Riley's Hypocrisy on Gambling Reaches New Heights

You've got to give Governor Bob Riley credit. The guy can make breathtakingly hypocritical statements and not bat an eye.

The latest example of Big Bob's hypocrisy comes on the subject of gambling.

Mayor Larry Langford announced this week that he wants to bring electronic bingo back to the Birmingham Race Course. Riley poohed-poohed the idea. "I don't believe in gambling," the governor said. "I don't believe in it as a revenue source. It might make a lot of people wealthy, but I don't think it's the best thing for the state of Alabama."

Let me repeat: Bob Riley said he does not believe in gambling as a revenue source. If you have a mouthful of liquid, try not to spew it across the room when you read that sentence.

This is the same Bob Riley who was more than happy to take $13 million in Mississippi Choctaw gambling money to help him get elected. And Riley didn't mind one bit that the money was laundered through disgraced GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

So there you have it: Gambling is not a good revenue source for the City of Birmingham, but it is an excellent revenue source for Bob Riley.

Blows the mind. And this guy got elected governor--twice.

Gruesome Murders Shine Light on Alabama Corruption

It's sad that it takes the gruesome murders of five men for the mainstream media to shine a small spotlight on the corruption that permeates Republican-run Shelby County, Alabama.

But that was the case this week as John Archibald, a columnist for The Birmingham News, took off his paper's red-colored glasses long enough to scorch Shelby County officials for their handling of a case in which five Hispanic men were found in a suburban Birmingham apartment, bound with their throats cut execution style.

Four men were arrested and charged with capital murder on Tuesday, nearly a week after the bodies had been discovered. News reports indicated that drug trafficking might have been a factor in the crime.

As one of Archibald's regular readers, I sense that he is more progressive and forward-thinking than the people he reports to at The News. One can only wonder what kind of revelatory reporting Archibald could produce if he was unleashed.

But even The News' right-leaning honchos could not hold back Archibald in the aftermath of the murders. The columnist laid it on the line about the mindset that exists in what is generally considered Alabama's wealthiest, fastest growing, and most Republican county.

Archibald blasted Sheriff Chris Curry for the secretive, unprofessional way he handled the murder story. Wrote Archibald:

"Shelby County did what Shelby County always does. It sat on the facts, telling the world it knew best. . . . Nobody won in the vacuum behind Shelby County's Iron Curtain."

This all hit close to home for my wife and me because we happen to be among the small, but growing, number of Democrats and progressives who live in Shelby County. Our legal nightmare, which is at the heart of this blog, originated in Shelby County. And these murders took place about four miles from our house.

Regular readers might remember Sheriff Chris Curry. He played a starring role in the unlawful auction of our house a few weeks back.

For those not familiar with Alabama's largest metro area, Shelby County sits due south of Jefferson County, home to Birmingham. The apartment complex where the murders took place is in the Inverness area, about two miles east of the Cahaba River, which divides the two counties on Highway 280.

A number of high-end neighborhoods dot the north Shelby landscape, earning the county its "wealthiest in Alabama" status. Michael Jordan lived in the north Shelby Greystone development while he played baseball for the Birmingham Barons a few summers back.

But Shelby County is not all McMansions and big bucks. A whole bunch of folks, like my wife and me, are middle class (at best), and significant slices of the population are at or near the poverty level.

Most of the county's population is to the north, nearest to Birmingham, but government is run in a little hellhole called Columbiana, way to the south. Having the county seat in an "out of the way" location helps create what Archibald calls the "Iron Curtain" of Shelby County.

My theory is that Shelby County officials don't feel they are accountable to anyone. They are almost all Republican, and once in office, they are unlikely to ever be seriously challenged. And the press is either too disengaged, or too far removed, to pay much attention to governmental misdeeds.

One gets the feeling that Archibald knows Shelby County government resides in a corrupt backwater, and the murders give him a forum to let his readers in on a poorly kept secret. Shelby County, Archibald writes, makes Birmingham and Jefferson County "look like a freedom-of-the-facts" Valhalla.

But Archibald doesn't stop there:

Shelby is no longer Hazzard County, with its Duke boys and smoke-filled rooms. It's all grown up now, and needs to act it. Not just when five men are killed, but every day.

This is the same county, and the same sheriff who schemes to meet individually with county commissioners to talk about something as public as a budget. Curry wants to avoid prying eyes, and that little thing called the law.

Curry's boys don't just act like buffoons when it comes to handling quintuple murders. They act that way on a regular basis. Just check out this scene from the day our house was "auctioned" on the courthouse steps by one of Curry's boys, Bubba Caudill:

Showdown in Shelby County

Curry is hardly the only Shelby County official who wants to avoid prying eyes. The Shelby County Courthouse is filled with those types, led by presiding judge J. Michael Joiner. Regular readers will remember Joiner as a key player in our Legal Schnauzer story. The judge has repeatedly gotten away with federal crimes (honest-services mail fraud) because Bush-appointed U.S. Attorney Alice Martin is not about to go after a member of the "home team."

In a case of sickening irony, it appears that Joiner will be handling the quintuple-murder case. That's truly a case of a criminal overseeing criminals. How bad is Joiner? Here is one of many posts I've written about "His Corruptness:"

Republican Hypocrisy Up Close

His editors might never let him write the real story of Shelby County corruption, but John Archibald apparently knows what's going on. Here's what he says about the Shelby County approach to government:

It's a slap in the face to all who respect the law and admire the reason it exists.

Amen, brother.

Unmasking Alice Martin's Latest Mess--in Real Time

Rarely does the public have an opportunity to see the weakness of a government prosecution in real time--while the trial is going on.

In the case of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, many people did not begin to realize how weak the government's case was until well after Siegelman and codefendant Richard Scrushy had been convicted. The same was true in the Paul Minor case in Mississippi.

But the case of Alabama Representative Sue Schmitz, currently unfolding in Decatur, Alabama, allows us to witness the machinations of the Bush Justice Department as they happen.

How do we unmask the dirty deeds of Alice Martin, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama and one of the most loyal of Bushies? It takes a knowledgeable tour guide, someone who has followed the case closely and has the professional background to understand a federal criminal trial.

David Fiderer, who writes at Huffington Post, is just the guy. Fiderer has worked in banking for more than 20 years, covering the energy industry for several global banks in New York City. He is trained as a lawyer and currently is working on several journalism projects dealing with corporate and political corruption.

Fiderer has followed the Schmitz case as an apparent example of a politically driven prosecution. In this case, the motivation seems to be the Republican Party's desires to take over the Alabama Legislature. And one way to do that was by going after Schmitz, charging that she had been paid $177,251 (over almost four years) by a two-year college program but did little or no work.

Martin's prosecution team finished presenting its case on Tuesday afternoon, and the defense began to call witnesses. U.S. Judge David Proctor earlier today postponed the trial until next Tuesday, with his clerk saying, "something had come up." No further explanation was given.

That seemed strange. But perhaps the strangest thing of all, Fiderer says, is that the Schmitz case ever was brought at all.

After learning that the prosecution had rested its case, Fiderer had this blunt assessment: "The case against Sue Schmitz isn't weak. It's nonexistent. To understand why, you need to go through the legal elements of a fraud."

If you read The Birmingham News, Alice Martin's personal mouthpiece, you probably have little idea about what Schmitz actually is charged with. The News makes vague references to fraud and "double dipping," but usually doesn't go beyond that.

This is reminiscent of the Mobile Press-Register's coverage of the Siegelman case. Reporter Eddie Curran wrote more than 100 articles, outlining all sorts of activities surrounding Siegelman that somehow seemed "wrong." But in going over Curran's articles, I've yet to see one where he clearly states what law Siegelman was alleged to have violated.

Fiderer takes a different approach. He makes an effort to actually understand the applicable law. And what do we learn?

Schmitz is charged with committing fraud under two federal statutes--18 U.S. Code 1341 and 18 U.S. Code 666(a)(1)(A)(2). You can check out the statutes here and here.

Federal statutes are notorious for being broadly written and seriously confusing. But the gist of a fraud charge includes five elements:

(1) A false statement of a material fact;
(2) Knowledge on the part of the defendant that the statement is untrue;
(3) Intent on the part of the defendant to deceive the alleged victim;
(4) Justifiable reliance by the alleged victim on the statement; and
(5) Injury to the alleged victim as a result.

How about a real-world example? Fiderer provides one:

A dealership sells a used car after representing that it has only 10,000 miles on it, when in fact the dealer knew that the odometer had been turned back, and that the car had 90,000 miles on it. The material fact, which could be demonstrably proven, was that the car had 90,000 miles on it.

What was the fact that allegedly Sue Schmitz misrepresented? Schmitz’ own state of mind. According to the prosecutor, Schmitz misrepresented her intention to perform her duties as required by her employer. The fraud began before she ever took the job, and the fraud continued for over three years, while she was employed at the job.

It’s not hard to prove that an odometer has been turned back, but it’s very hard to prove Schmitz’ state of mind before and after she got her job. Lots of people break promises that they originally intended to keep. The prosecutor has the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Schmitz never intended to keep her promise to do her job.

Schmitz' job was with the Community Intensive Training for Youth (CITY) program, which tutors young people referred by the juvenile-court system. Prosecutors must prove that Schmitz knew the job was bogus before she even started it. And that, Fiderer says, is a tough task.

The prosecution has presented evidence that Schmitz and others pulled strings to get her the position with the CITY program. The prosecution has also presented evidence that Schmitz did not do her job. Taken at face value, that circumstantial evidence may support an inference that Schmitz knew from the start that she would never do her job. But no reasonable person could infer that the evidence proves Schmitz’ intent beyond a reasonable doubt, because, again, lots of people make promises that they intend to keep at the time.

The prosecution has rested its case, and Fiderer says the evidence was flimsy at best. Here are key points from the prosecution, followed by Fiderer's analysis:

* AEA chief Paul Hubbert and two-year colleges chancellor Roy Johnson went through back-door channels to get Schmitz her job.

That only proves that Schmitz wanted a job.

* Schmitz never used her office or her computer.

Don’t they have Blackberries or laptops in Alabama? Schmitz was a state legislator who operated out of Montgomery and out of Toney. If Schmitz is like most of the professionals I know, they spend a lot of time on the go and do their work just about anywhere.

* Schmitz was derelict in turning in her time sheets.

Administrative sloppiness is not the same thing as not doing your job. And again, not doing your job is not the same thing as operating with the specific intent not to do her job.

So we've established that the government has no case. But does this mean that Sue Schmitz definitely will be found not guilty? Absolutely not. Remember, this is Karl Rove's Alabama, and guess who appointed Judge R. David Proctor? Yep, it was George W. Bush, and the nomination was approved in November 2002.

It's tempting, though probably not fair, to assume that any Bush appointee is corrupt. And given what has happened in the Siegelman and Minor trials, both overseen by Republican-appointed judges, one could be forgiven for thinking the fix is in on the Schmitz case.

The key might come when Proctor provides jury instructions--if the case gets that far.

At the close of the prosecution's case, defense attorney Jake Watson moved for the charges to be dismissed, saying that no reasonable jury could find Schmitz guilty because there was no evidence of criminal intent by Schmitz to defraud the college system. My understanding is that such motions rarely are granted, particularly in high-profile cases. But Fiderer says Proctor had strong grounds for granting this one. (Proctor probably will have another chance to dismiss the charges at the close of the defense case.)

Without clear evidence pointing to Schmitz’ state of mind, the prosecution has failed in its burden to present a material “fact” that has been misrepresented by Schmitz. . . . To put it charitably, Judge Proctor is wrong.

Siegelman to Democrats: Grow a Spine

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman has repeatedly criticized Republicans in the Bush Administration for politicizing the United States Justice Department.

But yesterday at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Siegelman criticized Democrats who allowed it to happen.

In asking Democrats to be tough enough to hold wrongdoers accountable, Siegelman presented a brief history lesson:

"Democrats didn't pursue Watergate when Carter came in. They didn't pursue Iran-Contra when Clinton came in, and they are not going to pursue this when Obama comes in," Siegelman said. "Democrats are going to say, `Listen guys, we have a positive agenda, we want to move forward, we want to solve the problems of this country and we don't need to get bogged down in this kind of stuff.'"

Some Democrats have expressed concern that Karl Rove and others might get away with their misdeeds if Republican John McCain is elected president in November. But Siegelman said Rove and others might get a "Get Out of Jail Free" card if Democrat Barack Obama is elected, too.

"It's this let bygones be bygones view that is wrong and why this week is so critical, the timing so important in trying to reach as many members of Congress as I can reach," Siegelman said.

Specter of Rove Looms Over Paul Minor Case

Anyone who has closely followed the Paul Minor story in Mississippi might think it impossible for the case to become even more riven with politics than it already was.

But anyone making that assumption would have been wrong.

On August 15, Judge Priscilla Owen of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower-court ruling that denied Minor release from federal prison pending appeal. And to whom does Owen pretty much owe her career? Why, none other than Karl Rove, the former Bush strategist who is alleged to have been behind the Minor prosecution from the outset.

Thanks to Larisa Alexandrovna and Lindsay Beyerstein at Raw Story, we learn how legally and ethically questionable it was for Owen to be involved in a decision on the Minor appeal.

Readers who have followed the Bush Justice Department's machinations might remember the name Priscilla Owen. Alexandrovna and Beyerstein provide the background:

Priscilla R. Owen was one of the Bush administration’s most conservative and most controversial judicial appointees. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted against Owen’s confirmation as a federal judge in 2002. A New York Times op-ed excoriated Bush for nominating Owen a second time over the objections of the Senate Judiciary Committee, saying that “ignoring the committee's decision is only one in a growing list of ways the White House and its allies have politicized judicial selection.”

Ultimately, Bush got his way and Owen was confirmed following a second battle in Congress. It was Karl Rove’s interest in seeing Owen on the bench that kept her nomination alive, despite strong criticism of her hard-right interpretation of the law.

Why was Rove pushing so hard for Owen's confirmation?

Rove had a longstanding interest in Owen’s career, beginning in 1994, when Owen hired him as a campaign consultant in her successful bid for a seat on the Texas Supreme Court, paying him $250,000 for his efforts. Rove helped Owen raise over $900,000 for that campaign.

Jim Moore, a long-time Texas journalist who has chronicled Rove’s career in several books, including Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, explained the unique relationship between Rove and Owen in a Wednesday phone interview.

"He did everything for her. He created her career. He handpicked her to go to the Texas Supreme Court when he was trying to take over the Texas Supreme Court,” said Moore. “He was looking for people to groom and raise money for and have in his pipeline. Rove went and plucked her out of obscurity. She was an unknown lawyer in Houston.”

Raw Story lays out the process that is supposed to prevent cases from being decided by judges who have conflicts:

Lawyers familiar with the judicial process say Owen could not have been assigned the case by means of favoritism because it would be impossible to interfere with the process of randomly assigning cases to judges without implicating the clerk of court and possibly other judges in a conspiracy.

Yet the appearance of impropriety, even when none actually exists, is often reason for recusal. According to canon two of the US Code of Conduct for United States Judges, “A judge should avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities.”

