UPDATED BELOW
This morning, two folo-ups to recent posts:
1. Here’s Scott Horton’s post-60 Minutes post at Harper’s. If you have family or friends in Alabama angry that their cable company “lost” part of the broadcast (welcome to folo, Tom Paine, and thanks for your Alexandrovna heads-up!), they’ll appreciate Horton’s video of Scott Pelley’s 13:38-minute report.
Here‘s the DailyKos diary alerting the rest of the world to the Alabama blackout. Horton heard from his readers that it hit north Alabama “from Decatur to Huntsville and considerably on down” — the area served by Channel 19 WHNT — but commenters on the DKos thread report that Mobile was blocked too.
“Channel 19,” notes Horton, “is owned by Oak Hill Capital Partners, who can be contacted through Rhonda Barnat, 212-371-5999 or rb@abmac.com. Oak Hill Partners represents interests of the Bass family, which contribute heavily to the Republican Party.” And as someone at DKos suggests, “Time to file complaints with FCC. They go into the local affiliate’s files and when it is time to renew the license, these docs are reviewed.”
Had that happened where you were last night, how up-in-the-FCC’s-face-about-it would you be this morning? Wooey.
But if you did see it, you’ll have noticed (as did Scott Horton, though emphasis mine), that
the show was dominated by one of 52 former attorneys general from 40 of the 50 states who have called for a Congressional probe of the conduct of the Siegelman case, former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods. He leveled a series of blistering accusations at the Bush Administration’s Justice Department. With the Alabama G.O.P. this evening issuing a near-hysterical statement in which it characterizes the CBS broadcast –before its transmission –as an anti-Republican attack piece it was notable that Woods, like the piece’s other star witness, is a Republican. Not just any Republican, either. Grant Woods is co-chair of the McCain for President leadership committee, and a lifelong friend and advisor to the presumptive 2008 G.O.P. presidential candidate. Woods is also godfather to one of the McCain children.
Attorney General Woods has this to say about the Bush Justice Department’s prosecution of Siegelman: "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. "
In other words, not being able to beat Siegelman at the polls, Woods believes that his own party corruptly used the criminal justice process to take out an adversary. This is an extraordinary, heavy accusation. Not something that a senior Republican would raise easily about his own party. And the facts back the accusation up, beginning to end.
Seems to me that Grant Woods is the sort of lawyer (and the sort of Republican) that afotl — for only one — can approve of. Karl Rove’s DoJ-empowered minions in Alabama . . . not so much.
Speaking of them: Note also the link to CBS News that Horton supplies. I’d bet you this blog that they’ve got material for another show or two, just on Bill & Leura Canary and Judge Mark Fuller-and-his-conflicts alone. If you agree that America needs to learn more of their doings, please join me in using Scott’s link to ask CBS News to broadcast the rest of its story.
Finally, here MSNBC’s Dan Abrams in mid-December interviews Rep. Artur Davis and Scott Horton about the Siegelman case (listen for “Alice Martin”):
2. The other day I huzzahed the news that Josh Marshall and his Talking Points Media have won the George Polk Award. Now today’s New York Times covers Josh and his Polk (with pix).
UPDATE: Another for our “Cover-up worse than the crime” file? With a h/t or three to Researcher, I pass along the New York Times‘, Facing South‘s, and the Huntsville Times‘ coverage of the blackout. The NYT report, by far the most complete, pairs Alabama with Pakistan in terms of what happened (though noting a major difference).
As the 60 Minutes piece illustrated, by extensively interviewing former (Republican) AZ Atty Gen Grant Woods, the Siegelman case is a story of apparent corruption of the federal judicial system that is way more important than political partisanship.
Woods is a longtime friend and advisor to John McCain, and McCain could go a long way toward advancing his bipartisan cred by pushing to investigate the Siegelman prosecution and demanding an undo-over.
Note that the Alabama GOP is beating up on Jill Simpson to discredit her, but is not addressing any of the concerns raised by Woods about blatant conflicts of interest, engaging in a full scale investigation of a person in search of a crime, or the fact that the “crime” appears to be nothing more than a common transaction between a donor with a specifice interest and an elected official with appointment powers.
Using the DOJ’s argument against Siegleman and Scrushy, here are a few hundred criminals:
Pioneers Fill War Chest, Then Capitalize
Of the 246 fundraisers identified by The Post as Pioneers in the 2000 campaign, 104 — or slightly more than 40 percent — ended up in a job or an appointment. A study by The Washington Post, partly using information compiled by Texans for Public Justice, which is planning to release a separate study of the Pioneers this week, found that 23 Pioneers were named as ambassadors and three were named to the Cabinet: Donald L. Evans at the Commerce Department, Elaine L. Chao at Labor and Tom Ridge at Homeland Security. At least 37 Pioneers were named to postelection transition teams, which helped place political appointees into key regulatory positions affecting industry.
A more important reward than a job, perhaps, is access. For about one-fifth of the 2000 Pioneers, this is their business — they are lobbyists whose livelihoods depend on the perception that they can get things done in the government. More than half the Pioneers are heads of companies — chief executive officers, company founders or managing partners — whose bottom lines are directly affected by a variety of government regulatory and tax decisions.
When Kenneth L. Lay, for example, a 2000 Pioneer and then-chairman of Enron Corp., was a member of the Energy Department transition team, he sent White House personnel director Clay Johnson III a list of eight persons he recommended for appointment to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Two were named to the five-member commission.
UPDATE – Someone still needs to investigate this remarkable coincidence:
WHNT to rebroadcast Siegelman segment on 6 p.m. newscast
http://blog.al.com/breaking/2008/02/whnt_to_rebroadcast_siegelman.html
Posted by Staff reports February 25, 2008 4:05 PM
WHNT Channel 19 will rerun the entire 13 minute “60 Minutes” segment, “The Prosecution of Don Siegelman,” tonight during its 6 p.m. newscast.
Local viewers missed the segment at 6 p.m Sunday night when receiver through which the station gets its CBS feed failed, WHNT said. The station re-aired a portion of the piece at 10 p.m. Sunday night, and now plans to air it again tonight in its entirety.
The station will do an abbreviated newscast then rebroadcast the Siegelman piece.
Well, that oughta — what? — triple or quadruple the audience (no church tonight).
Luvvitluvvitluvvit, heehee.