They are buried deep within our judiciary at every level. Their first concern is political advantage, not the rule of law. That’s the only way anyone could possibly explain the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that effectively says George W. Bush is a serial felon for having appointed ambassadors whose sole qualification was that they first raised significant sums of money for Bush’s campaigns.

There is no other way to read the appellate court’s cowardly “anonymous” decision upholding the conviction of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, a decision that says if you appoint a campaign donor to a position of responsibility, you’re guilty of taking bribe.

The three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit was unanimous in ruling that there was enough evidence to convict Mr. Siegelman of bribery for having appointed a campaign contributor to a state hospital licensing board, rejecting his arguments that the testimony of an aide who turned against him was not enough. The judges rejected prosecutors’ contentions, however, that Mr. Siegelman had participated in a “broader self-dealing scheme.”

The judges threw out two lesser charges against Mr. Siegelman having to do principally with the “self-dealing” actions of the businessman he appointed to the hospital board, Richard M. Scrushy, and the businessman’s associates. Mr. Scrushy’s separate conviction was upheld….

Mr. Siegelman’s backers, and some legal experts, contended that the evidence against him was flimsy. But the appeals court judges, all appointed by Republican presidents, brushed past that claim. At the outset of their 68-page opinion, they expressed great reluctance to interfere with the jury verdict, handed down nearly three years ago in Montgomery, Ala.

The Siegelman case, the judges wrote in their opinion, “has arrived in this court with the ‘sword and buckler’ of a jury verdict,” adding that the verdict “commands the respect of this court, and that verdict must be sustained if there is substantial evidence to support it.”

Republican judges. Terrified of overturning precedent when it favors them, boldly going where no judge has ever gone when precedent is against them. The entire case rested upon the sworn testimony of one liar, as recounted by the Times.

The case turned largely on whether there had been an explicit agreement between Mr. Siegelman and Mr. Scrushy for a seat on the hospital board in exchange for the $500,000 contribution to a campaign for a state lottery, and the definition of the word “explicit.” The government’s main evidence was a conversation between Mr. Siegelman and a former aide, Nick Bailey, as reported by Mr. Bailey.

Mr. Bailey testified to having asked, “What in the world is he going to want for that?” referring to the first installment of Mr. Scrushy’s $500,000 contribution. Mr. Siegelman is said to have replied, “the CON board,” referring to the Certificate of Need board, which approves hospital projects. Mr. Scrushy had served on the board under previous governors.

Bailey responded, according to his testimony, “I wouldn’t think that would be a problem, would it?” To which Siegelman is alleged to have said, “I wouldn’t think so.”

Even if this were true (and there’s no reason to believe it is), our entire political system is founded on exactly this kind of you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours logrolling. The Times story is, of course, egregiously incomplete. For the whole story you have to turn to Harper’s Scott Horton who was covering this case for years before the official “major media” was forced to acknowledge that the Old South was once again in the business of operating under their own rules.

The Court found that the jury in the case was within its rights when it found that Siegelman’s appointment was a quid pro quo in exchange for the contribution to the foundation.

The Court also concluded that there was no clear evidence that Judge Mark Everett Fuller, in sentencing Siegelman, retaliated against Siegelman for arguing that the prosecution was politically motivated. They overturned two of Siegelman’s convictions and are therefore sending the matter back to Judge Fuller for resentencing.

There are two points to consider. First, nearly all the disclosures that undermined confidence in the fairness of the Siegelman trial occurred after the trial record was closed–and none of these disclosures were examined by the Court of Appeals. Even though the appeals court looked into jury misconduct, it did not have before it the much more powerful evidence of misconduct that a whistleblowing member of the prosecution team subsequently disclosed to the Justice Department—because the Bush Justice Department, in violation of its plain ethical duties, chose to keep all of that secret. So although an appeal has been taken and resolved, not one of the truly significant issues with the Siegelman case was ever briefed or argued. That remains for the future.

Second, the opinion in this case was rendered “per curiam.” That’s often the approach taken by judges when they don’t want to own up to their own writing. In my opinion none of the judges would want to own up to being the author of this opinion, with its technically well-justified but nevertheless obviously unjust conclusions. This was a panel consisting entirely of Republican judges, and two of the three had an active record of political engagement in G.O.P. causes. They were a distinctly hostile audience for Governor Siegelman, and many passages of the opinion, to my eyes, reflect this.

Scott Horton, Harper’s Magazine

Congress was impeded in their efforts to follow up on this case because, in part, Harriet Miers and Karl Rove REFUSED to appear before Congress, asserting non-existent privilege from the comfort of their attorneys’ offices instead of before Congress and under oath. This is the case that, if our cowardly Congressional leadership allows, will permit progressives to remove a significant number of hyperpartisan judges from the federal bench.

