Breaking: Supreme Court vacates conviction of Don Siegelman

The US Supreme Court has ruled to vacate the conviction of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, who was convicted of bribery charges in 2006 in a case that was widely seen as politically motivated.

The ruling was vacated in light of another recent ruling which revised the court’s opinion of an “honest services” fraud statute, a ruling that has helped former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling. Siegelman’s case will now be remanded to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals for a second consideration.

A second attorney, Paul Minor, who was a major donor to the Democratic Party and convicted under similar politically motivated circumstances. It’s unclear how this ruling will affect his case. Minor was represented by former Bush Solicitor General Ted Olson, who had said the “honest services” ruling last week could help his client’s efforts to have his conviction thrown out.

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Lara Logan, You Suck
By Matt Taibbi

Lara Logan, come on down! You’re the next guest on Hysterical Backstabbing Jealous Hackfest 2010!

I thought I’d seen everything when I read David Brooks saying out loud in a New York Times column that reporters should sit on damaging comments to save their sources from their own idiocy. But now we get CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan slamming our own Michael Hastings on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” program, agreeing that the Rolling Stone reporter violated an “unspoken agreement” that journalists are not supposed to “embarrass [the troops] by reporting insults and banter.”

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For Release June 28, 2010
www.Justice-integrity.org
Tel: (202) 638-0070

Justice Project Urges ‘No’ Vote On Kagan

Washington, DC (June 28, 2010) – The Senate should reject Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court nomination because she seeks to expand executive branch authority at the expense of the public’s historic civil rights.

The bipartisan Justice Integrity Project (JIP) today announced its opposition to Kagan, based especially on JIP’s core area of research: She is part of an Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) leadership team that has failed to redress unconstitutional lawbreaking by overzealous prosecutors and greedy judges.

“Our nation faces unprecedented threats, with constitutional issues too often decided by a Supreme Court on a partisan, result-oriented basis,” said JIP Executive Director Andrew Kreig. “We need reform. This nominee’s track record on key civil rights issues does not deserve public trust or confirmation Ñü especially given her direct involvement in several notorious cases while representing DOJ as solicitor general.” Today, for example, the Court reportedly meets to decide whether to concur with her request to deny a hearing for former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy.

More generally, JIP criticizes as flawed the Senate confirmation hearing that begins today. The partisan hearings fire up the base of the parties largely on hot-button cultural issues, but duck issues central to the disintegration of constitutional protections. In one of Kagan’s few scholarly works, she also described the process as “vapid and hollow.” But she reversed her view last year as she avoided tough questions during her confirmation to be solicitor general, DOJ’s third-ranking post. She was confirmed with 61 votes.

To foster reform, JIP today launches a special website featuring critics of Kagan, the confirmation process and the largely unaccountable executive branch. With scant oversight, U.S. presidents increasingly lead the way on economic policies, war-making and mandatory health insurance of dubious constitutionality, as well as warrantless electronic surveillance, torture, and prosecutorial immunity from liability. Looking ahead, the courts must address mass suffering from BP’s Gulf oil volcano, often minimized as a “spill.”

JIP argues that Kagan’s undue deference to executive authority, particularly after nomination by her friend Barack Obama, violates the warning of Federalist No. 76 explaining the need for a Senate process that avoids cronyism. Exhibit A is how Kagan rubberstamped DOJ misconduct in the Siegelman case: In 1999, Scrushy contributed at Siegelman’s request to the non-profit Alabama Education Foundation. Siegelman then reappointed Scrushy to a state board. At sentencing in 2007, authorities sent the two away in chains for seven-year terms. But an unprecedented bipartisan coalition of 91 former state attorneys general last year told the Supreme Court that such donations are routine and not a crime.

More generally, an in-depth JIP investigation has confirmed that the two defendants were systematically framed, with a cover-up extending to the current administration. Here’s what JIP’s executive director has reported: Authorities headquartered their all-out attack on Siegelman, Alabama’s leading Democrat, from the secure location of an Air Force base. The prosecution had the effect of helping a European-led consortium in its ongoing effort to win $35 billion in Air Force contracts for a next generation of tanker planes, which would be assembled in an Alabama factory. Meanwhile, fraud in Scrushy’s company unrelated to his criminal conviction enabled lawyers suing HealthSouth and its insurers to feast on a $2.8 billion state court civil fraud judgment against him and HealthSouth during his imprisonment.