It's unknown whether Owen was aware of allegations Rove had been involved in the prosecutions of Minor, Diaz, Whitfield and Teel. However, the public record and legal filings both either mention Rove by name or reference the White House’s alleged involvement in political prosecutions in general terms. For example, in a letter (pdf) from Paul Minor to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, dated Oct. 22, 2007, Minor expresses his belief that Rove was directly involved in his prosecution. “I am writing to you because you are the only people who can help me prove that the Bush Justice Department’s prosecution of me and Justice Oliver Diaz, Jr., and Judges Wes Teel and John Whitfield was politically motivated," he writes. “Over the past few months, it has become increasingly clear that Karl Rove, political strategist for Bush and other Republicans, conceived a strategy to dry up political money to Democratic candidates which included using the Justice Department as an instrument to prosecute prominent Democrats, particularly trial lawyers.”

Owen repeatedly has been criticized for not recusing herself in cases brought by corporate donors to her judicial campaigns:

According to Andrew What, the Research Director for the non-profit legal watchdog Texans for Public Justice, Owen’s career has been rife with questionable decisions."When we followed her on the Texas Supreme Court, she was an activist jurist that was results oriented," What wrote in an email late Wednesday. "Her record suggests that she was keenly aware and sensitive to what side her bread was buttered on. She threw out precedent out again and again to deliver decisions that benefited the business community that paid her bills."

Siegelman Shines Spotlight on Rove at Convention

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman asked Colorado Democrats today to push for a contempt citation against former Bush White House advisor Karl Rove.

Siegelman spoke to the 70 delegates at a kickoff breakfast for the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Two Colorado Congressmen attended the meeting and split on Siegelman's proposal. One, Rep. Ed Perlmutter, said he would enthusiastically vote for a contempt citation. The other, Rep. John Salazar, said his main focus is on winning the November election. "I've never been one for digging up bones," Salazar said.

It seems certain that's the kind of limp-wristed response that Republicans want to hear.

After the speech, Siegelman made a sheet of information available to delegates as to how they could contribute to his effort to clear his name.

Glynn Wilson, at Locust Fork World News & Journal, provides an overview of the Siegelman speech and offers a reply for the John Salazars in the Democratic Party. Writes Wilson:

We say what good is winning elections if the Constitution is trampled in the process? Some Democrats are willing to sell their soul to the company store. You?

Steven Rosenfeld, of Alternet, covered Siegelman's talk on Sunday night at an election integrity panel in Denver. Here is an excerpt from that talk:

I am from Alabama. I know something about how votes are suppressed. I know how those in power seek to control elections.

The spirit of the civil rights movement was not deterred by police dogs. The spirit of the civil rights movement was not beaten back by billy clubs, or dampened by the water cannon. The spirit of that movement was built upon the belief that every person should have the right to vote, and that those votes should be counted.

And we watched this country come from a place where woman and slaves, African-Americans could not vote, where they built into state constitutions that you had to be white, male and 21 and own 40 acres of land or be married to somebody who owned 40 acres of land to vote. Then we came up with the poll tax and hard questions, and they were designed to keep people from being able to register to vote. And later we became more sophisticated, when votes were stolen. Dead people were voted so they could swing elections at the tail end of elections on Election Day. And then there were prosecutions of African-Americans who were activist in their community, trying to get people to register to vote or cast absentee ballots. And now we have come to the point when we are becoming even more sophisticated, requiring photo IDs that put an added burden on some people, particularly those who happen to vote democratic.

And then there is this new wave, or process, of trying to control elections, which is the electronic manipulation of the vote. And I think that Rove has come up with a new one, which is using the federal indictment and prosecution process as a way to eliminate his political enemies.

I'm going to be at this convention, and my sole purpose here is to see that Karl Rove does not walk away quietly into the sunset. The U.S. Congress has a duty and an obligation to dig for the truth. The House Judiciary Committee has votes that Karl Rove be held in contempt for failing to show up after having been subpoenaed to testify before the Judiciary Committee about my case and about the firing of the U.S. Attorneys.

Karl Rove has refused to show up. Congress now has an obligation to vote on that contempt citation. The full House must be encouraged to bring that up for a vote when they come back in September. To do otherwise, is to say to the American people that we have two standards of justice. One for the powerful and those connected to the White House, and another for the rest of us.

Karl Rove should be made to show up before the Judiciary Committee, just like you or I or any of the members of our family members would have to do if we were subpoenaed. And he can either answer truthfully. He can lie under oath or he can plead the fifth -- and it does not matter to me. But to do otherwise is to also send a message to Rove's band of right-wing extremists who have participated in this conspiracy to abuse power and use the Department of Justice to win elections to gain and maintain power. And frankly, that would be a terrible disservice to our democracy.

McCain, Reality, and the Military Draft

The possibility that Republican presidential candidate John McCain, if elected, might reinstitute a military draft has become hot news lately.

Keith Olbermann devoted major time to the topic last Thursday and Friday on MSNBC's Countdown. The Keith O pieces were driven by McCain's answer to a woman's question at a town-hall campaign stop in New Mexico.

Here at Legal Schnauzer, this got us to thinking about the draft in larger terms--particularly terms that apply to the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

A strong case can be made that George W. Bush is both the worst and the dumbest president we've ever had. But bad, dumb people can teach us valuable lessons--in a "never again" kind of way.

To borrow a phrase from Keith O, the real "Worst Person in the World," perhaps was Adolph Hitler. But he taught horrible and indelible lessons, which are embodied in the Jewish Defense League's motto--Never again.

I can think of two "never again" lessons that George W. Bush has taught us:

* Never again must we allow anyone to corruptly use our Justice Department for political reasons.

* Never again must we go to war--a defensive (just) war, a preemptive war, or any other kind of war--without instituting a military draft.

When Congress abolished the military draft in 1973--I was a junior in high school at the time--I doubt that any Americans could envision a day when the United States would start a war, when we would attack a sovereign nation that posed no clear threat to our national interests.

But the Bush administration has shown that such a thing can happen. And without a military draft, it can happen with only a tiny fraction of the population making any sacrifice--and an even more tiny fraction actually serving.

This creates a political sense of unreality that my wife and I witness most every day, primarily because we live in what is generally considered the most conservative county in Alabama. I would guess that at least 95 percent of the people in our neighborhood who voted in the last two presidential elections, voted for George W. Bush. And quite a few of those people had boys (and girls) who were in the prime draft age range--or soon would be.

But the conservatives in my middle-class neighborhood aren't the least bit concerned that their Justins and Jessicas are going to wind up in Iraq. In fact, I doubt that it's ever crossed their minds. So they can slap a "Support Our Troops" bumper sticker on their SUV and drive around feeling patriotic, knowing they helped put Dubya in charge.

As a result we are living in a Through the Looking Glass world that even Lewis Carroll could not have imagined. The people who actually lived through World War II, and sacrificed as a result, must think, "Something isn't right with this picture."

What isn't right? We are at war without a military draft. And it must never happen again. We've allowed an incompetent president to redefine what war means to a democratic society. It has sanitized and marginalized war. And it has made it all too easy for the United States to actually initiate a war--something that once was unthinkable.

How bad is it for our men and women who are serving in the military? Time magazine recently reported that the stress is so great that antidepressants are being given in mass quantities to keep the troops functional.

Perhaps worst of all, our modern ability to conduct a "war without pain" has perverted our political process. A voter can mindlessly vote for a supposed "hawk" (like Bush) without ever having to worry that anyone he knows or cares about will actually have to sacrifice.

So what should we do about it? I don't like the thought of a military draft any more than most people. But I've decided we must have a draft, under certain circumstances, if for no other reason than to protect us from our own worst urges.

Our Schnauzer proposal: In times of peace, we will have a volunteer military. But we cannot go to war, or even prepare for the possibility of war, without instituting a military draft.

We could call it the "No War Without a Draft Law (NWWDL)."

I don't know what kind of political and legislative action would be needed to turn such an idea into law. But I think it is critical that action is taken so that we "never again" will have another George W. Bush fiasco.

Consider these questions:

* With NWWDL in place, what would the chances have been that the Bush administration would initiate the Iraq War? Almost zero.

* If Bush had started the Iraq War, with NWWDL in place, what would have been his chances of getting re-elected? Absolutely zero.

I'm liking this idea more and more.

And perhaps it would add a touch of sanity to modern politics. For now, the draft is such a touchy topic, that even veterans groups can't seem to agree on it.

On Countdown with Keith O last week, Jonathan Soltz of votevets.org said the majority of vets are against a draft. The reasoning? No one wants to be serving on a dangerous mission alongside someone who doesn't want to be there.

The next night, Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America told Keith O the majority of vets support a draft. The reasoning? Those who serve are tired of putting their lives on the line while a huge majority of draft-age Americans don't contribute to the war effort.

Rieckhoff's reasoning rings more true to me. Even those who serve voluntarily probably cannot honestly say they "want to be there" when a dangerous mission comes up. They'd probably rather be back home on a base playing war games.

But if they are on a dangerous mission, they probably would like to be sharing that responsibility with a cross-section of their fellow Americans. And NWWDL would help ensure that we have enough bodies to conduct a war properly, without having our troops stretched nearly to the breaking point.

A "Verdict" on Dan Abrams

The news that a show hosted by Rachel Maddow will replace The Verdict with Dan Abrams on MSNBC drew mixed reaction here in SchnauzerWorld.

Maddow is one of the sharpest liberal voices to come along in years, and she richly deserves an hour-long slot on the network that is becoming must-see TV for folks who enjoy a little thinking along with their politics.

I had become disenchanted with The Verdict in recent months. But anyone who cares about justice issues, particularly those of us who live in Alabama, will miss Dan Abrams.

Abrams did more than anyone else in broadcast journalism to bring the Bush Justice Department scandal to public awareness. And his focus on the Don Siegelman prosecution was both enlightening and appropriate, given that the scandal's roots, to a great degree, are in Alabama.

As The Verdict exits stage right, I'm disappointed that the show didn't fulfill its considerable potential. I believe there is a significant appetite out there for justice news and analysis that is presented in an understandable and compelling way. Abrams, at his best, showed he could fill that need.

But for reasons I will never understand, the show in its last weeks moved away from justice stories and meandered into celebrity/gossip territory, with the occasional sashay into the Greta Van Susteren neighborhood. (Dear God, a white female is missing somewhere on the planet!)

Even The Verdict's most recent reports on the Justice Department scandal missed the mark. A few weeks back, Abrams had a segment featuring Don Siegelman and former New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias. Both were excellent choices to be on the program, and you could see that they were itching to make critical points about the evolving scandal. But they must have said about three sentences between them as Abrams focused on Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff, who seemed mainly interested in serving as Karl Rove's water boy. It was a depressing case of Abrams missing a chance to educate the public about a vitally important subject.

Even though Abrams did better than anyone else in broadcast journalism on the Bush DOJ story, he still missed numerous opportunities. Why not look into the Paul Minor case in Mississippi, the Georgia Thompson case in Wisconsin, the Cyril Wecht case in Pennsylvania? Why not look into all of the U.S. attorneys who were fired and what led to their dismissals? Why not look into the issue of corrupt federal judges, focusing on Mark Fuller in Alabama and Henry Wingate in Mississippi? And as Siegelman himself suggested, why not look at figures other than Karl Rove in his story--people like Bill and Leura Canary, Alice Martin, Rob Riley, Eddie Curran, and Brett Blackledge?

At other times, Abrams slipped into that familiar "he said/she said" format, where a Democrat is paired with a Republican to present some appearance of balance. This is the kind of thing that Arianna Huffington has rightly criticized, and Abrams (unfortunately) had become one of its regular practitioners.

For example, why on earth was Pat Buchanan on The Verdict so often? The world doesn't already know what Buchanan thinks about most issues?

At least Buchanan can be interesting at times. But the real debacle on The Verdict was making right-wing mouthpiece Brad Blakeman a regular "contributor." Blakeman is the worst sort of partisan shill, and any segment on which he appeared quickly became a waste of airtime.

I wouldn't be surprised if the decision to make Blakeman a regular was the single biggest factor in The Verdict's demise.

Abrams still will serve as legal analyst for NBC. I hope that he or someone else will eventually fill the need for a program about justice that isn't watered down and educates its audience about a justice system that is badly broken.

In Honor of Our Pets

A thoughtful reader from the Mississippi Gulf Coast sent the following item today, and I wanted to share it with others at Legal Schnauzer.

Regular readers know that this blog is named for, and inspired by, the memory of a beloved pet. So I figured our little place in the blogosphere seemed like a good place to print this:

A PET'S TEN COMMANDMENTS

1. My life is likely to last 10-15 years. Any separation from you is likely to be painful.

2. Give me time to understand what you want of me.

3. Place your trust in me. It is crucial for my well-being.

4. Don't be angry with me for long and don't lock me up as punishment. You have your work, your friends, your entertainment, but I have only you.

5. Talk to me. Even if I don't understand your words, I do understand your voice when speaking to me.

6. Be aware that however you treat me, I will never forget it.

7. Before you hit me, before you strike me, remember that I could hurt you, and yet, I choose not to bite you.

8. Before you scold me for being lazy or uncooperative, ask yourself if something might be bothering me. Perhaps I'm not getting the right food, I have been in the sun too long, or my heart might be getting old or weak.

9. Please take care of me when I grow old. You too, will grow old.

10. On the ultimate difficult journey, go with me please. Never say you can't bear to watch. Don't make me face this alone. Everything is easier for me if you are there, because I love you so.

Take a moment today to thank God for your pets. Enjoy and take good care of them.

Life would be a much duller, less joyful experience without God's critters.

We do not have to wait for Heaven, to be surrounded by hope, love, and joyfulness. It is here on earth and has four legs!

Amen.

Madness in Mississippi

We long have called Alabama "Ground Zero" for the Bush Justice Department scandal and other assorted Republican shenanigans that appear to be driven by acolytes of Karl Rove.

Mississippi long has been running a close second in the "Ground Zero" sweepstakes, and now the Magnolia State looks like it might be ready to pull into a first-place tie.

Not content with the blatant corruption of the Paul Minor case, Mississippi Republicans are stretching ethical boundaries on a couple of new fronts.

One involves the U.S. Senate race between Roger Wicker, who took over Trent Lott's old seat, and Democratic challenger Ronnie Musgrove. Scott Horton reports at Harper's.org that Jim Greenlee, a Bush-appointed U.S. attorney for northern Mississippi, appears to be orchestrating a federal investigation that is designed to disrupt Musgrove's campaign.

Greenlee just so happens to have been a donor to Wicker's Congressional campaign. Hmmm.

A four-year-old investigation into the failed Mississippi Beef Processors plant came to a head recently with guilty pleas from three Georgia businessmen. The three were mostly let off the hook on the most serious charges, but they pled guilty to charges that they tried to buy influence with Musgrove in his failed 2003 re-election campaign for governor.

A Mississippi journalist who had been skeptical of charges that the Bush administration has engaged in political prosecutions now says the Mississippi Beef case doesn't pass the smell test.

