What has the POWER CONTROL GROUP done to justice?: SIEGELMAN CRIMES IGNORED BY HOLDER?

http://www.wtvm.com/Global/story.asp?S=10347213



Prosecutors ask for longer sentence for Siegelman


Associated Press - May 12, 2009 12:04 PM ET

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - Federal prosecutors have recommended that former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman be sentenced to 20 years in prison when he receives a new sentencing hearing in federal court in Montgomery.

That's a much longer sentence than the more than 7-year prison term Siegelman originally received for his 2006 conviction in a federal government corruption case. The recommendation comes after a panel of 3 appellate judges dismissed 2 of the seven charges the former governor was convicted of and ordered a new sentencing hearing.

Prosecutors made the recommendation in a letter to federal probation officers. The probation officers will prepare a report recommending a new sentence to U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/05/obama-justice-department-continues-to-cover-up-bush-era-crimes/


Obama Justice Department continues to cover up Bush-Era crimes

by Larisa Alexandrovna



Something very questionable is happening in Obama’s Department of Justice. I don’t know if it is simply institutional loyalty that is the reason for a once admired office of justice to simply abdicate from its official duty. Whatever the reason, there is one question that no one will answer and this question only grows more urgent as new developments are made public.

Why is no one being held accountable?


It is one thing to overlook a series of bad choices made in good faith. But the issues at hand have nothing to do with good faith or even bad choices. The allegations of criminal activity and extreme and willful abuses of power by officials of the Bush administration fall directly under the very definition of high crimes. The crimes are not small ones either.


The Watergate break-in, for example, appears insignificant against the backdrop of the Bush-Cheney legacy. No, the crimes are not small or even limited to a single genre or type of crime. From the outing of a CIA officer for political payback, to the massive illegal domestic surveillance program, to a policy of torture that resulted in multiple homicides; high crimes were committed and more startling, no one has been held to account.

Why?




The Manipulation of Language



In all other times in the past, when a crime occurred involving officials in the highest positions of government, no one thought to dare argue the necessity for committing the crime or how truly patriotic the crime was. Now we are told that we were spied on for our own good, that torture saves lives, that outing a CIA officer is okay, that starting an illegal war was just a series of decisions based on bad intelligence.

The debate over these various crimes has been drawn in such a way as to make it seem too complicated for the average American, too steeped in national security for the average American to understand, and missing in important details because those are too classified for the average American to see.

What of the domestic political prosecutions then and the victims who were targeted for political reasons? Why is no one being held accountable? Worse still, why is Obama’s DOJ seemingly engaging in payback given the latest news? Have you seen the latest news?


MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - Federal prosecutors have recommended that former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman be sentenced to 20 years in prison when he receives a new sentencing hearing in federal court in Montgomery.

That's a much longer sentence than the more than 7-year prison term Siegelman originally received for his 2006 conviction in a federal government corruption case. The recommendation comes after a panel of 3 appellate judges dismissed 2 of the seven charges the former governor was convicted of and ordered a new sentencing hearing.




Don Siegelman

Here you have a case that is so visibly flawed, so visibly unethical and possibly even criminal on the part of the prosecutors, and so visibly implicating the Bush White House, that it calls into question everything the DOJ did during Bush’s 8 year reign (yes, you read that right).

Attorney General Holder stepped into former Senator Ted Steven’s corruption case on the grounds that federal prosecutors behaved unethically and possibly in a criminal way. This was the right decision, but why Stevens and no one else? Why are federal prosecutors demanding harsher sentencing in a case where the prosecutorial misconduct was far worse than it was in the Stevens’ case?

Why are we getting no answers to any of this?


Siegelman’s case is not remotely related to national security nor are we missing important details because those are too classified for us to see. We know a good deal about what happened and yet we are still unable to get any answers to the basic question: why is no one being held accountable?

Consider that this is a case where it has been demonstrated beyond any shadow of doubt that a man was targeted for political reasons, the main witness against him was coached and intimidated, and the US Attorney directed the case despite recusing herself because of her conflicts of interest. Yet Holder does worse than nothing.

To make my point more clear, let me provide but a few highlights of what we know to be true with regard to Siegelman’s prosecution.


The US Attorney who prosecuted Siegelman is married to William Canary, a business associate of former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and prosecuted Siegelman during the latter’s employment at the White House.