To read more, click here.

SIEGELMAN CASE VACATED AND REMANDED BY SUP CT

09-182
SCRUSHY, RICHARD
SIEGELMAN, DON E. V. UNITED STATES

The petitions for writs of certiorari are granted. The judgment is vacated, and the cases are remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit for further consideration in light of Skilling v. United States, 561 U.S. ___ (2010).

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/53568

The Third Depression
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Recessions are common; depressions are rare. As far as I can tell, there were only two eras in economic history that were widely described as “depressions” at the time: the years of deflation and instability that followed the Panic of 1873 and the years of mass unemployment that followed the financial crisis of 1929-31.

Neither the Long Depression of the 19th century nor the Great Depression of the 20th was an era of nonstop decline – on the contrary, both included periods when the economy grew. But these episodes of improvement were never enough to undo the damage from the initial slump, and were followed by relapses.

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Leader of Death Squads Wins Colombian Election
A “Role Model” for Latin America
by Prof. James Petras

Juan Manuel Santos, notorious Defense Minister in the regime of outgoing President Alvaro Uribe and closely identified with high crimes against humanity “won” the recent Presidential elections in Colombia, June 2010. The major electronic and print media CNN, FOX News, Washington Post, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the once liberal Financial Times (FT) hailed Santos election, as a great victory for democracy. According to the FT, “Colombia not Venezuela is (the) best model for Latin America” (FT 6/23/2010 p. 8). Citing Santos “overwhelming” margin – he garnered 69% of the vote, the FT claimed he won a “strong mandate” (FT 6/22/2010). In what has to be one of the most flagrant cover-ups in recent history, the media accounts exclude the most egregious facts about the elections and the profoundly authoritarian policies pursued by Santos over the past decade.

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BP’s Methane Monster:
From the Gulf to the Globe
by: Craig Collins, Ph.D., t r u t h o u t | Report

We hear a lot of talk about carbon dioxide as the most dangerous climate culprit. And we should. So far, loading the atmosphere with CO2 is the single biggest cause of climate disruption. But, in the final analysis, methane may prove to be the most deadly of all greenhouse gases.

Unlike CO2, methane is flammable. BP’s Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before exploding. The fiery blast killed 11 workers and sank the platform. Since then, an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil has spewed into the Gulf every day, making it the biggest oil spill in the US since the wreck of the Exxon Valdez in 1989.

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No skimmers in sight as oil floods into Mississippi waters

GULFPORT, Miss. – A morning flight over the Mississippi Sound showed long, wide ribbons of orange-colored oil for as far as the eye could see and acres of both heavy and light sheen moving into the Sound between the barrier islands. What was missing was any sign of skimming operations from Horn Island to Pass Christian.

U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor got off the flight angry.

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Be sure to note the update/correction (and check out the video at MJ’s site).

MCM

La. Police Doing BP’s Dirty Work [Video]
By Mac McClelland

Everyone knows by now that BP is still blocking press access to oil-spill sites even though they’re not supposed to anymore. I’ve been blathering about it for weeks, and it’s been all of three days since four contractors wouldn’t let me through the Pointe Aux Chenes marina outside Montegut, Louisiana. And though as of June 16 the federal government was saying helicopters could fly reporters as low as 1,500 feet around spill sites, on June 17 I was on a helicopter that was prohibited from flying below 3,000 feet (and whose pilot flipped silent birds at the “military guys” coming over the radio and hassling him about being in the area
at all). But a Louisiana sheriff’s deputy* pulling over a video camera-wielding private citizen because the head of BP security wanted to ask him some questions is a whole other level of alarming.

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Elena Kagan – Willing Accomplice
Michael Collins

Should Elena Kagan be approved as a justice to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States?

As it turns out there’s a supremely simple method of testing her suitability. Once applied, citizens of any political persuasion will see that her nomination should be rejected outright.

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