In an even more bizarre event, Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz was barred by his colleagues from having a dissenting opinion published in a particular case. Diaz was one of four defendants in the Paul Minor case, which resulted in federal prison sentences for Minor, an attorney and prominent Democratic supporter, and former state judges Wes Teel and John Whitfield. Diaz, a moderate Republican, was prosecuted twice by the Bush Justice Department and acquitted both times.

The Emptywheel blog reports that the case dealt with the statute of limitations on wrongful-death cases and established that the statute would begin to run at the time of injury, before the victim had even died. This type of ruling evidently has been a longtime goal of the Republican-backed "tort reform" movement. Let me repeat what this ruling says: The statute of limitations on a wrongful death case will begin to run before the victim dies.

This is rubber-meets-the-road conservatism, what the modern "conservatism" movement is all about. But the vast majority of citizens don't have a clue about what "strict constructionist" judges are doing in state courts.

The folo blog is THE place to go for legal news in Mississippi, and it has an excellent overview of the Diaz story. It also includes coverage from two of Mississippi's largest newspapers.

Ultimately, the Diaz dissent was released, but not before the folks at folo had a chance to call his colleagues "knuckleheads." Explanations from Diaz' fellow Supremes ring pretty hollow, and one can only wonder what they really were thinking.

Is Alice Martin in Bed With The Birmingham News?

How big a scumbucket is Alice Martin, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama? How weak is the case she is currently trying against Alabama Rep. Sue Schmitz, a Democrat? How cozy is Martin's relationship with The Birmingham News? And how has the paper's coverage of the Schmitz case--and the entire two-year colleges scandal--been colored by its pro-prosecution agenda?

Reporter David Fiderer provides answers to these questions with a splendid piece today at Huffington Post.

By focusing on what we are NOT reading in The Birmingham News, Fiderer provides the most compelling analysis I've seen about the Schmitz case. And it adds evidence to support what many of us have suspected for some time: Certain Alabama newspapers are actively engaged in helping prosecutors and Republican politicians execute a politically driven form of "justice" in our state.

How tight is the Martin/News lovefest?

In April 2006, The Birmingham News began running a series of articles on "corruption" within Alabama's two-year college system. The reporting focused on a number of House Democrats who were engaged in "double-dipping" at the expense of Alabama taxpayers. "Double-dipping" became a political catchphrase in Alabama. What wasn't The Birmingham News talking about? The outside employment and business interests of Republican politicians, among other things.

A few weeks after The Birmingham News started going after Democratic representatives who "double-dipped" within the two-year college system, U.S. Attorney Alice Martin started hauling in witnesses for her grand jury investigation. The first case she brought to trial, over two years later, is against Sue Schmitz.

Who knows how the Schmitz case will turn out? Who knows what is motivating the judge and what kind of jury instructions he might concoct? But Fiderer reveals the weakness of the case against Schmitz:

Prosecutor Martin isn't alleging that Schmitz pulled strings to get a cushy part-time job and then failed to perform. That isn't a crime. Instead, Martin alleges that Schmitz had the specific intent, before she ever got a job offer, to take the money and in return do nothing. And Martin says she can prove this beyond a reasonable doubt. Again, at the risk of being didactic, beyond a reasonable doubt means there can be no plausible alternative explanation.

The Birmingham News fails to acknowledge this critical legal distinction, and thereby misleads its readers:

"The prosecutor told jurors the case will boil down to a few questions. 'Did Sue Schmitz do the things she told the CITY program she did? Did she work the number of hours she said she worked? Did she perform the tasks she said she did? The answer to those questions is no, she didn't.'"

If it boils down to those questions, then the prosecution's case is fatally flawed and the judge was bound to dismiss the case. More likely, the reporting at The Birmingham News is fatally flawed.

Again, unsatisfactory job performance is not a crime. Martin is engaged in the type of prosecutorial overreaching that mirrors the case against Don Siegelman, where the prosecutor essentially argued that a political donation was the same thing as a bribe.

Martin's actions also are reminiscent of the Paul Minor case in Mississippi. In that case, prosecutors argued for exclusion of evidence that was critical to the defense; in fact, the evidence went to the fundamental defense that was available, and by law, had to be allowed. But the judge sided with prosecutors.

Will the judge in the Schmitz case side with prosecutors? Martin evidently is counting on it. She wants to exclude any references to a lawsuit in which Schmitz was found to have been wrongfully terminated:

Here's the giveaway of the prosecution's bad faith. Alice Martin wants the judge to, "prohibit the defendant from referencing this lawsuit at any fashion at trial, including its filings as well as any rulings or determinations issued." She says that the lawsuit isn't relevant, and that "the admission of such evidence will only serve to confuse, distract, and mislead the jury." Martin is shamelessly insulting the intelligence of everyone involved. Schmitz' willingness to invite judicial scrutiny into the circumstances of her employment reflects her state of mind, which is central to the government's case.

The prior lawsuit also touches on another point. It's impossible for someone to be employed in a phantom job for three years without the supervisor being similarly culpable. Schmitz' employer would not have willingly invited judicial scrutiny if this were part of some criminal enterprise.

But Martin does not stop there:

Martin wants the judge to "prohibit the defendant from suggesting to the jury that Schmitz could fulfill her obligations to the CITY Program by advocating on its behalf, or providing any advice or assistance on matters concerning the Legislature." Even though Schmitz' written job responsibilities included:

"II. External Affairs
A. "Develop and maintain a positive working relationship with members of the State of Alabama legislative delegation, various city and county officials relative to CITY locations.

B. "Establish a positive working relationship with various state service providers (i.e. Department of Human Resources, Department of Mental Health, and Department of Youth Services."

Hmmm, seems Schmitz got in trouble for doing her job, and Alice Martin played a major role in the whole affair. Boy, does that sound familiar.

Fiderer's conclusion?

The foregoing is what The Birmingham News is not talking about. The paper's coverage has essentially been spoon fed by Martin.

"Prosecutors outlined the case they'll present against Schmitz in a 41-page trial memorandum. After it was reviewed by The Birmingham News, that document was sealed by a federal judge."

Wonder how the News came to possess the trial memorandum.

I'm not too familiar with the alleged facts and the relevant law in the Schmitz case. But I am intimately familiar with the facts and the law in the Paul Minor case. And as I read material related to the Minor case, I remember thinking to myself, "Good God, these prosecutors are arguing for the judge to make rulings that they know are not lawful. These people are interested in convictions, not justice. If they had been interested in justice, this case never would have been brought."

I sense the same thing happening in the Sue Schmitz case. It's shocking to think that public prosecutors, people who are paid by taxpayers to do the people's business, intentionally try to bastardize the law in order to win politically driven cases.

Even as the George W. Bush era draws mercifully to a close, his Justice Department still is conducting its business in shockingly unethical ways.

The Original Legal Schnauzer, Part IV

Here's Murphy and her "Mom" at Oak Mountain State Park, just south of Birmingham.

The Murph loved to go for rides in the car, and probably her two favorite destinations were the Sonic Drive-In in Pelham, Alabama, and Oak Mountain State Park.

On this day, I think we followed up our visit to the park with a stop by Sonic. So this was a "red-letter day" for our girl. I'm sure she slept well that night--right between us.

UAB, Bloggers, and Double Standards, Part II

How did my old buddy Doug Gillett get in hot water at UAB?

My memory is fuzzy on some details, but here is how I think it went down:

Doug had not been at UAB long when he became a volunteer with John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. That's one difference between Doug and me. I vote Democrat; Doug is a Democrat, through and through. He puts shoe leather to pavement on behalf of the Democratic Party, and I admire that.

Doug also wrote a blog, with the not-so-subtle title "George W. Bush, Will You Please Go Now."

In the course of volunteering for Kerry, writing his blog, and participating in various online political forums, Doug must have somehow made a Republican enemy. (Imagine that!)

It seems that said enemy alerted a reporter at The Birmingham News about Doug's online activities during work hours, and our local right-wing rag was delighted to write a story that portrayed Doug as a thief of Alabama's treasure. The story got picked up by the wire services and wound up being run in newspapers all over creation.

I don't believe the original Birmingham News story is online anymore. But a blog post about the whole brouhaha is available here. And the blog Practically Harmless (written by Doug's sister, Ann) had a good post about the whole affair, with links to several articles.

Doug's case was clear cut. He was blogging at work. He was engaging in political activity (defined as involving political candidates, organizations, or campaigns). He almost certainly violated state law.

But he kept his job. In fact, I see no evidence that his job was ever seriously in danger. (Doug, by the way, is still in the blogging business, although Hey, Jenny Slater is more about sports and babes, less about politics and elections.)

Why did UAB not fire Doug? I wasn't involved in any meetings, but I can only guess. One, I think UAB kept its head and realized that Doug did not have any improper intent. He was an enthusiastic young guy who was getting his work done, and in his spare time on the job, made the mistake of doing something he shouldn't have been doing.

Also, I suspect that UAB realized that while it has policies regarding the use of university equipment for improper reasons, it has no clear-cut policy (at least one that I've been able to find) regarding the use of computers and the Web. For example, UAB has a policy titled "Safeguarding UAB Equipment." (See page 69, You & UAB Handbook.) Within that policy is this sentence: "You are not to use UAB Equipment for personal reasons." But the overall policy says nothing about computers. I've been around UAB a long time, and I'm pretty sure this policy predates the use of personal computers in the work environment, and it certainly predates the widespread use of the Internet. This policy seems aimed at equipment that can be moved and taken outside the work environment for personal use. And its title suggests that it is concerned primarily with taking care of UAB equipment, not damaging it. In other words, don't take a UAB vacuum cleaner home to clean your house; don't check out a UAB vehicle and take the family to Disney World. And whenever and wherever you use UAB equipment, take care of it. But this policy makes no clear statement regarding computers or the Web, and I suspect that's one reason Doug kept his job.

Why does UAB not have a clear policy regarding use of computers and the Web? I suspect it's because, as an institution of higher learning, UAB does not want to establish a policy that would inhibit academic inquiry and make it more difficult to recruit faculty members. If word got around that a university was run by a bunch of "computer Nazis," I suspect potential teachers and researchers would avoid joining the faculty.

The only other policy issue that could be applied to Doug's case--or my case--is "Political Activities of UAB Employees." (See page 48, You & UAB Handbook.) This one is pretty clear: No UAB employee is permitted to use university resources, time, or property for political activities, which are defined as activities "on behalf of any political candidate, campaign, or organization."

Doug probably violated this one. He was, as I understand it, blogging and conducting other political activity on UAB time, with UAB equipment. Even the title of his blog had a clearly partisan, political tone. But I suspect UAB realized that Doug had no malicious intent--and he pretty clearly was the victim of political backstabbing by someone who alerted the local newspaper--so it did not fire him. And I wholeheartedly supported that decision.

But what about me and Legal Schnauzer? UAB's own investigation showed that I was not blogging at work. I was not engaged in political activity. I didn't write about political candidates or tout a certain political organization or campaign. Evidence suggests that UAB was concerned that my blog covered the Don Siegelman case, but Siegelman was a federal prisoner, not a political candidate, for most of the time I've written the blog. And I didn't write about Siegelman, or anyone else, on UAB time or with UAB resources.

I didn't violate any UAB policies or state laws or engage in any form of misconduct.

So why am I out of a job? Three reasons, I think:

* The age difference--My situation is about far more than age discrimination, but that certainly is present. I enjoyed most of my 12 years working for Pam Powell, but as I've noted before, she clearly has shown a preference for younger people, especially in the positions closest to her. This has been apparent for a long time, but Powell's superiors (Dale Turnbough and Shirly Salloway Kahn) have turned a blind eye to it. The fact that Doug was, and still is, in his 20s has a lot to do with why he still works at UAB. Pam went to bat for him; she stabbed me right between the shoulder blades--repeatedly, like the shower scene from Psycho (with a reversal of gender roles).

* The timing difference--Doug's "issue" arose in 2004. GOPers, I'm sure, were sensitive to criticism at that point. But that was before much of the blatant corruption in the Bush administration began to surface. It definitely was before the U.S. attorneys scandal broke, followed by stories about the politicization of the Justice Department. My "issue" arose with the Justice Department scandal in full swing, and I think things really started to boil when Don Siegelman's story appeared on 60 Minutes and then when he was released from federal prison pending appeal. As the actions of U.S. attorneys began to receive scrutiny--particularly in Alabama--I suspect GOP honchos in our state became more than a little agitated. They also might have begun to have visions of seeing themselves in federal prison someday. It appears that folks connected to a particular U.S. attorney decided to lash out by costing me my job. Doug might have gotten fired, too, if his "issue" had arisen in 2008, rather than 2004.

* The nature of the blogs--Doug's political blog was filled with opinion, and apparently that peeved some minor GOP politico. But most of the big dogs, on either side of the political aisle, can handle folks who disagree with them or even poke fun at them. But my blog, Legal Schnauzer, is a different animal. It presents plenty of opinion--and like Doug, I view things through a liberal or progressive prism. But a major chunk of my blog involves "citizen journalism." I'm reporting facts, about events that have taken place in the public arena--and the facts reveal that certain folks with Republican leanings have committed federal crimes. That makes certain powerful people nervous, particularly when it's clear that I've done my homework, and I know what I'm talking about. Plus, much of the wrongdoing I've written about isn't being covered anywhere else.

Even political big dogs get worried, and more than a little agitated, when a blogger is exposing them, or their brethren, as corrupt reptiles. (An apology to reptiles; they don't deserve to be compared with the lowlifes at the heart of Legal Schnauzer.)

Doug has written about uncomfortable opinions. I've written about uncomfortable truths. There is a big difference between the two. That difference, to a large extent, explains why Doug still has a job at UAB--and why I do not.

How has that difference manifested itself?

In Doug's case, the university actually followed its own policy. UAB has a progressive discipline process, and its stated goal is "to retain employees and to improve an employee's performance while at the same time documenting the efforts of the employer in the event of discharge." (See page 57, You & UAB Handbook.) Doug's actions probably merited some level of progressive discipline, and the university applied the policy the way it should have. Best I can tell, the university was honest with Doug, and his coworkers, every step of the way.

What about my case? Well, UAB has butchered its own policy in almost every respect. UAB's own employee grievance hearing, which I sat through in its entirety, showed that I shouldn't have been disciplined at all, much less terminated. But the university seemingly couldn't wait to rid itself of a 19-year employee, apparently because I had used my university computer to keep up with Alabama-related news, as I was required to do by my job description. In other words, I got fired for doing my job. Is that Rovian or what?

How badly did UAB fail to achieve the goals of its own policy? Let's go step by step:

* The goal is to retain employees--I wasn't retained; I was fired. UAB's grade: F.

* The goal is to improve an employee's performance--UAB's own investigation showed there was nothing wrong with my performance. The annual review I had received in September 2007 showed my performance was good. Anyone's performance can improve, including mine. But did UAB accomplish that stated goal? Not exactly. Research has shown that wrongfully terminating an employee is not a good way to improve performance. UAB's grade: F.

