A Pardon For Siegelman On Democrats '08 Agenda?
by Glynn Wilson
A pardon for former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman could be on the presidential agenda if the Democrats take back the White House in 2008, according to Pam Miles, a member of the Alabama Democratic Party executive committee who was in Washington, D.C. this weekend for the Democratic National Committee's fall meeting.
She talked with a number of the presidential candidates at the meeting in addition to party chair Howard Dean and members of Congress, she said, pressing the issue of doing something about the political prosecution of Siegelman.
"The investigation and the possibility of a pardon would be on the agenda," she said. "It came up in every conversation."
Siegelman's case was received well by Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, she said, in addition to Dean and a number of members of Congress, including Mike Honda of California, and a staff member for Dave Obey of Wisconsin, the chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee.
Senator Hillary Clinton was the only presidential candidate who failed to attend the fall meeting because of the bomb threat in her New Hampshire office last Friday, according to Miles and a New York Times blog.
D.N.C. Fall Meeting Ends on Difficult Note
Ms. Miles presented a personal eight-page letter to Howard Dean from Don Siegelman on her trip, although the contents of the letter are not yet being made public for the media.
What struck Ms. Miles the most on her trip was the extent to which people from other countries seemed to know more about Seigelman's case than people in the United States, which may be a statement on the American media.
She talked to people from China, the Philippines and Africa who seemed to know more about the story than people form North Carolina, she said, and they had learned about the case from blogs, not mainstream media coverage.
She also talked at length to Washington Post columnist David Broder about Siegelman's story. If he were to write about it, it would be a first for the Post, which has so far only run AP stories about the case and even the Washington Post-owned Salon.com has yet to do a lengthy story.
Ms. Miles has worked for the Democratic Party and for Don Siegelman's campaigns at least since 1998. She is known as the administrator of perhaps the biggest Democrat e-mail list in Alabama run out of Huntsville.
She also ran for a state House seat a few years back, but lost to the Republican in District 25, a district where Republicans make up about 76 percent of voters. Mac McCutcheon now holds the seat as a Republican but votes with Democrats in the Legislature much of the time.
Which brings up another interesting point. When the Republicans were trying to gain a foothold in Alabama back in the 1980s, they recruited Democrats to change parties. Now that there is such a backlash against Republicans with the failings of the Bush administration and Republican scandals dominating the news, is it time for Democrats to now go back after some of that talent in the Republican Party and recruit people to switch back?
"Absolutely," Ms. Miles said. "That is already under discussion."
Bill Clinton has talked about it, she said.
And now that the Republican Party is coming to be seen as "the party of the pervs," she said, with gay Republicans ensconced in scandal such as Sen. Larry Craig from Idaho, is it possible we will be seeing more candidates switch back to the Democratic Party in the near future?
Comments
There are still a few conservative Republicans that line up with the old traditional Republican values, and don't accept Bush's corrupt idea of running our government. These honest republicans are considered outside Bush's circle and they are victimized along with the Democrats. They are falling fast because they are not endorsed by the Bushes and receive little help with campaign finances.
Posted by: D. Segretti | December 4, 2007 09:11 AM
Would that be Daniel Segretti? One of Nixon's CREEP lawyers?
Not sure what conservative Republican values are, but if the Republican Party wants to survive, perhaps they should all get together and talk Bush into resigning. It is obvious he is losing it now over this Iran nuke business, just lying to the American people as if we were a bunch of children who can't see the truth without having a would be dictator and monarch tell us what it is.
One more lie and the Dems might just get up the courage to stand up against him and get behind impeachment. Resignation or impeachment is the only chance we have to restore America's standing in the world.
Posted by: RP | December 5, 2007 10:18 AM
When the books leave the press next fall about the persecution of Alabama’s most popular Democrat Ex-Governor Don Siegelman, they will be best sellers; I guarantee. I don’t know of anyone in the history of the United States who has had the constitution torn up and thrown in their face, by all levels of the federal government like Siegelman has. On top of that, the three largest newspapers in his own state have been a big part of this conspiracy. The newspapers are owned by the media giant, Advance Publications Inc. Whose writers have pacific orders on how to write news articles that involves Democrats. These newspapers are feeding this same false information to the AP Associated Press and the TV and radio media. This is a form of nazism and is against the law. I have requested that the FBI conduct an investigation of Advance Publications Inc.
Every time I see Riley on TV. I want to change channels knowing what a liar and cheat that he has proven to be.
