Nancy Pelosi seems to be blind to the very recent legacy of Republican white-collar lynch-mobs. The Republican's ability, using vast resources of private Republican donors (e.g. Republican lawyers and legal "elves" such as Ann Coulter) to turn a 2 minute encounter in a Little Rock hotel room between then Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and Paula Jones, into a CONSTITUTION IMPEACHMENT CRISIS. eg. Ken Starr's ability to win a FELONY CONVICTION of Clinton friend and lawyer Webster Hubbell for "OVERBILLING clients and partners" for legal work at the Rose Law firm.
HELLO? IF partners do not like a lawyers legal bill... THEY DO NOT PAY IT! The same holds true for clients... clients DISPUTE legal bills they do not agree with.
BY THE STANDARDS OF THE WEB HUBBELL "overbilling" conviction, THE ENTIRE CHENEY-BUSH WHITE HOUSE SHOULD BE BEHIND BARS!
INDEED, VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY's CHIEF OF STAFF Lewis Libby, who CONCURRENTLY WAS ALSO a PRESIDENTIAL SENIOR ADVISOR, WAS ACTUALLY CONVICTED OF _PERJURY_ AND _OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE - and he has never seen a moment of jail time!
GOT THAT? Under REPUBLICAN "justice" WEB HUBBELL sees MONTHS of JAIL TIME for "overbilling" partners... while REPUBLICAN LAWYER Lewis 'Scooter' Libby IS CONVICTED OF PERJURY and OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE, and sees NO JAIL TIME!
EVERYONE IN THE WORLD knows that Libby's OBSTRUCING JUSTICE was about KEEPING THE FBI INVESTIGATION into the White House's illegal "outing" of an entire undercover CIA operation AWAY FROM HIS BOSSES, Vice President Cheney and President Bush. (Which obstruction of justice allowed Bush and Cheney to prevail in re-election campaign 2004, even if they had to steal votes in Ohio, Iowa, New Mexico, and other states to do so.)
TODAY WE KNOW that popular Alabama DEMOCRATIC GOVERNOR DON SIEGELMAN was FRAMED by a hyper-partisan REPUBLICAN PROSECUTION in the heady months of early 2002, when the Bush-Cheney administration enjoyed 80% support, a docile post-9-11 media, and a cowed and docile "Democratic" 'opposition' party.
TODAY, AMERICAN JUSTICE _DEMANDS_ that the Democratic Congress CALLS KARL ROVE to the floor of Congress, to ANSWER TO HIS ROLE in the white-collar mugging of the Democratic governor ROBBED of his winning re-election bid by malicious, partisan WHITE HOUSE SUBVERSION of the US Department of Justice.
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Going to Jail for Being a Democrat: How Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman Got Roved
By Paul Craig Roberts, CounterPunch.
Posted March 3, 2008.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/78407/
Once a popular governor of Alabama, Siegelman was framed in a crooked trial and sent to prison by the corrupt Bush administration.
Don Siegelman, a popular Democratic governor of Alabama, a Republican state, was framed in a crooked trial, convicted on June 29, 2006, and sent to Federal prison by the corrupt and immoral Bush administration.
The frame-up of Siegelman and businessman Richard Scrushy is so crystal clear and blatant that 52 former state attorney generals from across America, both Republicans and Democrats, have urged the US Congress to investigate the Bush administration's use of the US Department of Justice to rid themselves of a Democratic governor who "they could not beat fair and square," according to Grant Woods, former Republican Attorney General of Arizona and co-chair of the McCain for President leadership committee. Woods says that he has never seen a case with so "many red flags pointing to injustice."
The abuse of American justice by the Bush administration in order to ruin Siegelman is so crystal clear that even the corporate media organization CBS allowed "60 Minutes" to broadcast on February 24, 2008, a damning indictment of the railroading of Siegelman. Extremely coincidental "technical difficulties" caused WHNT, the CBS station covering the populous northern third of Alabama, to go black during the broadcast. The station initially offered a lame excuse of network difficulties that CBS in New York denied. The Republican-owned print media in Alabama seemed to have the inside track on every aspect of the prosecution's case against Siegelman. You just have to look at their editorials and articles following the 60 Minutes broadcast to get a taste of what counts for "objective journalism" in their mind.
The injustice done by the US Department of Justice (sic) to Siegelman is so crystal clear that a participant in Karl Rove's plan to destroy Siegelman can't live with her conscience. Jill Simpson, a Republican lawyer who did opposition research for Rove, testified under oath to the House Judiciary Committee and went public on "60 Minutes." Simpson said she was told by Bill Canary, the most important GOP campaign advisor in Alabama, that "my girls can take care of Siegelman."
Canary's "girls" are two US Attorneys in Alabama, both appointed by President Bush. One is Bill Canary's wife, Leura Canary. The other is Alice Martin. According to Harper's Scott Horton,a law professor at Columbia University, Martin is known for abusive prosecutions.
What was the "crime" for which Siegelman and Scrushy were convicted? Scrushy made a contribution to the Alabama Education Foundation, a not-for-profit organization set up to push for a lottery to benefit secondary education in Alabama, to retire debt associated with the Alabama education lottery proposal. Scrushy was a member of Alabama's Certificate of Need board, a nonpaid group that oversaw hospital expansion. Scrushy had been a member of the board through the terms of the prior three governors, and Siegelman asked him to serve another term.
Federal prosecutors claimed that Scrushy's contribution was a bribe to Siegelman in exchange for being appointed to the Certificate of Need board. In the words of federal prosecutor Stephen Feaga, the contribution was "given in exchange for a promise for an official act."
Feaga's statement is absolute nonsense. It is well known that Scrushy had served on the board for years, felt he had done his duty, and wanted off the board. It was Siegelman who convinced Scrushy to remain on the board. Moreover, Scrushy gave no money to Siegelman. The money went to a foundation.
As a large number of attorneys have pointed out, every US president appoints his ambassadors and cabinet members from people who have donated to his campaign. Under the reasoning applied in the Siegelman case, a large number of living former presidents, cabinet members and ambassadors should be in federal prison_not to mention the present incumbents.
How in the world did a jury convict two men of a non-crime?
The answer is that the US Attorney used Governor Siegelman's indicted young assistant, Nick Bailey, to create the impression among some of the jurors that "something must have happened." Unbeknownst to Siegelman, Bailey was extorting money or accepting bribes from Alabama businessmen in exchange for state business. Bailey was caught. Presented with threats of a long sentence, Bailey agreed to testify falsely that Siegelman came out of a meeting with Scrushy and showed Bailey a $250,000 check he had accepted in exchange for appointing Scrushy to the Certificate of Need board. Prosecutors knew that Bailey's testimony was false, not only because they had Bailey rewrite his testimony many times and rehearsed him until he had it down pat, but also because they had the check. The records show that the check, written to a charitable organization, was cut days after the meeting from which Siegelman allegedly emerged with check in hand.
It is a crime for prosecutors to withhold exculpatory evidence. The Washington Post reported on February 26 that Siegelman's attorneys have called for a special prosecutor after CBS quoted prosecution witness Bailey "as saying prosecutors met with him about 70 times. He said they had him regularly write out his testimony because they were frustrated with his recollection of events. The written notes, if they existed, could have damaged the credibility of Bailey's story, but no such notes were turned over to the defense, as would have been required by law."
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