* The goal is to document the employer's effort in the event of discharge--This might be the biggest joke of the whole affair. At my grievance hearing, my supervisor Pam Powell repeatedly was asked to provide documentation regarding her allegations that my performance had declined. She didn't turn over one document--unless she did it while my back was turned. Why no documentation from my supervisor? Because my performance hadn't declined, and UAB management knows it. And I had violated any policies either, and UAB management knows that, too.

Clearly, something is amiss with my firing. And the evidence shows that could only be caused by improper, and probably unlawful, external pressure applied to UAB for political reasons.

As I noted above, the university appeared to deal honestly with Doug Gillett. Have they dealt honestly with me? Consider President Carol Garrison's recent "statement" issued to several folks who had voiced concern about my termination. Garrison says my firing had nothing to do with politics and was based solely on work performance.

Let's take the "work performance" statement first. Garrison's own grievance committee has found I shouldn't have been terminated at all. So in addition to being defamatory, Garrison's statement is boldly dishonest.

And what about the "politics" statement? Heck, Garrison's own employees don't believe that. In an unguarded moment, Employee Relations director Anita Bonasera spilled the beans about what was really behind my termination. You can listen to that conversation between Bonasera and me, and judge for yourself:

UAB, Siegelman, and Blogs

So you have a large institution engaged in a coverup, with the president right in the middle of it. Richard Nixon would be proud.

Did Leaks to Blackledge Signal Criminal Activity?

Glynn Wilson, of Locust Fork World News, raises that question today with a post about former News reporter Brett Blackledge.

After winning a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Alabama two-year colleges scandal, Blackledge recently left Birmingham for a position with Associated Press in Washington. Wilson presents several video segments that raise questions about both the quality of Blackledge's reporting and possible criminal activities involving his newspaper and federal prosecutors.

The News' reporting led to the criminal prosecution of Democratic State Rep. Sue Schmitz in a trial that started this week.

Blackledge states in the video that he was handed information in a box. How could that indicate criminal activity? Well, it depends on what was in the box and who gave it to Blackledge.

Reports Wilson:

"If the materials include grand jury materials, then this may have been a criminal act,” says New York attorney and writer Scott Horton, who keeps up with the cases in Alabama for his blog “No Comment” on the Harper’s magazine Website at Harpers.org.

Horton has written before, referencing the Don Siegelman case, about the serious nature of grand-jury leaks:

The leading newspapers in two of Alabama’s major cities—Birmingham and Mobile—are sibling publications under joint ownership. They gave extensive and tendentious coverage of the investigation and prosecution of Don Siegelman. And these papers had access to nearly every aspect of the prosecution’s case, including its witnesses and its evidence. They knew the charges before their formal presentation; they even knew in some detail what transpired before the grand jury. The press is free to make inquiries and publish what it learns, and the more the better. However, the prosecution is obligated to maintain the secrecy of the proceedings, and the disclosure of grand jury secrets by the prosecution is a very serious violation of Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Usually the publication of grand jury secrets in the press is taken as sufficient for a judge to trigger an inquiry into violations of Rule 6(e) by the prosecution. In this case, the federal prosecutors openly and publicly lauded the newspaper reporters who were disseminating their materials. This practice of “poisoning the well” is extremely abusive and the judge should have stopped it.

So who would be criminally liable here? It appears it would be federal prosecutors. Could criminal liability fall on reporters and editors at the newspaper? The answer appears to be no. But it raises this question: What if the reporters and editors knowingly engaged in a conspiracy to leak grand-jury information as part of a plan to ensnare Democrats in legal proceedings and allow Republicans to take over all branches of Alabama government?

An excellent article at ethicsscoreboard.com addresses many of the issues connected to grand-jury leaks. This article was based on the steroids-related case of former San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds.

As for Blackledge, Wilson wonders if his work truly merited consideration for a Pulitzer:

It also raises some doubts about the qualifications of the reporting for the award, since it doesn’t look like he did much “investigating,” and was perhaps just handed the information by federal prosecutors in possible violation of judicial codes of ethics.

The stories came preliminary to charges being brought against a number of legislators, including Sue Schmitz of Huntsville, who worked in a program that helps troubled teenagers. Her trial is ongoing in the federal courthouse in Decatur, and her lawyers have indicated an interest in this video as evidence.

The Pulitzer committee awards the prizes each year for “a distinguished example of investigative reporting by an individual or team, presented as a single article or series, in print or in print and online.” The prize pays a cash award of $10,000.

Blackledge’s award is billed as a reward for “his exposure of cronyism and corruption in the state’s two-year college system, resulting in the dismissal of the chancellor and other corrective action.” It was moved by the board from the Public Service category.

UAB, Bloggers, and Double Standards

My case is not the first time UAB has received unwanted attention because of an employee who writes a blog.

In fact, it's not even the first such case in my old office, UAB Periodicals.

One of my former colleagues, Doug Gillett, got into some hot water a few years back because of his blog. Did UAB exhibit consistency in its handling of Doug's case and my case? Uh, not exactly.

In fact, it's hard to imagine two employment-related cases being handled in a more disparate manner. What's the biggest difference between the handling of the two cases? Well, as you can see by checking the personnel roster of UAB Periodicals, Doug still works there.

I do not.

Are there other differences between the two cases? Oh gosh, let me count them all:

* Doug actually was violating UAB policy; I was not;

* Doug actually was using UAB equipment and time to write a blog; I was not;

* Doug actually was using UAB equipment and time for political activity (as defined by university policy); I was not;

* Doug probably violated state election and ethics law; I did not;

* I was harassed for roughly five months by our supervisor, Pam Powell; Doug was not;

* Pam Powell repeatedly made false statements regarding my job performance and behavior; I see no evidence that she ever made false statements regarding Doug;

* Pam Powell launched an "investigation" of my computer use, just five days after I had told her via e-mail that I knew she was lying (and had written proof of it) in a recent statement she had made about my job performance. Was Doug's computer use ever investigated? I don't think so.

* I was placed on administrative leave; Doug was not;

* I was immediately discharged, contrary to university policy; Doug was not;

* Doug, to my knowledge, received a written warning and never missed a day of work; I was immediately fired, and I've been out of work for roughly three months.

Oh, a couple of other differences: I was 51 at the time of my "event," and Doug was around 25. I was a 19-year UAB employee; Doug had worked at UAB for about a year, I think.

Why did UAB handle these two cases so differently? Well, I think there are two reasons, and we will examine those.

But first, let me make this editorial note: I like Doug Gillett a heckuva lot. He's a smart, funny, irreverent "character," and I like "characters." (Heck, I married one.) He and I are on the same page politically, we both like sports and hot French broadcasters, and I considered Doug to be a breath of fresh air in the workplace--a genuine hoot. He's one of many "worker bee" colleagues that I miss a lot.

In fact, as I noted in a recent post, Doug and another one of my 20-something colleagues, Stanley Holditch, pretty much inspired me to write a blog--or at least to think about writing a blog. Without them, I probably still wouldn't know what a blog is. And I probably would have just sat back and taken the royal screw job that corrupt Alabama judges were dishing out.

The point of this post is not to swipe at Doug in any way. The point is to illustrate UAB's duplicitous behavior in its handling of my case, particularly in comparison to a previous case that was far more serious regarding the use of university equipment.

One final point in my editorial note: When Doug got into hot water, I think everyone in our office was afraid he was going to be fired. But I thought UAB handled it the right way. Gary Mans--the same guy who issued President Carol Garrison's goofy statement about me--gathered everyone in our office together and said that Doug had been warned, but was not going to lose his job. Gary reminded all of us that we should not blog or do any kind of political activity at work. But he also added-and I'm paraphrasing here--that the department and the university didn't want to be "computer Nazis." He knew that we all used the Web extensively for our work, and he also knew that most everybody occasionally checked a news site, a sports site, a music site, etc. He said that was fine and he wanted to maintain a relaxed, productive atmosphere. Mainly, he said, just don't blog or engage in political activity at work.

I've not been shy about criticizing Mans for his role in Carol Garrison's statement about my case. The statement was false and defamatory, and it contradicted the findings of UAB's own employee grievance committee. Mans should have been smart enough, or bold enough, to head that off. But in Doug's situation, I thought Mans handled everything just right. Doug should not have been fired, and I think Mans set the right tone, and sent the right message, for Doug and our entire office.

Which brings us back to UAB's double standard. More on that coming up.

(To be continued)

Is Deborah Bell Paseur Toast?

I hope the answer to the question in our headline is no. But based on Paseur's recent speech before the Birmingham chapter of the Federalist Society, I'm afraid the answer is yes.

According to a report in The Birmingham News, Paseur made a number of excellent proposals:

* She supports the appointment of appellate judges. (I would expand this to include appointment of all state judges.)

* She would push for an increase in oral arguments heard by appellate courts;

* She would push for more opinions that explain rulings. (I would call for abolishment of the no-opinion affirmance rule, which allows appellate courts to affirm trial-court findings without issuing an opinion.)

But she evidently said nothing about the Alabama Supreme Court's infamous ExxonMobil ruling. Paseur was speaking before a conservative organization, and perhaps she didn't want to raise the ExxonMobil case in that forum. But I'm not aware of her raising the issue in any forum.

According to a report at Left in Alabama from November 2007, a Paseur supporter used a sign to mock the Republican jurists who sold out to ExxonMobil. But Paseur herself has shied away from spotlighting the case, and I think that's a mistake.

Here is the background on the ExxonMobil case: In an 8-1 ruling last fall--with the court's lone Democrat, Sue Bell Cobb, providing the dissenting vote--the Supreme Court overturned most of a $3.6 billion verdict against the oil giant and in favor of the state of Alabama. The ruling was a devastating hit to the state's financial picture, but more important it was a violation of clear procedural and legal precedent.

In other words, the ruling was corrupt, and Cobb had the cojones to pretty much say that in her dissent. Paseur is going to have to show similar cojones if she is going to win in a state where a major proportion of the white population reflexively votes Republican--particularly in judicial races.

The ExxonMobil story is not complicated. Republicans on the Supreme Court violated the law and cheated the citizens of Alabama. Most citizens understand that kind of language, and they don't like cheaters, by and large.

Paseur needs to take that message, put it in a short, sweet, simple package, and let it loose on a regular basis between now and election day. Former Democratic Governor Don Siegelman has publicly pushed for such a campaign, but Paseur seems unwilling to do it.

I don't think there is any question that Paseur is a far superior candidate to her GOP opponent. She has strong support from law enforcement and from women's groups. But that will not be enough for her to win. The Republicans on the Supreme Court gift wrapped a winning campaign issue for her, and if she is not bold enough to use it, she probably doesn't deserve to win the race.
Perhaps someone close to Sue Bell Cobb, or some of Paseur's own advisors, can convince her that she has to come out swinging between now and election day. Playing nice in judicial races is not going to get it done with the snakes who back GOP jurists.

If Paseur doesn't toughen up, I'm afraid we are in for more 8-1 rulings in the future.

Raising Judicial-Corruption Issue Sparks Vigorous Debate

Your humble blogger has taken to occasionally writing diaries at Daily Kos, that vast repository of progressive opinion and debate.

One of my recent scribblings drew an interesting response from what I assume is a pretty liberal crowd at the Kos.

The subject was judicial corruption, and I presented several proposals for addressing the problem. I also raised the issue of a California-based organization called Jail 4 Judges, which proposes a Judicial Accountability Initiative Law (J.A.I.L) that would rework the concept of judicial immunity in our country.

J.A.I.L., the brainchild of a man named Ron Branson, would not eliminate judicial immunity. But it would subject the concept to citizens' panels of Special Grand Jurors who would determine if immunity should apply in specific cases. My understanding is that J.A.I.L. would apply to cases where a judge's application of procedure, statutory law, case law, or legal precedent is alleged to be clearly wrong; it is not aimed at discretionary rulings.

I don't consider myself an expert on J.A.I.L., but I have followed the movement for a while. I think Branson has identified a significant problem in our country, and his proposals seem reasonable and deserving of serious public debate.

So I was a bit surprised at the response my Daily Kos piece attracted the other day. It drew 70-plus comments, which is not a lot by Daily Kos standards, but it was the most any of my diaries had drawn. And quite a few of the comments were negative or dismissive. A few people even accused me of being a Republican. (Ouch! Dear God, call me anything, but please don't drop that label on me!)

The diary and the comments, along with my attempts to defend my position, can be read here.

A few thoughts from my most recent Kos experience:

* It's almost as if a squadron of lawyers is assigned to check out Daily Kos and swoop down upon anyone who raises questions about the nobility of the legal profession. I would guess that eight to 12 lawyers were involved in our discussion, and almost all of them were taking the opposing side from yours truly.

* I certainly don't mind folks disagreeing with me, and indeed, you expect that to happen when you write at a heavily traveled site like Daily Kos. But some of the comments had a tone of "You must be a right-wing nut job if you raise questions about the judiciary or the legal profession in general." I think progressives are making a mistake if they take that approach. After all, the Bush Justice Department scandal is driven largely by corrupt conservatives who have legal credentials of some sort. And the victims have been Democrats or moderate/honest Republicans. I think it's important for liberals to view this as a matter of right and wrong, not right and left.

* In defense of my DK challengers, most of them I'm sure had not read my blog and had little if any background about my case. Had they known more about the facts of my case, and that the judicial wrongdoers are all Republicans, we might have been more on the same wavelength. But it is interesting that lawyers, no matter where they live, tend to almost reflexively use certain arguments when they feel their turf is being threatened. One tactic is the familiar "You are a layperson, so you can't possibly understand the law" routine. Another is the "It might seem like the judge is wrong, but due to some incredible nuance of the law (that is way over your head), he surely must be right" routine. Another is the "Rule X might read a certain way to you, but the law gives Judge Y discretion to rule however he wants to" gambit.

Here are a couple of specific examples of what the DK legal crowd was throwing at me:

(1) I stated a very simple principal of law: That when one party files a properly supported motion for summary judgment and the other party does not respond and offers no evidence, the movant's evidence is considered uncontroverted and summary judgment must be granted. This scenario happened three times in my case, but Shelby County judges J. Michael Joiner and G. Dan Reeves denied summary judgment, favoring corrupt opposing attorney Bill Swatek (and his family ties to Karl Rove) and causing a case to go to trial when it could not, by law, go to trial. The DK legal squadron pulled out all of the stops in trying to convince me I didn't know what I was talking about. One commenter even suggested that my affidavit, and that of my wife, must have been immaterial to the case, that we had said something like, "We were born on planet Earth." Please. Our affidavits were about matters central to the case, that our troublesome neighbor had indeed trespassed on our property as had been charged. Finally, I cited Alabama case law, Voyager Guar. Ins. Co., Inc. v. Brown, 631 So. 2d 848 (Ala., 1993), which states that when the movant presents a properly supported motion for summary judgment and the nonmovant presents no evidence to counter it, summary judgment must be granted. When I proved that I could cite case law, the DK crowd seemed convinced. One commenter said, "Oh, you mean a 'properly supported' motion for summary judgment. That's the key term.'" I had said it was properly supported all along.