Moreover, the US Attorney’s husband was an advisor to Siegelman’s opponent in the 2002 gubernatorial elections while his wife was investigating Siegelman.


This US Attorney, Leura Canary, has claimed publicly time and time again that she had recused herself due to the conflict of interest. Time Magazine, however, uncovered emails from Canary to her team in which she detailed to day-to-day objectives of the prosecution.


As Siegelman was being investigated and prosecuted by Leura Canary, Karl Rove was actively running the Alabama gubernatorial campaign with Bill Canary for Siegelman’s opponent. In addition, he had clandestine meetings on street corners with Alabama GOP operatives.


Remember, that his business partner in Alabama is married to the US Attorney who prosecuted Siegelman while also acting as an advisor to Siegelman’s opponent in the election.

All of this alone would be enough to throw Siegelman’s case out entirely.

Why then is his case instead being pushed through with harsher terms?


Yet another remarkable development is the direct communication between the prosecutors and the jury, DURING jury deliberations. That raises questions of jury tampering and any such activities on the part of the prosecution usually result in a mistrial. The prosecutors not only engaged in this conduct, but failed to inform both the defense and the court. That alone should have been enough reason for throwing out Siegelman’s case entirely.


The judge in the case, Mark Fuller, claims to have investigated the issues and found no evidence of jury tampering. Yet despite having a long-standing grudge against Siegelman, Fuller did not recuse himself from the case.

More astounding are the allegations from Republican whistle-blower Dana Jill Simpson, who swore under oath that Fuller was selected/appointed to be a judge in order to “hang Siegelman.” She also testified that Rove was directly involved in Siegelman’s prosecution.


Why is this not enough to demand the DOJ’s full intervention as with the Stevens’ case?


These are but a few examples of the many issues around this case and the facts that are now well established and known. But let me provide you with one more example relating to this case that rather clearly illustrates that something is terribly wrong at the DOJ.

During the trial and sentencing, the targets of two allegedly political prosecutions – Siegelman being one – as well as their attorneys experienced 8 break-ins and two cases of arson.


Simpson, the whistle-blower in the Siegelman case, was another victim. She was run off the road by a former police officer and her house was set on fire. Yet no one has been investigated for these series of crimes individually or collectively.

Why?


The Watergate scandal began with a single break-in. Why is no one investigating these break-ins, arson, and other strange crimes that have plagued Siegelman, his attorney, and the whistle-blower in the case?


Now consider the news today that the DOJ is seeking a 20-year sentence for Siegelman against the backdrop of the above facts. Consider too that 54 former state Attorneys General of both parties filed several letters with the DOJ demanding a full investigation into the prosecution of Don Siegelman. What had initially gotten roughly 30 of them interested in the case was the extreme sentence imposed on Siegelman – a seven-year term. By the way, the number of former state Attorneys General of both parties demanding a full accounting in the Siegelman case is now 70.

Yet even after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals dropped two of the charges, Siegelman’s sentence appears to be growing rather than dwindling in the DOJ’s version of reality.

Why?

Is this payback for embarrassing the DOJ?

What possible reason could account for the prosecution seeking an unheard of 20-year prison term?

Most importantly, why does the Obama DOJ appear to be covering up Bush administration crimes, including those against American citizens prosecuted for political reasons?


__________________________



tommy:



I can show you a bigger, more outrageous scandal that implicates FBI HQ, US DOJ, US SEN JUD COMM, US HOUSE JUD COMM, ERIC HOLDER, AND BARACK OBAMA.


I can testify about numerous PATRIOT ACT MURDERS AND ATTEMPTED MURDERS that effectively blows wind through the smoke created with the latest DUMBFUCKERY in re. TORTURE, ENHANCED INTERROGATIONS, etc.


LOOK...TORTURE HAS BEEN SPUN AS A NECESSARY EVIL TO PROTECT while...FBI HQ AND CIA AND DOD AND SD US ATTORNEYS, AND SF FBI...all know....TORTURE IS USED TO NEUTRALIZE DISSENT IN THE FORM OF A CIVIL SUIT FILING AND MOTION FOR INJUNCTIVE RELIEF.


I GOT TORTURED BECAUSE, The FBI JFLTTF knew from the FBI MAGIC LANTERN KEYSTROKELOGGER ON MY COMPUTER, that...I was drafting a MOTION FILING, AND CIVIL SUIT mentioning my fact pattern: OK CITY AS FALSE FLAG...PATRIOT ACT MURDERS OF LAWYERS, COPS, WITNESSES, ETC...TITLE III FELONIES...FBI PROTECTING GOON SQUADS...ETC..

