The hype of this election season seems to have drowned out any political news not directly relating to which candidate is up or down. The often fanatic candidate diaries here on dailykos only reflect this fact. One sad victim of this is the Don Siegelman case, the story of the former Democratic Governor of Alabama now serving 7 years in a federal prison for nothing but what seems to be a political prosecution orchestrated by Karl Rove himself. CBS News recently brought national attention to this outrage in Alabama on 60 Minutes. Mysteriously, that part of the program was blocked out by a local CBS station in Alabama. Senator John Kerry has since written to the FCC protesting what he described as an effort by the local affiliate to hide information from the American public.
Dan Abrams has also shed light on this story devoting four nights on his program covering this case in a segment he calls 'Bush League Justice'. Interestingly, the netroots (especially big wigs like dkos and huffpost) which should be going wild over this injustice has remained generally mute on this issue distracted instead by petty in party bickering about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
The charges leveled against Siegelman by a Republican Federal Prosecutor was that of bribery and corruption.
according to Ernest Partridge from Online Journal
The bribery charge rose out of Siegelman’s appointment of Richard Scrushy to the Alabama hospital regulatory board, a non-paying position that Scrusky had held under two previous governors. The appointment followed Scrushy’s donation of a half million dollars to a Siegelman foundation and gained Siegelman no financial advantage whatsoever. Of course, political favors to donors is routine in both state and federal governments, as numerous ambassadorial appointments will testify.
The 60 Minutes story: Did Ex-Alabama Governor Get A Raw Deal? on the CBS News website said the following:
Now a Republican lawyer from Alabama, Jill Simpson, has come forward to claim that the Siegelman prosecution was part of a five-year secret campaign to ruin the governor. Simpson told 60 Minutes she did what’s called "opposition research" for the Republican party. She says during a meeting in 2001, Karl Rove, President Bush’s senior political advisor, asked her to try to catch Siegelman cheating on his wife.
Simpson reiterated this on Live with Dan Abrams, here is the video:
Adding to the outrage surrounding this case is the way the entire judicial proceedings were handled, for the example, federal judge Mark Fuller at sentencing, ordered Governor Siegelman be sent directly to prison and had him paraded away in shackles like a demented murderer, in full view of the public strictly in contrast to the 45 day grace period which is usually allowed before reporting. Also very egregious is the fact that it took the court almost two years to release a simple transcript of the trial, thus delaying Gov Siegelman's appeal and the fact that the two Republicans also implicated for receiving illegal campaign contributions: Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions and Federal Judge William Pryor, were neither investigated nor prosecuted.
A grand total of 52 former state Attorney Generals from both parties have asked Congress and the Justice Department to investigate the Siegelman Case. One of those people is Grant Woods, the former Republican Attorney General of Arizona who said "I haven't seen a case with this many red flags on it that pointed towards a real injustice being done," Mr. Woods also said "I personally believe that what happened here is that they targeted Don Siegelman because they could not beat him fair and square. This was a Republican state and he was the one Democrat they could never get rid of,"
Abrams has called for Siegelman's release pending his appeal and the Alabama Democratic party has done the same. It's time that the netroots throw it's full weight behind this case. We demand that Governor Siegelman be freed NOW!