(2) I stated another very simple principal of law: When a party tries to amend his complaint roughly 65 days after the deadline for doing so, and he fails to seek leave of court, the amendment cannot possibly be allowed. This is not complicated stuff, folks. But the DK crowd went into all kinds of contortions to convince me I was clueless. One stated that the request for leave of court was "implicit" when the late amendment was filed. Well, this fellow (I'm assuming it's a fellow) evidently is not familiar with Alabama law. And I suspect the law is the same in all 50 states.

In Alabama, a family-law case styled Malone v. Malone, 854 So. 2d 109 (Ala. Civ. App, 2003) states the matter succinctly:

Rule 15(a), Ala. R. Civ. P., requires that a party desiring to amend a pleading less than 42 days before trial must seek leave of court; it states that leave will be granted "only upon a showing of good cause." The comments to Rule 15 indicate that the rule "REQUIRES A WRITTEN MOTION" seeking such leave and also requires notice to all parties. . . . The wife did not seek leave of the court and did not present any ground upon which the trial court may have allowed such late amendments. Therefore, the wife's purported amendments were never "allowed" and did not serve to inject additional claims.

So a party must file a written motion seeking leave of court; The request is not implicit in the filing of a late amendment. And notice must be given to all parties. If this is not done, the amendment cannot be granted.

This is exactly what happened in my case. Opposing attorney Bill Swatek never filed a written motion seeking leave of court, and notice was not given to all parties. But Bill Swatek has family ties (through his son Dax Swatek) to Karl Rove, so Bill Swatek does not have to follow the law in Alabama.

And this was not a minor procedural matter in my case. The late amendment added a claim of conversion, and that is the (bogus) charge upon which a jury made a finding of $1,525 against me. And that "judgment" was the basis of the unlawful "auction" of our house, which means my wife and I no longer own our own property free and clear. You see the kind of repercussions that can come from being before a corrupt judge.

I didn't have time or space to tell my whole story at Daily Kos. But when I finally got down to citing certain Alabama case law, it seemed to turn the tide of the conversation.

Did I rule the day? Heck, I don't know, and that's really not the point. But lawyers sure can be dogged in defending their profession against a "commoner" who dares to question the integrity of the process. It sure is interesting that some of the lame arguments I've heard from local lawyers turn up when the discussion becomes national (or even international) in scope at DK.

* I'm not through with the issue of judicial corruption and the self-policing nature of the legal profession, which I think fuels much of the sleaze that takes place in our courtrooms. We will deal with these subjects again, both here and at Daily Kos.

I'm Not Alone on the Blogger Firing Lines

Turns out I'm not the only one getting "fired" these days simply for writing a blog, on my own time.

It also happened recently to Michael J. McCarthy, a vice president at Citigroup. Bloomberg.com reports that the 35-year-old stock trader was fired after his employer realized he is "Large," the man behind the blog at http://www.takeareport.com/.

McCarthy's site, Bloomberg reports, "showcases women who manage to look insufficiently dressed, along with bawdy commentary on celebrities." Bloomberg further states the site "consists of remarks about homosexuals, excretory functions, concert reviews, and college football picks."

Lindsay Beyerstein has an insightful post about McCarthy's firing at her Majikthise blog and compares his situation to what happened to me at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB):

I've seen an employer elide blogging and surfing to justify a firing before. The University of Alabama at Birmingham used the same studied vagueness against former university editor Roger Shuler.

Here's how the HR language game works: Implying that an employee regularly blogged at work suggests that he's a chronic goof off who might well deserve the boot for slacking. Whereas, if you say you fired a longtime salaried employee for a little web surfing, people are going to ask questions.

Citigroup cited "behavior that violated the firm's code of conduct and policies" in firing McCarthy, Beyerstein reports. The firing came even though McCarthy never blogged about his employer, mentioned Citigroup, or identified himself.

Bloomberg's anonymous source says McCarthy did not blog at work, but he was accused of "accessing and promoting the blog on company time," whatever that means.

Obviously this hits close to home here at Legal Schnauzer. Let's compare and contrast McGarthy's situation with mine:

* McCarthy writes under a pseudonym; I write under my own name;

* McCarthy's blog, according to Beyerstein, is "a bunch of locker-room babble. It's sexist, homophobic, and generally crude." My blog is about judicial corruption and the promotion of honest government;

* One reader says McCarthy's blog is "funny as hell;" mine is not.

* McCarthy did not blog at work; neither did I;

* McCarthy is alleged to have "accessed and promoted" his blog at work, although it is unclear what those terms mean; UAB's own investigation showed I never accessed my blog at work, and I never promoted my blog at work. I would say maybe five or six of my closest coworkers knew about my blog, and it wasn't because of any promotion on my part.

* Speaking of promotion, McCarthy must be pretty darn good at it. Bloomberg reports that his blog averages 60,000 page views a day. Man, I guess crudity pays off. If I get 1,000 page views, it's a banner day.

* Here's something I suspect McCarthy and I have in common: We both got fired because we've been relatively successful at achieving our blogging goals. McCarthy, it appears, set out to be funny and attract an audience. Evidently he did both quite well, and that probably made him a target. If he had 500 page views a day, I imagine he would still be at Citigroup. I set out to expose corruption in Alabama state courts, tie it to national justice issues, and educate people about what, all too often, really goes on in the legal process. The goal was to write truthfully and with transparency (under my real name, citing numerous public documents as evidence). I accomplished my goal well enough that Congress and a number of prominent bloggers picked up on what I was doing--and that made me a target. If I had been writing a bunch of baloney that wasn't supported by fact or law, nobody would have cared--and I would still be working at UAB.

The message seems to be this: If you are going to blog, don't do it well and don't attract attention.

While the subject matter of McCarthy's blog apparently is crude, it's hard to see how he violated any company policies. Beyerstein puts things into context:

Setting aside the particulars of the McCarthy case, there's still a larger issue here. It is completely unreasonable for employers to be able to fire employees for blogging on their own time. Blogging on company time shouldn't be judged more harshly than playing solitaire, making paper clip sculptures, or using an office phone to call the babysitter. Obviously, people deserve to get fired for overdoing these things--but we all know that minor infractions are the norm, even for diligent employees.

Currently, non-work related internet access is management's "get rid of employee free" card. The rules tend to be vague and therefore to give management vast discretion. I often wonder whether they want employees to do a certain amount of surfing at work so they have a pretext to fire them at will.

There's a fiction that employers provide internet strictly for work and that any non-work-related use is dereliction of duty. At this point, most workplaces treat internet access for salaried employees as an amenity as well as a tool, like an office phone. Employers install phones in every cube, even for employees who have no phone-related duties. Despite pretenses to the contrary, the web now serves a similar function for the average office worker.

Obviously, employers have the right to set whatever rules they want for the use of company resources including the web and the phone. If a company wants to ban all web surfing at work, they're entitled to do so. What's unacceptable is treating the internet as an amenity to be used with discretion until you want to fire someone and then selectively enforcing the rules to get rid of them.

In my case, "surfing" the Web at work was not an issue. It is undisputed that part of my job description was to use the Web to research news and issues connected to Alabama and higher education. This included keeping up with the Don Siegelman case, which was the biggest story in Alabama over a two-year period and included a former ex officio president of the University of Alabama Board of Trustees (Siegelman) and UAB's most famous alumnus (Richard Scrushy).

Evidence indicates that someone with ties to the Alabama Republican Party grew uncomfortable with the truths presented in my blog, discovered I worked for a state institution, and took steps to get me fired. Under that kind of pressure, UAB suddenly decided that my actions--which were part of my job description--were non-work related activity. That led to me being fired--for doing my job.

Here's a curious thought: What if McCarthy and I had essentially swapped subject matter and blogging methods? What if I had blogged anonymously, making various crude statements about women, homosexuals, excretory functions etc.? What if McCarthy had, for some reason, decided to blog under his own name about the Don Siegelman case?

If I had chosen McCarthy's subject matter, I probably wouldn't have attracted anywhere near his audience. For one, I'm probably not as funny as he is. And two, I wouldn't have promoted my blog the way he evidently did. I probably wouldn't have attracted much attention and nobody would have figured out who I was.

If McCarthy had chosen my subject matter, it's safe to say his daily page views would have dropped dramatically. And no matter how well he might have written about the Siegelman case, and general Republican corruption in Alabama, he would have been doing it at a distance. He would not have been able to present the kind of first-person "citizen journalism" that I have presented. McCarthy would have been limited to sharing his opinions, which might have mildly ticked off a few GOPers in Alabama, but it's unlikely they would have gone after his job.

Makes me wish McCarthy and I had known each other when I started Legal Schnauzer in June 2007. He and I could have "switched hats," if you will. And the result? I would still be working at UAB, and he would still be working at Citigroup.

I agree with Beyerstein that, no matter how crude McCarthy's blog was, Citigroup made a bad decision.

But I have to give Citigroup credit for one thing. It seems the company has been fairly upfront about its actions. UAB, on the other hand, has been conducting a fairly elaborate coverup for quite some time. For example, UAB President Carol Garrison issued a public statement saying my termination had nothing to do with politics and was based solely on job performance. But Garrison's own grievance committee found that I shouldn't have been fired at all. And the following audiotape, featuring yours truly and UAB Employee Relations Director Anita Bonasera, begs to differ with the notion that politics and blogging were not involved in my case:

Blogging and Siegelman Audio

UAB: Liars, Tramps, and Thieves?

We've already established that several folks on the upper tier of the UAB food chain have made false statements about my termination at the university.

We also have hinted that the university has been, and probably still is, awash in research fraud, which federal law-enforcement types in Birmingham have essentially helped cover up. Much more is coming on that topic in the days ahead.

Now we learn that UAB has resorted to what amounts to thievery regarding my termination.

Lying, cheating, and stealing are three of the biggies on any cavalcade of wrongdoing. Looks like the folks on the Southside are going for quite a trifecta.

How did thievery enter into the equation? When I was placed on administrative leave on May 7, UAB human-resources types decided it was imperative that I be treated like a criminal. They would not allow me to return to my desk to gather my personal belongings. An HR rep went to my desk to retrieve my backpack, newspaper etc., and a few days later I picked up three boxes of my stuff and took them home. When I went through the boxes, I quickly saw that a number of my personal items were not there.

I immediately notified UAB that some of my stuff was missing and asked for it to be returned. I also noted that since UAB's own employee grievance committee had found I had been wrongfully terminated, I should be allowed to return to my desk and retrieve personal items myself.

The university took roughly three months stalling, I mean searching, for these items. And it never has responded to my request to get my own things.

Finally last week, Employee Relations rep Bobby Barnes informed me that UAB would send me several items in a package. But some of my personal items, Barnes said, could not be located.

Guess what those items were? I had a folder in my desk at work titled "Lawsuit," which included copies of some papers, plus three audiotapes, connected to the lawsuit in Shelby County, Alabama, that I've been fighting for roughly eight years now. This, of course, is the lawsuit that caused me to start Legal Schnauzer in the first place.

I have multiple copies of these papers and audiotapes, stored in other locations, but I figured it would be wise to have one in my desk at work. (After all, in Alabama, you never know when some right winger is going to try to burn down your house.)

The missing items just happen to be those three audiotapes. Hmmm. Wonder who was interested in those, and who currently has them in their possession?

Thinking about this reminded me of a curious moment in my grievance hearing, the one that ended with the employee committee finding that I had been wrongfully terminated and should be reinstated.

Pam Powell, my former supervisor, said at one point that after I had been placed on administrative leave or terminated, someone ("we," she called them) had found personal legal documents I had stored on my work computer. Powell didn't say who "we" was, but her statement raises several issues:

* The documents Powell referred to were stored in a personal folder on my desktop, a folder our departmental IT guy, Dan Willson, had set up for me and my coworkers. I had never asked for it, but Dan said it was there for my personal use. Mostly, I used it to store items that didn't fit on our server. Our server contains folders by various projects, and when I discovered something that was worth keeping but didn't fit a specific project, I would store it on my desktop. If a coworker sent me a joke or funny/interesting story, I would store it on my desktop personal folder. And I kept copies of some legal documents there. I was not violating any UAB policy; our own IT guy had set this up, without me asking for it, for my personal use. Here's one of many ironies in this whole situation: On one hand, UAB now claims it has strict policies about use of university equipment for personal reasons. On the other hand, UAB encourages the use of university equipment for personal reasons. We all had folders on our desktop for our personal use. People have tons of personal music and photos stored on UAB computers. Can we say "mixed messages?"

* The issue of items stored on my desktop was never mentioned in any of the "reasons" UAB cited for my termination. I wasn't violating UAB policy, and UAB had never claimed that I was. But Powell made this off-handed comment about a search of my desktop in the grievance hearing. Wonder why that was?

* Based on its own statements, UAB had no reason to go through my desktop in an investigative sort of way. The university had alleged that I was using the Web to "research" my blog, even though keeping up with Alabama news is part of my job description and UAB's own investigation showed that I had never written anything for my blog on university time or equipment. The issue of storing stuff on my desktop was not an issue in my termination. But Powell's comment indicates someone ("we," in her words) went through my computer with the proverbial fine-toothed comb. (By the way, I wasn't trying to hide these legal documents. I had been told this desktop folder was for my personal use, and these were copies that I had for safekeeping, so I had nothing to hide. But in what you might call a "hierarchy" of folders, they were three or four levels down in this personal folder. If anybody had asked to see them, I could have shown them in a matter of seconds. But without my guidance, somebody would have had to do some pretty serious searching to find them.)

So we've learned two things:

1. UAB "lost" audiotapes that were stored in a hard-copy folder related to legal matters;

2. "We" went to quite a bit of trouble to scour my desktop, even though anything on my desktop was not an issue in my termination.

What does this tell us?

It tells me that someone was awfully interested in anything law-related on my computer or in my desk. And given that neither of these items above were connected to issues raised in my termination, it tells me that "we" included someone from outside of UAB.

Did "we," perhaps someone from federal law enforcement, want me fired so they could go in and grab my hard drive and see if I had stored something "important" there. (If that was their hope, I can tell you they were disappointed. I have some incriminating information against a certain federal law enforcement official, but it wasn't on my work computer. Sorry, Alice.)

The bottom line? All of this tells me that UAB did not act alone in cheating me out of my job.

The Legal Schnauzer Book Club

We might not have the pull of the Oprah Book Club. But by golly, we think it's our duty to alert readers whenever a particularly compelling read comes along.

So we will start with two books that have attracted our attention recently.

One is Machiavelli's Shadow, by Paul Alexander, which we already have discussed here and here. This is the most complete account we have so far of Karl Rove's involvement in the Bush Justice Department scandal. And it provides details about the tactics Rove developed in Texas and then used in his "second home," Alabama. The book devotes an entire chapter to the Don Siegelman case, so it should be of particular interest to folks in the Deep South.

FireDogLake has an excellent overview of Machiavelli's Shadow, along with an in-depth online chat with Alexander:

* FDL Book Salon Welcomes Paul Alexander

The second book, just out, is Wrecking Crew, by Thomas Frank, a Wall Street Journal columnist and author of the acclaimed What's the Matter With Kansas.