____________________________________________

http://vdare.com/roberts/090513_america.htm



May 13, 2009

Who Rules America?


By Paul Craig Roberts



What do you suppose it is like to be elected president of the United States only to find that your power is restricted to the service of powerful interest groups?

A president who does a good job for the ruling interest groups is paid off with remunerative corporate directorships, outrageous speaking fees, and a lucrative book contract. If he is young when he assumes office, like Bill Clinton and Obama, it means a long life of luxurious leisure. Fighting the special interests doesn’t pay and doesn’t succeed.

On April 30 the primacy of special over public interests was demonstrated yet again. The Democrats’ bill to prevent 1.7 million mortgage foreclosures and, thus, preserve $300 billion in home equity by permitting homeowners to renegotiate their mortgages, was defeated in the Senate, despite the 60-vote majority of the Democrats. The banksters were able to defeat the bill 51 to 45.


These are the same financial gangsters whose unbridled greed and utter irresponsibility have wiped out half of Americans’ retirement savings, sent the economy into a deep hole, and threatened the US dollar’s reserve currency role. It is difficult to imagine an interest group with a more damaged reputation. Yet, a majority of “the people’s representatives” voted as the discredited banksters instructed.


Hundreds of billions of public dollars have gone to bail out the banksters, but when some Democrats tried to get the Senate to do a mite for homeowners, the US Senate stuck with the banks. The Senate’s motto is: “Hundreds of billions for the banksters, not a dime for homeowners.”


If Obama was naive about well-intentioned change before the vote, he no longer has this political handicap.

Democratic Majority Whip Dick Durbin acknowledged the voters’ defeat by the discredited banksters. The banks, Durbin said, “frankly own the place”.


It is not difficult to understand why. Among those who defeated the homeowners bill are senators Jon Tester (Mont), Max Baucus (Mont), Blanche Lincoln (Ark), Ben Nelson (Neb), Many Landrieu (La), Tim Johnson (SD), and Arlan Specter (Pa). According to reports, the banksters have poured a half million dollars into Tester’s campaign funds. Baucus has received $3.5 million; Lincoln $1.3 million; Nelson $1.4 million; Landrieu $2 million; Johnson $2.5 million; Specter $4.5 million.


The same Congress that can’t find a dime for homeowners or health care appropriates hundreds of billions of dollars for the military/security complex. The week after the Senate foreclosed on American homeowners, the Obama “change” administration asked Congress for an additional $61 billion dollars for the neoconservatives’ war in Iraq and $65 billion more for the neoconservatives’ war in Afghanistan. Congress greeted this request with a rousing “Yes we can!”


The additional $126 billion comes on top of the $533.7 billion “defense” budget for this year. The $660 billion--probably a low-ball number--is ten times the military spending of China, the second most powerful country in the world.

How is it possible that “the world’s only superpower” is threatened by the likes of Iraq and Afghanistan? How can the US be a superpower if it is threatened by countries that have no military capability other than a guerilla capability to resist invaders?

These “wars” are a hoax designed to enrich the US armaments industry and to infuse the “security forces” with police powers over American citizenry.



Not a dime to prevent millions of Americans from losing their homes, but hundreds of billions of dollars to murder Muslim women and children and to create millions of refugees, many of whom will either sign up with insurgents or end up as the next wave of immigrants into America.

This is the way the American government works.

And it thinks it is a “city on the hill, a light unto the world”.


Americans elected Obama because he said he would end the gratuitous criminal wars of the Bush brownshirts, wars that have destroyed America’s reputation and financial solvency and serve no public interest. But once in office Obama found that he was ruled by the military/security complex. War is not being ended, merely transferred from the unpopular war in Iraq to the more popular war in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Obama, in violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty, continues to attack “targets” in Pakistan. In place of a war in Iraq, the military/security complex now has two wars going in much more difficult circumstances.


Viewing the promotion gravy train that results from decades of warfare, the US officer corps has responded to the “challenge to American security” from the Taliban. “We have to kill them over there before they come over here.” No member of the US government or its numerous well-paid agents has ever explained how the Taliban, which is focused on Afghanistan, could ever get to America. Yet this hyped fear is sufficient for the public to support the continuing enrichment of the military/security complex, while American homes are foreclosed by the banksters who have destroyed the retirement prospects of the US population.


