Sparks was our only chance to get rid of Jeff Sessions. Well, Sparks decided not to run and Vivian Davis Figures is our candidate. With Obama the eventual nominee, this race is certainly in play. Turnout will be high all over the state. Can you help raise $500 today that will be matched? Can I get 15 Contributors as well?

WE can really make some heads turn. If they did it in Miss CD1 we can do it here for sure.!!!

http://actblue.com/...

Lest we must not forget those Senators and those that essentially said that if we pull the wool over their eyes for six months it is okay for women not to receive equal pay.

Alabama U.S. Senate race starting to get some attention. Could be one to watch despite what the pundits are saying.

What's a candidate to do when he can't find enough volunteers to set up chairs and tables before a fundraising event?

Why, obviously, allow local functionaries to supply prisoners for that purpose.

John McCain is on his barnstorming tour of forgotten America, and found himself in Homewood, Alabama earlier this week:

The McCain campaign was charged $250 to use two rooms in the hall, which normally would book for $1,200 on a weeknight. The campaign also was given free labor from Homewood City Jail inmates to set up tables and chairs for the event, avoiding a $100 set-up fee, but did pay a standard $50 cleaning fee.

I haven't seen this diaried, but thought it was somewhat telling on a number of levels...

I'm not much for actually posting diaries here, but since I finished a big project at work and had a little time, I wanted to share with you fine people my thoughts on recently meeting AL-03 Congressional candidate Joshua Segall when he came to my firm to do a meet-and-greet.  Joshua has just posted some impressive fundraising totals for the first quarter, outraising his opponent, incumbent Republican Mike Rogers, by $273K to $104 K (however, Rogers has a large war chest of cash on hand).

 Well i emailed Don to see how he was doing, and the response i got was an article he copy pasted and sent back to me. It seems that maybe Rove will be forced to testify about all the dirty trick he played involving selective prosecution whilst he was hitman numero uno of the GOP White house.

More Below The Fold.

SUSA has new GE polls out for some states...yeah, I know we like to say GE polls don't matter now, but superdelegates are going to make their decision on who is electable vs. who won the most votes/delegates...that will most likely be Obama, but if he's trailing in important states, the superdelegates' decision will be harder and less certain.

Anyway here are the polls;

Whereas, Fred Clarkson just posted a piece about Alabama's HJR 415, "Recognizing Easter Week as Christian Heritage Week in the State of Alabama;" and

Whereas, said resolution is a piece of Christian nationalist crap;

Be it resolved, that I have some debunking to do...

When I was 11, my family moved from Ohio to Birmingham, Alabama. My father was offered a job running his heart-lung machine during open heart surgery by a very good surgeon there. Their success rate was exceptionally good. There exists around a hundred slides of smiling young children with large scars on their chests. They are smiling because they had heart defects that would have killed them but after the surgery they were told they would now have normal lives. I wish I could post those pictures, but I don't know how I could ever get permission to do so. They look so beautiful, black and white children.
There was a woman who worked with my Dad who sterilized the instruments. She was African American. He liked her very much. The cafeteria in the hospital was segregated. The black people had to eat on one side that was shabby and dirty. I think they even had to bring their own food. My Dad one day decided he couldn't stand that any longer and he called up the head of the hospital and said he wanted the cafeteria integrated by the next day. My Dad had a hot temper sometimes and when he demanded something he got it.

Recently the long, strange story of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman has rightly received a lot of attention. There is good reason to believe that Siegelman's prosecution on corruption charges was politically motivated. But this diary isn't about that. It's about the claim that the 2002 gubernatorial election was stolen from Siegelman in Baldwin County, where a late change in the vote count took over 6,000 votes away from Siegelman and gave Republican challenger Bob Riley a narrow victory.

As Scott Horton noted in Harper's, an Auburn sociology professor (now retired) named James Gundlach wrote a conference paper arguing that the results in Baldwin County suggested that the results had been tampered with to give Riley the win. There is no way to prove that the results were accurate -- but I don't think Gundlach's analysis holds up. Based on the evidence available to me, I think Riley probably did beat Siegelman. Here's why.