Wrecking Crew is an in-depth analysis of the corruption that has been at the heart of conservative rule for almost 30 years now. A number of excellent interviews with Frank are on the Web:

* Salon--"Thomas Frank on the Bush Administration: Sabotage by Design"

* BuzzFlash--"Thomas Frank's Wrecking Crew Explains the Right's All-Out Assault on Good Government"

* PBS--"Bill Moyers Talks With Thomas Frank"

* Democracy Now--"Thomas Frank on How Conservatives Rule"

Frank makes a compelling argument that modern conservatives are almost inherently corrupt and miserable at governance. An excerpt from Wrecking Crew is in the current issue of Harper's magazine (for subscribers only online, for now), and I highly recommend it.

A few key points from the Harper's piece:

* Journalists tend to present Jack Abramoff as "one bad apple" in the conservative batch. But Frank disagrees. "Fantastic misgovernment is not an accident, or the work of a few bad individuals," he writes. "It is a consequence of the triumph of a particular philosophy of government."

* Even though conservatives have ruled America for most of the past 25 to 30 years, they have a peculiar "sense of their own exclusion." This predicates everything they do, Frank writes.

* Some of us, me included, might think that GOP corruption is a fairly recent phenomenon that came with the George W. Bush administration. Nope, Frank says. He traces it to the early days of the Reagan era, particularly when a young Jack Abramoff took over the College Republicans in 1981.

* Frank points out the modern conservatives' penchant for bullying. Frank calls it a "swaggering truculence." (As someone who has been the target of conservative bullying for eight-plus years, this one really made my Schnauzer ears stand up.)

If I ruled the world, no American would be allowed to vote without having read these two books prior to the November election. (And I would throw in Kevin Phillips' The Politics of Rich and Poor as more required reading.) I think they are that important.

With Record Profits in the Bank, ExxonMobil Should Thank the Alabama Supreme Court

When ExxonMobil recently posted the largest quarterly profit in U.S. corporate history, many people probably cussed under their breath as they filled their tanks with almost $4-per-gallon gasoline.

But the story has deeper meaning for folks in Alabama who have been paying attention to our state courts over the past 10 months or so. One of those folks is our friend Robby Scott Hill at his Revolution Magazine blog.

Hill notes that ExxonMobil made those monstrous profits with the help of Alabama's Supreme Court, which overturned most of a $3.6 billion fraud verdict against the oil giant. Hill has a law degree and used to work in the State Lands Division, so the ExxonMobil ruling hit close to home for him. In fact, Hill used to help administer the leases that ExxonMobil so blatantly butchered.

Here's Hill's take on the ExxonMobil heist:

Headline: Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker and His Staff Attorneys/USAF Intelligence Officers John Eidsmoe & Henry Fowler Look Like Village Idiots After ExxonMobil Once Again Breaks It’s Own Record for Profits

August 1, 2008 by Robby Scott Hill

Parker, Eidsmoe and Fowler wrote the 120+ page decision that completely ignored the ore tenus presumption, overturned decades of State Supreme Court decisions in Alabama and shafted the taxpayer out of 3.6 BILLION dollars in punitive damages awarded at trial court.

As the Legal Research Assistant in the State Lands Division of the Department of Conservation & Natural Resources where my co-workers and I administered the offshore oil leases including ExxonMobil’s, my rectum feels especially sore this evening.

Gee thanks guys. The birds and the bees, the flowers and the trees and all the fishes in the deep blue sea thank you all for rewarding ExxonMobil for being such a poor steward of our Natural Resources.

Read that first paragraph closely. Hill isn't saying that the Alabama Supreme Court just made a funky 8-1 decision. (The court's lone Democrat, Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb, issued the lone dissent.) No, he is saying the Supremes violated fundamental procedural rules and years of legal precedent. And Hill doesn't say it, but the Supremes certainly used the U.S. mails in furtherance of their scheme, which makes their actions a federal crime--honest-services mail fraud.

Of course, you won't see anyone in the Bush Justice Department investigating and prosecuting this case. They'll be too busy patting the ExxonMobil gang on the back.

But here is the big picture: Karl Rove and his Alabama henchman, Bill Canary, combined with millions of dollars from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the 1990s to turn Alabama's appellate courts into a GOP playground. This is what the Republican "tort reform" campaign--which would better be called a war on plaintiff's attorneys and consumers--has wrought.

Karl Rove, Bill Canary, and the U.S. C of C got their way. ExxonMobil got its monster profits.

Citizens of Alabama got the shaft.

Fun With Whacky Headlines

One of the lessons from journalism school that has stuck with me is this: Never try to get cute with a headline about a tragedy.

I recall one from class, on a story about a salt-mine disaster, that went something like this:

A Dozen Miners Neatly Seasoned with 20 Tons of Salt

Ouch!

Even if you follow the "tragedy" rule, the headline trade offers numerous opportunities to screw up--often with hilarious results.

We deal with serious stuff much of the time here at Legal Schnauzer, so we could use a chance to lighten up. And what better way than to honor some of the best (actual) headlines from the past year or so. Thanks to an alert reader on the Mississippi coast for turning us on to these:

* Crack Found on Governor's Daughter [Imagine that!]

* Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says [No, really?]

* Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers [Now that's taking things a bit far!]

* Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over [What a guy!]

* Miners Refuse to Work after Death [No-good-for-nothing' lazy so-and-so!]

* Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant [See if that works any better than a fair trial!]

* War Dims Hope for Peace [I can see where it might have that effect!]

* If Strike Isn't Settled Quickly, It May Last Awhile [You think?]

* Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures [Who would have thought!]

* Enfield (London) Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide [They may be on to something!]

* Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges [You mean there's something stronger than duct tape?]

* Man Struck By Lightning: Faces Battery Charge [He probably IS the battery charge!]

* New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group [Weren't they fat enough?!]

* Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Spacecraft [That's what he gets for eating those beans!]

* Kids Make Nutritious Snacks [Taste like chicken?]

* Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half [Chainsaw Massacre all over again!]

* Hospitals are Sued by 7 Foot Doctors [Boy, are they tall!]

* Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead

Did McCain Engage in Abramoff Coverup?

An intriguing piece at MarketWatch asks that question and provides substantial evidence that the answer is yes.

Consider these passages:

MCCAIN DIDN'T INVESTIGATE REPUBLICAN COLLEAGUES FOR THEIR ILLEGAL OR UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR

John McCain's Indian Affairs Committee hearings failed to go after federal lawmakers who benefited from Jack Abramoff's lobbying. McCain said his Indian Affairs "committee continues to examine all the financial angles of where the $82 million ended up, as well as other political and charitable contributions the tribes made at Abramoff's request." However, McCain "reiterated that he was following the money trail, not the legislative actions taken by Members of Congress," saying, "We stop when we find out where the money went." [Roll Call, 3/10/05]


MCCAIN ACKNOWLEDGED THAT SOME LEGISLATORS HAD COMMITTED "WRONGDOING", BUT REFUSED TO INVESTIGATE

Asked if he believed that some legislators had committed a crime related the Abramoff scandal, Senator McCain said, "There's strong evidence that there was significant wrongdoing, but I'm not a judge or jury." McCain emphasized though that he would not investigate his colleagues in Congress, declaring: "I will not [investigate members of Congress], because I'm a chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee. This was brought to our--this whole thing started--was brought to us--attention by some disgruntled tribal council members in a small tribe in Louisiana, and we took it as far as we thought was our responsibility, which is where the money ends up." [NBC, Meet the Press, 12/4/05]

And who was one of the biggest beneficiaries of McCain's willingness to look the other way? Why, none other than Alabama Governor Bob Riley.

MCCAIN WITHHELD CONTROVERSIAL EMAIL IMPLICATING AL GOV. BOB RILEY DURING RILEY'S RE-ELECTION CAMPAIGN

As chair of a committee conducting an investigation on Abramoff, McCain had access to an incriminating email involving Alabama Governor Bob Riley. Rather than including the email--which detailed what Abramoff wanted Riley to do in return for the contributions Abramoff's tribal clients directed toward his campaign--in his report on the Abramoff scandal, McCain chose to withhold it, thus shielding Riley from becoming implicated in the scandal as he was waging a bitter re-election campaign. [Huffington Post, 2/25/08]

Does Conservative Rhetoric Drive Violent Behavior?

Liberals have been the targets of recent deadly shootings in Arkansas and Tennessee. And that has caused a number of folks in the blogosphere to ask: Is extreme rhetoric from conservative commentators driving some of their followers to act in violent ways?

In Tennessee, a man named Jim David Adkisson, who apparently was depressed and out of a job, targeted a Unitarian Church that was known for its liberal leanings.

In Arkansas, a man entered the state Democratic Party headquarters and shot and killed chairman Bill Gwatney. Evidence suggests the killer specifically targeted Gwatney.

Is political rhetoric out of control? Should liberals be concerned about possible violence or other wrongdoing at the hands of conservatives?

Glynn Wilson, at Locust Fork World News & Journal, has an incisive look at those questions, including a look at a number of news reports and opinion pieces from around the country.

McCain Plunges Into Abramoff Territory

Controversy continues to simmer over John McCain's decision to sign off on a fundraiser in Atlanta involving former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed.

The event is scheduled for Monday, even though Reed has connections to the corruption scandal involving disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution provides an overview of the issues behind the event.

The story resonates in Alabama because it has been widely reported that Abramoff and Reed helped funnel millions of Mississippi Choctaw gambling dollars into our state to help Bob Riley beat Don Siegelman in the 2002 gubernatorial election.

Congress stepped into the fray today when Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) hosted a media conference call to discuss connections between Reed and Abramoff. Lindsay Beyerstein has a report about the conference call at her Majikthise blog. Waxman called on McCain to cancel the event and return any money he has received from Reed.

From Beyerstein's report:

In his prepared statement, Waxman reviewed the highlights of the sprawling email record linking Reed and Abramoff as "conspirators in a money laundering scheme."

The Chairman's message was clear: Reed wasn't just some hapless subcontractor who got paid with Abramoff's dirty money, he was an integral partner a scheme to bilk Indian tribes out of millions of dollars.

Beyerstein also provides details about the Abramoff/Reed connection to Alabama:

Waxman's committee did its own Abramoff investigation focusing on the lobbyist's contacts with the White House, so he has his Abramology down pat.

In one notorious episode in their long and profitable collaboration, Abramoff hired Reed to help defeat a 1999 lottery ballot initiative in Alabama. Reed's job was to drum up evangelical opposition to the measure. The operation was bankrolled by the Mississippi Choctaw Indians with a view to quashing potential competition for their casino.

Obviously, the former head of the Christian Coalition couldn't openly accept gambling money as part of a scheme to force Alabamians to patronize casinos. So, Abramoff arranged to launder the money through various think tanks and non-profits.

Abramoff would give the money to an innocuous-sounding intermediary and the intermediary pass it on to Reed. Millions of dollars flowed from Indian casinos into Ralph Reed's pocket and Republican campaign coffers.

Sometimes, Reed's money came through front companies owned on paper by Abramoff's chief accomplice, Michael Scanlon, Waxman said.

Michael Scanlon, of course, worked for current Alabama Governor Bob Riley. Here are Beyerstein's thoughts about Scanlon's role in the Abramoff scheme:

I think this is a key point because the Scanlon front companies were the linchpin of the Gimme Five kickback scandal.

Abramoff and Scanlon charged the tribes vastly inflated fees, "hired" Scanlon's company to do nothing, and split the take between them.

Trying to conceal the source of legit money for purely political reasons isn't money laundering. Abramoff was a legitimate Choctaw lobbyist who paid Reed to do something sleazy and underhanded. Still, Reed did real work riling up "the wackos," as Scanlon famously called the evangelical base.

However, trying to conceal the source of money obtained through a crime is money laundering. Scanlon's companies existed as receptacles for funds obtained by deceit. The secrecy was concealing the fact that Abramoff and Scanlon were routing this money to their friend Reed.

The Reed fundraiser raises serious ethical issues for McCain, Waxman said:

John McCain's decision to attend Ralph Reed's event raised eyebrows. McCain led the Senate Indian Affairs Committee's investigation of Abramoff's dealings with the tribes.

"McCain likes to brag that he took on Jack Abramoff," Waxman said.

Waxman noted that despite Reed's pivotal role in the Indian gaming scandal, McCain didn't even call Reed to testify at the Indian Affairs hearing. [Schnauzer note: It also has been reported that McCain ignored evidence that linked Bob Riley to Abramoff.]

One reporter asked Waxman about the tens of thousands of documents McCain assembled in the course of his investigation but refuses to release to the public.

Waxman told us that John McCain has documents that even the House Oversight Committee couldn't get.

Brad Woodhouse of the DNC speculated that McCain embarked on his Abramoff investigation with one eye towards good government and "one eye towards protecting [certain] people." He didn't elaborate on who those people were.

Waxman disagreed. He said he was prepared to give McCain the benefit of the doubt. However, Waxman continued, given that McCain was so deeply immersed in the Abramoff scandal, he knows exactly how corrupt Ralph Reed really is.

Could Obama Give Us a "First Schnauzer?"

I can think of many reasons to hope that Barack Obama wins the presidential election in November.

But here is maybe the best reason of all: If Obama wins, the country could have a "First Schnauzer" in the White House.

Obama has promised his two daughters that, once the campaign is over, they can get a dog. The Obama girls have allergies, so the American Kennel Club has offered to help by suggesting several hypoallergenic breeds. The AKC is even conducting a survey, at presidentialpup.com, where folks can vote on their favorite dog for the Obama family. You have until August 19 vote, and you can cast your ballot at this Web page.

The candidates are the bichon frise, Chinese crested, miniature schnauzer, poodle, and soft-coated Wheaten terrier.

Now, management here at Legal Schnauzer is fond of all of these dogs, not to mention most other breeds and, of course, the wonderful "Heinz 57" mixed breed. But you can probably guess which dog will get our vote.

We even know about the challenge of getting a pet when you have an allergy sufferer in the family. One reason we focused on a schnauzer is that my wife has allergies, and the schnauzer features limited shedding. (Actually, my wife's allergies must not be too bad when it comes to animals; she has no problems now with our Siamese cats.) Getting our miniature schnauzer Murphy (1993-2004) was the best decision we've ever made.

I can think of nothing better to signal that our nation is recovering from the disastrous Bush years than to have a schnauzer in the White House. Nothing can give a house a can-do spirit quite like the presence of a miniature schnauzer. And having a schnauzer show up regularly with the First Family on television would do wonders for our nation's battered psyche.

Here's how the AKC describes the schnauzer:

The Miniature Schnauzer
The Miniature Schnauzer — Schnauzers also come in three sizes (although unlike the Poodle, each size is considered a separate breed). The Miniature Schnauzer is the most popular of the three breeds and is an active, alert dog who loves to be the center of the household. This versatile breed makes a sturdy playmate for kids, is highly intelligent and an excellent watchdog (qualifying him for Secret Service duties perhaps?). Additional information for those considering a Miniature Schnauzer can be found online at http://www.akc.org/breeds/miniature_schnauzer/puppy.cfm

That part about being the center of the household is right on target. And talk about security. They would be perfect for Secret Service duty.