According to Pentagon budget documents, by next year the cost of the war against Afghanistan will exceed the cost of the war against Iraq. According to a Nobel prize-winning economist and a budget expert at Harvard University, the war against Iraq has cost the American taxpayers $3 trillion, that is, $3,000 billion in out-of-pocket and already incurred future costs, such as caring for veterans.

If the Pentagon is correct, then by next year the US government will have squandered $6 trillion dollars on two wars, the only purpose of which is to enrich the munitions manufacturers and the “security” bureaucracy.


The human and social costs are dramatic as well and not only for the Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani populations ravaged by American bombs. Dahr Jamail reports that US Army psychiatrists have concluded that by their third deployment, 30 percent of American troops are mental wrecks. Among the costs that reverberate across generations of Americans are elevated rates of suicide, unemployment, divorce, child and spousal abuse, drug and alcohol addiction, homelessness and incarceration.

In the Afghan “desert of death” the Obama administration is constructing a giant military base. Why? What does the internal politics of Afghanistan have to do with the US?

__________________

TOMMY:


Afghanistan is about HEROIN, AND HEROIN PROFITS.

LOTS OF UNTAXED MONEY, POWER, MONEY LAUNDERING INTO CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGNS...ETC.

IT'S ABOUT POWER....and...don't forget VIET NAM had a nice HEROIN OPIUM ANGLE...as well.
__________________


What is this enormous waste of resources that America does not have accomplishing—besides enriching the American munitions industry?

China and to some extent India are the rising powers in the world. Russia, the largest country on earth, is armed with a nuclear arsenal as terrifying as the American one. The US dollar’s role as reserve currency, the most important source of American power, is undermined by the budget deficits that result from the munitions corporations’ wars and the bankster bailouts.

Why is the US making itself impotent fighting wars that have nothing whatsoever to do with is security, wars that are, in fact, threatening its security?

The answer is that the military/security lobby, the financial gangsters, and AIPAC rule. The American people be damned.





Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term.

He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.


He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.

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http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/05/16/obama/index.html



Saturday May 16, 2009 07:26 EDT

The NYT sums up Obama's civil liberties record in one paragraph
(updated below - Update II)



Among progressives, Democrats, liberals, Obama supporters and the like, there seems to be some debate about the extent to which Obama deserves criticisms for what he has done thus far in the realm of civil liberties, restoration of Constitutional principles, and reversing the severe imbalance between "security" and liberties -- major planks of his two-year-long campaign and among the most frequent weapons used to criticize the Bush presidency. On that topic, here is the first paragraph of this New York Times article this morning by David Sanger, summing everything up:



President Obama’s decisions this week to retain important elements of the Bush-era system for trying terrorism suspects and to block the release of pictures showing abuse of American-held prisoners abroad are the most graphic examples yet of how he has backtracked, in substantial if often nuanced ways, from the approach to national security that he preached as a candidate, and even from his first days in the Oval Office.


Here's how the NYT describes the article on its front page:



The opening paragraph of this Washington Post article today says much the same thing:

As a candidate for president, Barack Obama offered himself as a clear alternative to Bush-era anti-terrorism policies. Governing has proven muddier.

Both articles quote the hardest-core Bush supporters as heaping praise on Obama for what he has done in the area of "national security," terrorism and civil liberties ("Pete Wehner, a member of Karl Rove’s staff in the Bush White House [and a current National Review writer] applauded several of Mr. Obama’s decisions this week"). Indeed, all week long, and even before that, the greatest enthusiasm for Obama's decisions on so-called "terrorism policies" and civil liberties (with some important exceptions) has been found in the pages of The Weekly Standard and National Review.

Can anyone deny what the NYT and Post are pointing out today? This is what happened this week alone in the realm of Obama's approach to "national security" and civil liberties:



Monday - Obama administration's letter to Britian threatening to cut off intelligence-sharing if British courts reveal the details of how we tortured British resident Binyam Mohamed;

Tuesday - Promoted to military commander in Afghanistan Gen. Stanley McChyrstal, who was deeply involved in some of the worst abuses of the Bush era;

Wednesday - Announced he was reversing himself and would try to conceal photographic evidence showing widespread detainee abuse -- despite the rulings from two separate courts (four federal judges unanimously) that the law compels their disclosure;

Friday - Unveiled his plan to preserve a modified system of military commissions for trying Guantanamo detainees, rather than using our extant-judicial processes for doing so.