The following is part one of a few accounts that I have personal knowledge of:
(A) In late 1998 Karl Rove and William Canary arranged money laundering operations with Ralph Reed and Glover Norquist, and worked a deal with Bush's campaign financier and Rove's good friend lobbyist Jack Abramoff to finance Alabama campaign financing of GOP candidates in return for political favors. Canary and Rove were working closely with Republican Attorney General William Pryor who began at that time and continued profiling Alabama Democrats as part of their payback for running his election campaign. Don Siegelman's FBI file was flagged at this time by Pryor since Siegelman was a Democrat paving the way for other Democrats to Follow.
(B) In 1999 Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon funneled millions of dollars from the Mississippi Choctaw Indians to be laundered by Ralph Reed's Christian Coalition to defeat Siegelman's state education lottery. Representative Bob Riley endorsed Reed’s letters that was mailed to all Alabama residents along with prime time radio and TV ads trying to defeat Siegelman's effort to fund education in a state that ranked last in the number of illiterate adults.
(C) The conspiracy to kill Siegeman's Education Lottery worked, leaving Siegelman's campaign owing two million dollars to institutions that loaned the money to run the campaign. The negative advertisements caused many Alabamians that had made pledges to renege on their donations. Siegelman on his own managed to pay off all but $500,000 of the note.
(D) In 2001 Bush appointed William Canary's wife as U.S. Attorney of Middle Alabama. Her prior job was working for Al. A.G. William Pryor. According to her piers one of her jobs for Pryor was profiling Don Siegelman and other top Alabama Democrats.
(E) In 2002, Mark Fuller who was the district attorney for Coffee County was appointed By Bush to be U.S. federal judge in middle Alabama. His successor who was appointed by Siegelman found that Fuller had falsified the county payroll for his investigators who had been doing work for him on the side. Fuller who owed one senior investigator several thousand dollars attempted to falsify his income so that he could retire and draw an additional $1,000 a month for the rest of his life. Fuller left for the federal bench with this hanging over his head. AG Pryor refused to investigate or charge Fuller for defrauding and falsifying Coffee county’s payroll. He also attempted to defraud the Al. Retirement System.
Fuller blamed Siegelman for exposing him. Fuller owns 47% and is/was president of Doss Aviation of Colorado, Springs, CO. He was working both jobs. His uncle Everett Terry serves on several Congressional Defense Committees and made his nephew Mark Everett Fuller a wealthy man through military contracts.
(F) Campaign Summer of 2002, Bob Riley used Goff's personal plane to fly to Washington to meet with Karl Rove to get a quick course in wearing $3,000 alligator boots and how to project himself as the Marlboro man riding a horse in his campaign ads.
He also had a private meeting with Lobbyist Michael Scanlon hosted by Rove. Scanlon used to work for Riley before he went to work for Congressman Delay. Riley asked for major financial help on his campaign for governor. Scanlon with the aid of Jack Abramoff and Rove who would provide white house assistance in pulling it off. They agreed to use scare tactics on the Indian Casinos making them pay large sums of money to block so called legislation to keep their casinos from having to pay taxes. Then it was to block legislation to keep the casinos from being shut down.. Then it was to defeat Siegelman since he was still pushing the Lottery. The money would be laundered by the National Republican associations. Scanlon created sham companies one of which was setup in Europe from which over a million dollars came. Riley received millions of dollars which in Congressman John McCain’s congressional investigation he acknowledged that Riley received millions of dollars from the Republican Associations, but they could not determine where the money came from.
(G) 2002 election night. All the polls had reported in and Siegelman won by over 6,000 votes. Dan Gans, who had programming, computer system administration training and trained to work on the Diebold Election Systems Inc and the ES&S central voting tabulator was about to be fired by Bob Riley when he decide to get online with Bay Minette located in Baldwin County, Al. He made several attempts to take votes from Siegelman’s total vote count and switch them to Riley’s; however, there was a third candidate that was running for governor that he forgot about. Gans had trouble making the total votes equal the number of voters that had voted. There was a count of the paper ballots which still showed Siegelman as the winner. So as a cover up, all the votes was sealed by AL AG William Pryor who issued a warning that he would prosecute anyone who attempted to break the seals. Siegelman tried to get a court order to have a recount but the Republican Judges wouldn’t issue one. Siegelman filed charges with the attorney general’s office attorney Troy King and talked with the FBI to no avail.
Posted by: Mike Hale | December 11, 2007 04:56 PM