Please go to the AKC site and vote for the candidate of your choice.

Another Prisoner's Voice is Heard

Former Mississippi state judge Wes Teel is not the only federal prisoner in Atlanta whose voice is being heard.

Gregory Clarke, pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Birmingham, is serving a 21-month sentence for tax evasion involving $36,000. In a column titled "Bush-Whacked: The Untold Story" in the Birmingham Times, Clarke takes us on a journey that led from one of Birmingham's most prominent inner-city churches to a federal prison.

It is a compelling read, and again raises serious questions about the conduct of the Bush Justice Department, particularly Alice Martin, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama.

I don't know a lot about the facts of Clarke's case. But he makes a strong case for the idea that he was the victim of a political prosecution, driven largely by his friendship with former Governor Don Siegelman:

I was Bush-Whacked! But why? Could it be as simple as these “unreported facts” that I gave to the Birmingham News:

• Clarke prayed the inaugural prayer for Governor Siegleman at the Governor’s Manor, 1999

• Clarke was appointed to the Governor’s Commission for Community Service by Governor Siegleman

• Clarke’s Choir was featured on the Governor’s State of Alabama Christmas Cards for performing in the Rotunda of the Governor’s Mansion

• Governor Siegleman and Family often visited New Hope Baptist Church even when he was not campaigning

• Clarke has personally and financially supported Don Siegleman in his political campaigns for Attorney General, Lt. Governor and Governor (twice)

• Clarke was asked by Lt. Governor Siegleman to open the Senate Session with prayer

• Pastor Clarke personally wrote a support letter to Judge Fuller on Gov. Siegleman’s behalf, and financially contributed to the Siegleman’s Legal Defense Fund

• Clarke and Gov. Siegleman maintained communication via mail while Siegleman was in custody in Oakdale, Louisiana

• Clarke and Siegleman are friends.

Clarke follows up with this alarming scenario, which certainly raises questions about Alice Martin and her motives:

Yes, I remember standing at the top of the stairway after the inaugural prayer, taking pictures with the Governor and his wife. The official photographer of that event was another strong Democratic Leader, Commissioner Chris McNair. Hmmmm! Who would have imagined that two of the four people in the picture and the person taking the picture would all be indicted by the same U.S. Attorney, Alice Martin.

I was a “three-fer”: 1. A strong and influential Democratic Supporter; 2. A Black Church Leader provides inroads for the IRS; 3. A Non-Profit Administrator that brought a lot of government money to the other side of the tracks. And it couldn’t hurt to prosecute me for taxes because it would scare away other clergy supporters so they wouldn’t support me like they did Richard Scrushy. Wow . . . Bush-Whacked and Martinized!

Clarke concludes with a passionate plea for his country to look skeptically at Alice Martin and country. As someone who has lost his job, almost certainly because of pressure connected to Alice Martin, I put serious stock in Clarke's words. I hope the public will listen to what he has to say:

Someone has to tell the story, that the biggest culprit of “Identify Theft” is the U.S. Government using unjust prosecutions and relentless persecutions to steal a person’s integrity, influence and income. Someone has to tell the story that the biggest terrorist threat to America is systematic elimination of political adversaries, community leaders and pastors. The perpetrators are masters of illusion and hide behind “executive privilege”, “judicial conspiracy” and “presidential pardons.” At the same time, victims like me, not as well known as Governor Siegelman or Richard Scrushy, are well “spent.” Some have or will spend time in prison, some spend most, if not all, of their life’s savings for legal defense and appeals, but we all will spend the rest of our lives trying to regain passion to do what we once did, for a country we loved. Someone has to tell the story.

More on the Ordeal of Wes Teel

I was pleased to receive a strong response to our recent post, "Message From a Political Prisoner," about former Mississippi state judge Wes Teel.

I was even more pleased to learn that voices far bigger than mine are bringing the Wes Teel story to public attention. Teel is one of three people wrongfully convicted in the Paul Minor case.

Here is a comment Scott Horton, of Harper's magazine, left at Mark Crispin Miller's News From Underground blog:

Mark,
Wes Teel is sitting in a prison in Atlanta, GA, today. He is a political prisoner, one of a handful of political prisoners serving time because of the machinations of Karl Rove. I spent several months researching his case, and traveled down to Mississippi repeatedly to interview those involved with it.

Right now, the federal prosecutors involved are busy denying that they had anything to do with it. That's because they know it was a political hit job designed to hit Democratic fundraising for judicial races in Mississippi. In fact, the U.S. attorney who brought the case, Dunn Lampton, was found guilty of far more serious election fund raising violations than were charged against Teel--I pulled the data from the FEC files.

The difference is that, with respect to Republican violations, the matters are handled as civil and swept under the carpet, and with Democrats they are charged as corruption.

The other outrage in this case goes to the federal judge who tried the case, and who changed his rulings between the two trials in a transparent effort to insure a conviction. Why? It surely wasn't coincidence that, through this entire period, the Bush Justice Department was dangling the prospect of a promotion to the court of appeals in front of this judge--a promotion which they then dropped when the case was over.

I discuss all of this in the current broadcast of "Ring of Fire," in an interview with Sam Seder subbing for RFK Jr.

Scott

The Ring of Fire interview can be heard here.

Also, Horton discussed the Wes Teel case on the Peter B. Collins radio show. You can hear the interview by going here and scrolling down to the Wednesday, August 13, episode at Hour 2.

This is an excellent interview. Horton describes Teel as "collateral damage" in the Bush Justice Department's efforts to shut down Paul Minor, the biggest donor to the Democratic Party in Mississippi.

"Karl Rove and Haley Barbour decided they were going to have a 'Mississippi Makeover,'" Horton says. "So they went after the man who was the 'well' for Democratic funding in the state. They saw Paul Minor as a threat, and they wanted to cut off his funding. And the prosecution had the desired effect--contributions to the Democratic Party dropped off 75 percent in Mississippi from one election to the next."

Is McCain Reopening the Abramoff Can of Worms?

Republican presidential candidate John McCain plans to attend a fundraiser hosted by Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition who fell from grace during the Jack Abramoff scandal.

Sam Stein, of Huffington Post, says McCain's dalliance with Reed could open an ugly can of worms for the Arizona senator--and those worms could have their roots in Alabama.

Reed helped Abramoff shut down casino games in Alabama, an effort designed to protect the Mississippi Choctaws, an Abramoff client. With Reed's help, the Choctaws poured millions of dollars of support behind Bob Riley's gubernatorial campaign, and Riley unseated Democrat Don Siegelman in an exceptionally close race.

During a Senate investigation, McCain covered up these ties between Abramoff and Riley, causing some to wonder if McCain deserved his reputation as a "straight talker."

Stein says McCain's appearance with Reed might raise those questions even more.

Speaking of Riley, gambling, the Mississippi Choctaws, and religion, I recently discovered a 2007 Alabama lawsuit that shines interesting light on all of those topics.

We will be sharing those details soon.

Siegelman Will Raise Issues of Justice at Democratic National Convention

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman has accepted an invitation to speak at the Democratic National Convention, and that is good news for folks who care about justice-related issues.

Both presidential candidates have been mostly silent on the brewing scandal at the Bush Justice Department. But Siegelman's speech should ensure that the issue will receive at least some traction from the Democrats.

Let's hope Barack Obama and his advisors are listening carefully.

Investigative reporter Greg Privett of WHNT in Huntsville breaks the story, and here is his full report:

Don Siegelman will speak at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Siegelman tells NewsChannel 19 he has accepted an invitation extended by the Colorado Democratic delegation.

Targeted by Republican prosecutors, Alabama's former governor says he will talk, in particular, about the critical need to reveal former Bush White House adviser Karl Rove's role in politicizing the United States Department of Justice. The DOJ, under Bush, has gone after Democrats seven times more than Republicans.

In the Siegelman case, the prosecutors--then Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor followed by U.S. Attorneys Alice Martin and Leura Canary--along with Federal District Judge Mark Fuller have personal, political, or in some cases, business ties to the Bush administration.

Siegelman tells us it's not just his case he'll be talking about in Denver. The Governor explains he'll be advancing the cause to seek the truth about who hijacked the Justice Department.

Even though President Bush leaves office in January, Siegleman insists Congress must take action now. "I think you can have an election," Siegelman told NewsChannel 19 in an exclusive interview. "You can elect a president," he said. "And you can put in new people. But unless Congress speaks loudly on this issue and unless people are held accountable for their violations of the law, for their abuse of power and their misuse of the Department of Justice--using it as a political weapon, using it as a political tool which subverted peoples rights to a fair trial which jeopardized our democracy. If we don't speak loudly on this issue and hold people accountable, then those new U.S, Attorneys are not going to take this thing as seriously as they should. And it's likely to happen again. This country doesn't need that."

The House Judiciary Committee voted last month to cite Karl Rove for contempt of Congress. That's because Rove hid behind the White House and chose not to appear as ordered before the committee.

The full House must vote on charging Rove with contempt. And they must take action before they adjourn in September.

Governor Siegelman has started a website, ContemptForRove.com.

The Democratic Convention begins August 25.

ABA Head is Dealing Mostly in BS

The new president of the American Bar Association is from Birmingham, and at first glance, it seems we should be proud that one of our residents has attained such a lofty position.

But if you listen to Thomas Wells Jr.'s public statements--and if you have some personal experience with the real ailments of our justice system (as I, unfortunately, do)--you might see the new ABA head as a grandstander who isn't interested in making substantive change.

Our impression at Legal Schnauzer is that Wells, like many of his professional colleagues, is more about protecting the interests of lawyers and less about doing what's best for citizens--or our struggling republic.

This post is not meant as an across-the-board condemnation of lawyers. Heck, we spend much of our time in SchnauzerWorld standing up for lawyers--Don Siegelman, Paul Minor, Wes Teel, John Whitfield--who have been the victims of wrongful prosecutions. Two of the biggest heroes in SchnauzerWorld--Scott Horton and Jill Simpson--are lawyers. In fact, I think it's safe to say that we never will get to the bottom of the Bush Justice Department scandal without the smarts, courage, and toughness of noble and honest lawyers.

But there is a flip side to all of this. Siegelman & Co. were prosecuted mostly by dishonest lawyers. And the Bush DOJ was turned into a sewer mostly by dishonest lawyers.

On a personal note, my wife and I have seen our lives turned upside down by unscrupulous lawyers and judges.

So let's consider what H. Thomas "Tommy" Wells is saying as he takes over at the ABA. Wells, by the way, is a founding partner at the Birmingham firm of Maynard Cooper & Gale. He is the third Birmingham resident to head the ABA; the others were Henry Upson Sims (1929-30) and N. Lee Cooper (1996-97).

What issues is Wells pushing?

* He wants to promote diversity in the legal profession. No problem there. I'm sure that's a legitimate issue and needs to be addressed.

* He wants to make sure that everyone has access to fair representation, especially the indigent. That sounds good, but my impression is that legal services already exist for the poor and indigent. And the wealthy probably don't have a problem finding representation. But what about the middle class? Does anyone know how quickly a middle-class family can be wiped out when they have to pay a lawyer $400 an hour? I've yet to hear Wells or any other leader in the legal community raise this issue.

* He says he wants to reduce partisanship in judicial elections and promote the rule of law in our courts. These are both noble goals. But then Wells undercuts his argument by saying . . .

* He wants to preserve judicial independence and the legal profession's independence.

We already have an independent judiciary and a self-regulating legal profession--and both concepts have been colossal failures.

The truth, which Wells evidently does not want to face up to, is this: As long as judges essentially answer to no one and lawyers police themselves, we will continue to have a corrupt justice system.

Why was Don Siegelman wrongly prosecuted and sent to federal prison for nine months (pending appeal)? Why are Paul Minor, Wes Teel, and John Whitfield currently in federal prison while their appeals are heard?

There is no one answer to those questions. But here are two huge factors:

* Federal judges Mark Fuller (in Alabama) and Henry Wingate (in Mississippi) have lifetime appointments, and no one really oversees what they are doing. Oh, appellate courts can review what they did and perhaps overrule them. But do Fuller and Wingate fear any personal consequences for violating their oaths to uphold the law? Not really. Who's going to punish them for intentionally making unlawful rulings? No one.

* Federal prosecutors Leura Canary (in Alabama) and Dunn Lampton (in Mississippi) had no fear of personal consequences for handling cases where they had clear conflicts. Who's going to hold them accountable? Alberto Gonzalez? Michael Mukasey? Don't make me laugh.

And let's consider another problem that Wells apparently doesn't want to deal with: If you can pay the filing fee, you can sue anybody for anything--no matter how ridiculous--in the U.S. of A.

There is no standard you have to reach--no level of quality or legitimacy your case must attain--in order to file a lawsuit.

If you can find a lawyer who will file it, you're on. If you can figure out how to do it yourself, you're on. And you or your attorney are unlikely to face any consequences if your case happens to be totally bogus. The other party might get your bogus case dismissed fairly quickly. But they probably will have to hire an attorney and shell out at least $2,000 or $3,000 to defend it. You, meanwhile can walk away with the satisfaction of knowing you've caused someone a headache.

Even bogus cases, however, are not always dismissed when they should be, by law. I know that firsthand. Consider the following scenario:

You and I are acquaintances, and we pass each other at a party. I say hello, but you don't see me and pass without speaking. I decide my feelings are irreparably bruised, so I call an attorney friend who also happens to be my gambling buddy. "Hey," my attorney friend says, "let's sue that SOB for causing you emotional distress. We'll wring some cash out of his insurance company and use it to go on a trip to Vegas. And hey, I play golf all the time with one of the judges, and we can make sure he gets the case. He'll drag the case out so long that your unfriendly SOB will be begging us to take his cash. We might have to cut the judge in on the action, but it'll be worth it for a free trip to Vegas."

This all sounds good to me, so I sue you for hurting my feelings at the party--intentional infliction of emotional distress, my attorney calls it.

My fictional scenario might sound ridiculous. But trust me, it has more legal merit than the actual lawsuit that was filed against me. And I suspect my little fictional scenario--or scenarios very much like it--take place in our great country all the time. How do we all pay for this? Take a close look at your homeowner's insurance bill next time it comes in the mail.

What to do about this kind of corruption and waste? How do we truly repair our broken justice system?

Well, I'm not going to pretend that I'm qualified to answer such questions. But hey, this is my blog--and if you can't spout off on your own blog, where can you spout off? So here is our Legal Schnauzer Rx for what ails America's legal profession.

My general suggestion? Get regular citizens, non-lawyers, heavily involved in the process.

Lawyers have proven that they can't regulate themselves, so let's stop pretending that they can. Most bar associations scare lawyers about as much as Barney Fife scares the criminals of Mayberry. And most judicial inquiry boards scare judges about as much as Otis the Town Drunk scares the criminals of Mayberry.