Yeah, I’m smoking before noon again. Too bad, all they’d have to do is audit these bastards to make sure they’d properly recused themselves over the years. Republican or Democrat, judges who presided over trials that impacted the judge’s net worthy need to be impeached, tried, convicted and removed from the bench for painfully obvious reasons.

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Local online news outfits MinnPost and MnIndy are no doubt following Mother Jones’ nonprofit business model closely. They got there first, but MoJo isn’t an online startup, but rather a venerable lefty news magazine with 30+ years of scoops under its belt. The future of news may be far more altruistic than today’s “we can’t run that — BLANK is our biggest advertiser!” system of news dissemination.

It’s funny, the deeper we get into the age infotainment, the less amused I am.

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Bob Herbert writes about how the left and right and all the bought and paid for media are faulting Obama for not having stopped this still sliding train wreck of an economy. The Siegelman case should be instructive — Bush deadenders who riddle our government are not making things easy for Obama. 

The government we’re getting right now is all the government Obama believes he can deliver. More would be good, but you can’t do more if there isn’t a delivery system in place, and this transition is still ongoing.

Presidents used to get 100 days. It seems as if Obama only got 100 hours, and they started on the day after the election, not the inauguration. And really, I’m getting pretty tired of Glenn Greenwald’s constant pissyness. The man is stunningly ignorant of the political process and while he has a prosecutor’s eye for lawbreaking, he’s as bad as a talk radio host when it comes to speculatively imbuing political realities with democracy-threatening implications.

Don’t interfere with cops at the scene of a crime. Just don’t. Our judiciary system is packed with Federalist Society members who’re ideologically subordinated to political expediency and cronyism. They won’t hesitate to throw up roadblocks if Obama tips his hand. And they are the number one reason why Obama can’t change everything that needs changing — yet.

Decide how much time you’re going to give Obama, and then give him that much time. When you’re working in a snake pit sometimes the obvious move will just get you bitten. And when it’s a political snake pit, sometimes you’re just trying to find the path that comes with the fewest bites.

Then kick back and take note of how the orchestrated Right tizzies out each time Obama makes a bold move. Forward progress is always tricky when each move is met by screams (I’m sorry — am I hurting you or is that a scream of pleasure?). The Republicans may not have the horses to contest everything in Congress, but they aren’t without resources or the ability to selectively thwart Obama. They also have a division’s worth of screwloose racist militia types, any one of whom could drive a van full of fertilizer into a federal building at any time. 

Not since the Days of Rage has this country teetered so perilously close to armed insurrection. Criticism from the Left isn’t needed right now. This time will pass, and with it so too will pass most of the objections to Obama’s tactics. His game plan hasn’t changed, just the eagerness of his same party critics.

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Jim DeMint, cementing his reputation as one of our Senators who only likes some Americans, and has no use for most of us. A real hater who won’t cut you any slack on account of age or poverty. But mostly he’s a hypocritical asshole.

In comments made at a Republican news conference on the need to save the district’s federal school voucher program, DeMint said, “If you send a kid to [public] school in D.C., chances are that they will end up in a gang rather than graduating,” according to an article in The Washington Times.

The Times noted that the graduation rate for D.C. Public Schools was close to 70 percent last year, which puts it in line with the national average.

DeMint’s own state of South Carolina however has a much lower graduation rate – 56 percent, which is the fourth lowest rate of any state in the country, according to a 2008 article by South Carolina newspaper, The Post and Courier.

Rural areas have always shipped their most violent losers to urban areas. Not every gang member was born in a project, and I’m sure more than a few hail from South Carolina, a state that increasingly has put a strong claim on the right to call themselves the most racist and backwater state in the Union.

Not that some people wouldn’t love to bring that title to Minnesota.

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I’m not sure I linked to Will Bunch on Jon Stewart’s takedown of CNBC’s financial reporters/brothelistas. If not I should have. Here it is again.

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NBC touts HMO that put mentally ill woman in cab and then dumped her in a ghetto

Lets see the DFL embrace this!

Are we going through a global period of economic reinvention? If by that you mean is the current system broken beyond repair, the answer is yes! See also Jon Talton on the market bears and centrist politics

Bogus council candidate’s supporters want criminal investigation (I just want to know if Stonewall DFL ever actually voted on endorsing him)

More corporate expediency in support of the lying liars who fucked up the economy like no one this side of Coolidge

More about Rush Limbaugh, but from here on out I think I’ll just forget the link part

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Fifteen years seems like a lot for drunk driving until you read this and think about how it must have impacted the jury:

A Woodbridge man who drove the wrong way, drunk, on Route 1 last year and slammed head-on into another car at 96 mph, killing the driver, was sentenced to 15 years in prison yesterday by a Fairfax County judge….