It's not the fault of civil libertarians that Obama did all of those things, just in this week alone. These are the very policies -- along with things like the claimed power to abduct and imprison people indefinitely with no charges of any kind and the use of the "state secrets privilege" to deny torture and spying victims a day in court -- that caused such extreme anger and criticisms toward the Bush presidency.


What would it say about a person who spent the last seven years vehemently criticizing those policies to suddenly decide that the same policies were perfectly fine or not particularly bothersome when Obama adopts them?

How could that be justified?

What should one say about a person who vehemently objected to X when Bush did it, but then suddenly found ways to defend or mitigate X when Obama does it?

Just re-read that first paragraph from the NYT article today. What should a rational person say in response to what it describes?



It is absolutely true that there have been some important steps Obama has taken in the right direction that George Bush and John McCain would never have entertained, including banning interrogation techniques outside of the Army Field Manual, barring CIA secret prisons, guaranteeing International Red Cross access to all detainees, and releasing numerous Bush era OLC memos. He deserves praise for those decisions and has received it here. But other than the OLC memos, those steps all came in the very first week of his presidency in largely symbolic form. At the time, in the first week, I wrote that Obama's first-week executive orders "meet or actually exceed even the most optimistic expectations of civil libertarians for what he could or would do quickly," but:

This is why the understandable enthusiasm (which I definitely share) over Obama's pleasantly unexpected commitment in the first few hours of his presidency to take politically difficult steps in the civil liberties and accountability realms should be tempered somewhat. There is going to be very concerted pressure exerted on him by establishment guardians such as Hiatt (and the Brookings Institution, Jack Goldsmith and friends), to say nothing of hard-line factions within the intelligence community and its various allies, for Obama to take subsequent steps that would eviscerate much of this progress, that render these initial rollbacks largely empty, symbolic gestures. Whether these steps, impressive as they are, will be symbolic measures designed to placate certain factions, or whether they represent a genuine commitment on Obama's part, remains to be seen. Much of it will depend on how much political pressure is exerted and from what sides.

Obama deserves real praise for devoting the first few days of his presidency to these vital steps -- and doing so without there being much of a political benefit and with some real political risk. That's genuinely encouraging. But ongoing vigilance is necessary, to counter-balance the Fred Hiatts, Brookings Institutions and other national security state fanatics, to ensure that these initial steps aren't undermined.

Since that first week, Obama has engaged in one action after the next to preserve many of the key prongs, and the essential architecture, of the Bush/Cheney abuses of executive power and civil liberties. That's just factually true.

What's the point of closing Guantanamo if we're going to continue to keep people indefinitely in cages with no trial in Bagram, or if we simply transport a modified version of Guantanamo justice to the U.S.?

How can a President who repeatedly promised vast transparency embrace the most extremist Bush/Cheney secrecy powers?

How can a person who campaigned on the vow to end "Scooter Libby justice" and restore the rule of law take one extreme step after the next to shield from judicial scrutiny some of the most serious, brutal and highest-level crimes of the last eight years?


It's certainly true that there are other issues besides civil liberties and national security policies that are important. The fact that he's been horrible in these areas doesn't mean he hasn't been good in others. One can argue, if one likes, that these civil liberties issues don't really matter (a representative of Center for American Progress joined with two conservatives to claim exactly that yesterday on CNN), or one can argue that all that matters is that we fix the banking crisis and implement a new health care policy. But I never heard any Bush critics -- not one -- say anything like that when these issues were front and center in the case against the Bush presidency.

Nobody who spent the last many years devoting themselves to opposing Bush/Cheney abuses of executive power and civil liberties wanted to have to do the same in an Obama presidency. If you doubt that, just look at how intense was the celebratory praise directed at Obama from those factions in the first week. But unless the opposition of the last eight years was really just a cynical means for opportunistically weakening and demonizing Republican opponents rather than opposing policies that one genuinely found dangerous and wrong, then the actions of Obama are leaving no other choice but to object and object strenuously.


As the first paragraph of today's NYT article put it, this week alone provided "the most graphic examples yet of how [Obama] has backtracked, in substantial if often nuanced ways, from the approach to national security that he preached as a candidate, and even from his first days in the Oval Office." If nothing else, refraining from objecting will ensure that this continues further and further.