An interesting experience today.

A mass email was sent out to the members of the Birmingham (AL) chapter of the National Jewish Democratic Council on behalf of Alabama State Senator Vivian Figures. She is running for the US Senate this November against our Republican incumbent, Jeff Sessions.

The email was inquiring about the possibility of Senator Figures speaking to our NJDC chapter, and linked to her website. I looked at her website, and from the site, could not determine whether she was a Democrat challenging Sessions in the general election or a Republican primary challenger. I found that neither of the words "Democrat" or "Democratic" appeared anywhere on her site.

Cross-posted from

What can wine tell us about the world? Plenty, it turns out.  It is one of civilization's oldest products.  At one time it was a necessity, when food was served rotten and water was where you washed and evacuated.  Now it is enjoying a resurgence.  It is an agricultural product, and a unique one.  You see, vineyards have kept records of temperature, yield, and ripeness-dates for centuries, giving us incredibly precise records that tell us reams about the global environment. It is also a luxury item, particularly at the top end.  As such, its sale and purchase can tell us volumes about the global economy.

Today we look at wine, religion, and politics.

Folks, you really need to read this. While it is a very long piece, it is absolutely imperative that it be read and reacted to.

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Republican effort jails largest Democratic donor in Mississippi, helps put ex-RNC chairman in governor's chair

... a former Mississippi Republican state legislator who was later backed by Democrats to win a seat on the Mississippi Supreme Court discusses political prosecutions with Raw Story and the corruption and politicization of the Department of Justice.

snip

Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz Jr. was indicted in 2003 on charges relating to his receipt of a loan guarantee from trial lawyer Paul Minor – a personal friend and the largest Democratic donor in Mississippi – to help defray campaign debts. A Bush-appointed US Attorney, Dunnica Lampton, brought charges of bribery against Diaz, Minor and two other Mississippi judges. Diaz was acquitted of all those charges... Within days of his acquittal, Diaz was indicted for a second time. He was again acquitted.

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Over the flip are snips from the interview, which I urge everyone to read.

On Dan Abrams show, Verdict.  I'm surprised there isn't anything on the diaries list yet.

I'm pleased to see Dan Abrams doing this.  His "fair broker" schtick gets on my nerves, as it usually seems to be an excuse to pass along received wisdom and promote conventional thought in the name of playing the devil's advocate.  He's also having Phil Donohue as a guest later on.  Giving a place for these two men to voice their concern and educate the public of the outrages they've undergone is a big step in the right direction for Abrams.

Right now, I'm not on a good computer for doing video links, so I'm hoping that someone else will provide a link to this in the comments. Sorry this is short, but i wanted to put this out in case people want to watch it.

The deadline to file to run for Congress is in April in the following states and we still need candidates: Tennessee, Alabama, New Jersey, Virgina.  To be sure, I can't find reports of who has filed in those states, but checking the information from the reliable sources (Swing State Project, politics1), nobody has filed for the following districts:

Tennessee (filing deadline April 3)
1.Tennessee 2
2.Tennessee 3
3.Tennessee 7

Alabama (filing deadline April 4)
1.Alabama 6

New Jersey (filing deadline April 7)
1.New Jersey 2

Virginia (filing deadline April 11)
1.Virginia 1

Let's leave no Wingnut unchallenged!

Throughout the United States, there are places so isolated and impoverished that residents are literally unable to access the basic economic and educational ladders of opportunity that so many others take for granted. The impoverished rural areas in Alabama's Black Belt region offer testament to a nation that appears to have forgotten vast swaths of its own people. In fact, some might say Alabama's Black Belt presents a case study of blatant economic injustice. Here is a story from "The Birmingham News" that illustrates just one, but obviously major symptom of that apparent truth.***
CL
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Well friends, it seems that Bud Cramer is retiring. Yes this may be a little late news for some of you, but never the less it is something to keep track of.

On March 13th, Representative Bud Cramer announced that he will not seek re-election to Congress from Alabama's Fifth Congressional District. "This was a difficult decision, but after 28 years of public service it is time for me to step aside, spend more time with my family and begin another chapter in my life."

More below the fold.