The crash killed Robert L. Thomas, 53, who lived in the Groveton area of eastern Fairfax and was married with four grown children and a fifth adopted child. Thomas worked as a porter at the Harris Teeter groceries in Pentagon City and Alexandria, had just finished working a 16-hour double shift on a Sunday and was bringing home a jobless friend who needed a meal. 

If ever a punitive sentence made sense . . . it wouldn’t be this one. A sane sentence would have been for the drunk driver to 1) rehab, 2) do 20 hours of public service a week for life, and 3) publicly apologize to Robert L. Thomas’s family, friends and community.

The same crime involving the death of Bobby Lee Thomas (who’d also been drinking) and who had no survivors (Bobby Lee being a never married ex-con) would have gotten a much lighter sentence. The crime is the same, regardless of the consequences. What was the crime here? Not drinking, most of us do that. Not driving, that’s something we all do. The crime was driving when the driver knew he was significantly impaired. What happened next shouldn’t be relevant to the actual crime of poor judgment. Every drunk driver should be treated like every other drunk driver. Instead we have an emotionally chargd system in which the body count is a just a reverse lottery of unintended consequences.

I make light of drunk driving because mostly it’s not a crime at all. Most drunks can drive safely and do. The problem is with younger drunks (and hard core losers) who let alcohol partner with testosterone or pent-up rage. [Admittedly, this undermines my "every drunk drive is like every other drunk driver argument.] Robert L. Thomas didn’t die because Alfredo Martinez Rivera was drunk. Robert L. Thomas didn’t die because Alfredo Martinez Rivera was driving the wrong way down the Interstate. Robert L. Thomas died because Alfredo Martinez Rivera was driving the wrong way down the Interstate at 96 mph.

Take away the testosterone and all you would have had would have been a major traffic incident, but at normal speeds Robert L. Thomas would have probably dodged Rivera’s vehicle. People die in drunk driving accidents all the time, but the drunk is invariably male. Shouldn’t that tell us something?

Getting drunk is only one part of this crime. There is no intent here, just a confluence of booze and bad judgment with tragic consequences. Too bad Rivera will rot in jail for it instead of paying back the community and the family of his victim. When we punish “criminals,” why do we insist on punishing their victims as well? Why don’t we let people “pay” for their crimes?

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Sunday is International Women’s Day and KFAI is going all women all day. Cool, but unfortunately it reminds me of when I first moved to the Cities and lived in a place where I could pull in KFAI’s signal (not always easy to do in the inner city). I listened nightly to a women’s music show. One evening the DJ closed her show by saying something to the effect of “if you were to turn off your radio now and not turn it back on until BLANK’s show starts at 8 tomorrow morning, it would be like all women radio all the time.”

Truly a great lead in to the guys sitting in the same studio waiting to start their show.

I understand that men, myself included are assholes. It’s the gender specific equivalent of bitch, and we’re not short on those either. Isn’t it past time for some Obama style leadership from the feminists? Or am I just not picking up on whoever that person is?

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Maybe more snow today in parts of Minnesota. If you can’t handle cold, you may enjoy this Garrison Keillor video on Minnesota’s winters (set to Carmina Burana and that should give you a clue as to tone and impact).

Keillor is, of course, mocking those who hate winter. For those of us who are properly genetically wired it’s year-round sun and greenery that would be psychosis-inducing.

I’m not personally ready for spring. Spring is allergy time. Spring is muddy and messy. Spring smells bad (like anything would smell good after spending the winter under a snow bank). 

Whatever. I’m in a damned good mood because I just found an album I never knew existed, Studio One’s Alton & Hortense Ellis. Back in my reggae days in the late ’70s/early ’80s, I had one compilation album with one song by Hortense Ellis. Since then finding more of her music has been my grail, but an elusive one (as all quest-worthy grails should be). Oddly enough, you don’t find many great vintage reggae albums in the remainder bins in Iowa and Minnesota, and the competition for the ones who do make it this far north is pretty fierce.

This compilation was released in 1990, but the songs are all from ’60s vinyl sources that have been slow to make their way online. Sadly, this CD disappeared pretty quickly, reggae not being a big thing back in the early days of grunge.

Three more hours before this barely seeded gem is mine. I think I’ll run some errands to kill time until I can finally hear Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, a legendary brother-sister duet I’ve been waiting to hear for a long, long time now.

Serious roots reggae from two accomplished artists who never got their due. Thank god for digital technology that allows art to persevere long after the major label acts have faded away. Alton and Hortense Ellis, R.I.P.

Garrison, I’ve got your sunshine right here pal. Drop me an email and I’ll send it right over.