We need citizen boards with the power to disbar, impeach, fine, spank, apply wedgies, and recommend indictments for wayward lawyers and judges. Obviously these boards will need to be trained by honest lawyers (perhaps law professors?). And they will need lawyers available for advisory purposes. But citizens need to be the ones who determine if lawyers and judges are following the law. And citizens need to be given the teeth to bite bad lawyers in the britches--until it hurts.

I nominate Jill Simpson and Scott Horton to implement the Schnauzer plan across the nation. (Assuming they agree with me, of course; but I know they are smart people, so surely they will agree with me.)

Here's the plan:

* Every county/jurisdiction in the country needs a citizen board that reviews lawsuits to determine if they have enough merit to move forward into the courts. If they do not, the lawyer/citizen who brings them is fined. A lawyer who brings too many of these is suspended;

* For lawsuits that do move forward, citizen boards will review the actions of judges and lawyers to make sure the law and procedure are being followed. These boards will have the authority to heap a serious hurtin' on wayward members of the legal profession;

* Similar boards need to be in place for criminal cases;

* Statewide boards will oversee appellate courts. Don't assume that the higher up you go in the justice system, the more likely it is that judges will be honest. Some of the biggest crooks of all sit on appellate courts. And in many states, they have this nasty little tool, a no-opinion affirmance, that allows them to sweep trial-court wrongdoing under the proverbial rug. All rules that allow no-opinion affirmances should be overturned;

* I'm sure I'm leaving out some good ideas, and I welcome input from readers. But here is the big kahuna of all possible remedies for our justice system--the one that sends many lawyers, and all judges, into spasms of fear. The remedy? Doing away with judicial immunity. Most Americans probably don't know this, but no matter how badly a judge cheats you in court, you cannot sue him for his judicial actions. This is because of the doctrine of judicial immunity. Folks like ABA President Tommy Wells will tell you that this doctrine is essential to maintaining an independent judiciary. Legal Schnauzers like me will tell you this doctrine is a license to cheat. And way too many judges take advantage of this license. A California-based organization called Jail 4 Judges is pushing a Judicial Accountability Initiative Law (J.A.I.L), which would take judicial immunity and show it the door--and I'm about 85 percent sure the JAILers are right. J.A.I.L is the brainchild of a fellow named Ron Branson, and he might be the most hated man in America among all judges and many lawyers. That means I think Ron Branson is a pretty good guy. We will discuss judicial immunity--a concept that has an intriguing history--and J.A.I.L. in an upcoming post. Like I say, I'm not sure J.A.I.L. is the best way to go. But Branson impresses me as a serious guy who has given serious thought to a serious problem. His voice needs to be heard, and his ideas should be on the table.

As for the ABA, I find it ironic that its new president is from Alabama. Perhaps the worst miscarriage of justice in a criminal case over the past few years is the Don Siegelman case. Where did it take place? Alabama. Perhaps the worst miscarriage of justice in a civil case over the past few years was the ExxonMobil ruling that overturned most of a $3.6 billion verdict against the oil giant and its record profits. Where did it take place? Alabama.

I wonder if many members of the ABA seriously think a lawyer from Alabama, particularly one from a mainline Birmingham firm, is likely to lead the legal profession into an Age of Enlightenment.

I doubt it.

An Inside Look at Corruption in BushWorld

We learned yesterday that U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey does not intend to seek prosecution of Justice Department employees who improperly used political litmus tests in hiring decisions.

(By the way, Mukasey received a much-deserved public spanking from The New York Times for his weasly speech yesterday before a meeting of the American Bar Association.)

Mukasey's attempt to cover up for loyal "Bushie" ideologues makes it even more important that citizens understand what really has been going at the DOJ. One of the most detailed accounts so far of corruption in the Bush Justice Department comes from reporter Joe Palazzolo at Legal Times.

The full Palazzolo piece is available to subscribers only, but we have some highlights that show how underlings like Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson were allowed to run amok.

Here is an overview of the report about hiring practices in the Bush DOJ:

The report places the blame for the political manipulation primarily on two top aides to then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales: Monica Goodling, the White House liaison, and D. Kyle Sampson, Gonzales' chief of staff. Both have been accused of breaking federal civil service laws and DOJ policy in using politics to vet applicants for career jobs. But the report does something else. It provides the most detailed account yet of the inner workings of the Justice Department during the period of January 2004 to April 2007, and it shows how the two young aides were assisted in their effort by more senior officials who either actively helped their cause—or quietly acquiesced.

The effort ranged from placing what they called "good Americans" in everything from temporary Main Justice slots to career judgeships in the federal immigration courts. More than 480 lawyers interviewed for career and political positions were tested with queries like, "Tell us about your political philosophy."

The Legal Times piece portrays Goodling as an expert power monger:

Monica Goodling knew how to work the system. In January 2006, just three months after coming aboard Attorney General Gonzales' staff as counsel, Goodling started rewriting the rules on the way DOJ lawyers were hired. First, she went to the Justice Man­agement Division and ordered the office to strip hiring authority from the deputy attorney general. When the division questioned whether the idea would put too much of a burden on the attorney general, Goodling volunteered a simple solution: craft an internal order allowing the attorney general to delegate the authority to his White House liaison and chief of staff. Weeks later, Goodling became the White House liaison. She and Sampson, who likewise reconfigured the hiring process for immigration judges, used their newfound powers to improperly seed DOJ career slots and short-term details with Republican lawyers and friends, according to the July 28 report by the Justice Department's inspector general and its Office of Professional Responsibility.

How easy was it for a "loyal Bushie" to be selected to an important position? Legal Times provides the details:

When Mark Metcalf, then a lawyer in the Civil Rights Division who had worked on the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign, expressed an interest in becoming an immigration judge, all it took was an e-mail. "Immigration judge?" wrote White House liaison Jan Williams in an August 2005 message to Sampson, then a counselor to Attorney General Ashcroft. Sampson responded the same day: "Ok." Not long after, Williams formally offered Metcalf a position in Orlando, Fla., without interviewing him. Neither she nor Sampson thought to tell Kevin Ohlson, the deputy director of the Executive Office of Immigration Review. From 2004 to 2007, in violation of civil service laws, Sampson, Williams, and Goodling hired about 40 immigration judges, most of whom came recommended by the White House or Republicans in Congress. Sampson told investigators he thought immigration judgeships were political positions. They are not.

When folks hear about a "Monica Problem," they tend to think of Bill Clinton. But the Bush DOJ had its own Monica Problem:

When Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) asked (Inspector General Glenn) Fine last week how it was that "a 33-year-old was able to rule the day," Fine answered, pointedly, that too few DOJ officials were willing to challenge Goodling—let alone supervise her. The report cites Justice officials for brooking Goodling's decisions to block "politically unreliable" career candidates from details in the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, the Office of Legal Policy, and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General." Senior officials in these offices sometimes objected to Goodling's decisions, and argued with her about the quality of these candidates," the report says. "Sometimes their appeals were successful, but more often they were not." On at least 10 occasions noted in the report, officials shrank from a fight with Goodling.

What's ahead in the investigation of the Bush DOJ:

It's said the healing starts when the wounding stops. There are two more inspector general reports to come—one on the firing of eight U.S. attorneys and another about politicization of the Civil Rights Divi­sion—but Justice officials, including Attorney General Michael Mukasey, maintain that the department is the better for the pain. . . .

Mukasey has limited the department's communication with the White House, reinforced merit system principles—particularly within the department's Honors Program, the subject of a June inspector general report—and pledged to adopt the recommendations in the most recent report, which include clarifying department policies on whether politics may play a role in the selection of career attorneys to fill temporary details.

Only one of the officials accused of violating civil service laws and DOJ policy—John Nowacki, who was deputy director of the EOUSA in the period covered by the report—remains at the department. "We are reviewing the report and considering what, if any, actions should be taken based upon the findings contained in the report," says Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr.

Goodling, now a consultant based in Northern Virginia, and Sampson, a partner at Hunton & Williams in the District, could face sanctions by their state bars, but it's unlikely they'll see anything more serious. "We did not think there was a sufficient basis for criminal prosecution for false statements," Fine told senators last week.

Mukasey Proves Our Case for Moral Rot in the GOP

Just yesterday, we wrote about the moral rot that is at the heart of modern conservatism.

Today, Attorney General Michael Mukasey proves our point by rejecting the idea of criminally prosecuting former Justice Department employees who improperly used political litmus tests in hiring decisions.

Scott Horton, legal-affairs contributor for Harper's magazine and a law professor at Columbia University, attended Mukasey's speech at a meeting of the American Bar Association. Horton said the crowd was visibly angered by Mukasey's speech, and the AG's reception was "ice cold" throughout. Here is Horton's initial report:

Today at the ABA meeting in New York--I was present--Michael Mukasey delivered a speech in which he anticipates the outcome of the current US Attorney's inquiry. Perhaps it will show that the Justice Department was being unlawfully and politically manipulated, he appears to grant. And then he went on to say that he would oppose any effort to hold those who attempted to politicize the Justice Department to account. The crowd was visibly angered at Mukasey's speech and his reception was ice cold throughout. Essentially Mukasey was saying "okay, so maybe we got caught politicizing the Justice Department. But we'll use our political control of the Justice Department to block any accountability for the perpetrators." It was astonishing.

Alabama whistleblower Jill Simpson, a Republican, had a swift response to Mukasey's speech. Simpson, at significant personal cost, came forward to say she overheard a phone conversation in which GOP operatives planned a political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. The wimpy tone of Mukasey's speech left Simpson underwhelmed:

United States Attorney General Michael Mukasey is a disgrace to our country and those who really pursue justice. He is showing a complete lack of respect for the rule of law by not charging individuals who were part of the United States Justice Department that broke the law.

He is creating a class of individuals that are above the law in this country, and that is wrong. They should be tried for the crimes they committed, but Mr Mukasey told the ABA they are going to get off scot free. These DOJ employees broke the law, and it doesn't matter where they work--ignorance to the law is no excuse, plus the evidence suggests these folks knew what they were doing and broke the law anyway. They should be tried, and if convicted, punished for the crimes they committed.

Yet, Mr Mukasey wants to sweep it under his rug and forget it. By refusing to do his job he is part and parcel of the crime. Mr Mukasey made a very big mistake saying he will not charge these individuals. He will lose the respect of people around the world as this story is carried to other nations. The message around the world will be if you work for the Department of Justice in the United States of America and break the law, you won't be charged.

What kind of message is that? Have we no respect any longer in the Department of Justice for the rule of law?

It sounds like Mr Mukasey has no respect for the law. What is our President doing allowing this guy to run the DOJ? He took an oath to uphold the law, he should do so. If he cannot, then the President should fire Mr Mukasey.

His job after all is to uphold the rule of law and treat all citizens the same. Surely we are not now going to make a new class of citizens that are above the law. I am calling on the President of the United States of America to restore the rule of law in this country. After all, our attorney general seems to have forgotten what his job is.

Glynn Wilson, of Locust Fork World News & Journal, has an excellent overview of issues connected to Mukasey's speech.

Looking for Skeletons in Republican Closets

The story of former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards and his mistress has dominated the news in recent days, even prompting one national journalist to imply that the Edwards mess somehow posed a problem for Barack Obama.

David Gregory, of MSNBC, actually asked, "Is this another skeleton in the Democratic closet that Barack Obama must struggle to overcome?"

Huh? How in the world are the two related?

Gregory's off-the-wall question inspired David Fiderer of Huffington Post to do some searching of his own, looking closely for skeletons in Republican closets. What better place to start than Alabama.

Writes Fiderer:

OK, so now we know the new ground rules. The private life of John Edwards, who currently neither seeks nor holds public office, is a legitimate story for mainstream media because he was a hypocrite and because he lied.

As for hypocrisy, check out Alabama's chief law enforcement officer . . .

Ah, that would be Troy King. And Fiderer is having a serious load of fun pulling the mask off our boy Troy:

"I took a little bit of pride in the state being first in something that is good, decent and right," said Attorney General Troy King in 2004, when Alabama became the first state to refuse recognition a same-sex marriage begun in Massachusetts. That year, he reaffirmed an editorial he wrote as a law student in the early 1990s in the University of Alabama student newspaper. "The existence of the GayLesbian Alliance on this campus is an affront to the state of Alabama, its citizenry, this university and its students," he wrote. So would an Attorney General who conducted a homosexual affair with a subordinate in betrayal of his wife and three children be an affront to the state of Alabama and its citizenry? King isn't talking.

Ouch. But Fiderer wasn't finished with "Rapid Troy the AG Boy:"

So far, the media has given Attorney General Troy King a pass, even though anyone above age 12 has figured out that King's "no comment" responses about the affair constitute a de facto admission. Welcome to the Alabama, where politics, the law and the press are beyond parody.

In a July 31 radio interview, Troy King was adamant. Nobody was going to get a look at any of the skeletons in his closet. Nobody was going to examine DNA evidence that might prove King was sending an innocent man to his death. Nobody was going to examine the document that, King claims, impeaches a witness who claims that the death row defendant is innocent. (See Amnesty International's summary of the case against Thomas Arthur.) And nobody is going to get King to respond to "rumors."

Dale Jackson asked the questions, including one about the 2006 homecoming king of Troy University, King's alma mater. (You can't make this stuff up.) More specifically, Jackson, an Alabama radio talk show host, asked King about the meteoric rise in the career of John Godwin, who started working for King as an intern in 2007, when he was a 23-year-old senior majoring in broadcast journalism.

"Soon, he was on the payroll at $10 an hour, and he quickly advanced from there. As early as July 2007, Godwin was named a special administrative assistant earning more than $39,000 a year. Within nine months of arriving as an intern, Godwin was King's executive assistant, drawing more than $57,000 a year - close to what entry-level lawyers earn in the office." The Birmingham News, July 29, 2008. . . .

Jackson: "Another story that's out there right now a story that eventually you're going to have to answer to a story that eventually you're going to have to address so I figure I'm going to be the one who asks the question. There have been these rumors all over the blogoshere , there are rumors everywhere I get them every single day, I don't see it going away, I see it getting worse, worse and worse. And the rumor says that you were caught with a male aide [i.e. John Godwin] by your wife, she threw you out of the house because you were gay and that there was some sort of problem going on there. Is there any part of that rumor, any part of it . . ."

King: "Hey Dale . . . "

Jackson: "That is true in any way shape or form?"

King: "Hey Dale, to this point, the answer has been the same as it is today. I don't discuss rumors."

Jackson: "So your answer is a no comment basically."

King: "I don't talk ...I don't discuss rumors."

Fiderer leaves us with this titillating detail:

The National Enquirer may not pay someone to stalk and photograph the comings and goings of Troy King, but some enterprising backpack journalist may want to make a name for himself. According to one source, King and Godwin are still exercising together at the Montgomery Central YMCA.

I hope Fiderer will continue on his quest to find skeletons in Alabama's Republican closets. Who knows what Fiderer might find there, but I bet it will be a rich vein of material.

Why, just the other day I was doing research at a local courthouse when I stumbled upon a most interesting lawsuit that was filed last year in Montgomery. It doesn't contain any sexual hijinks, but it includes a lot of goodies about hot-button issues--money, greed, gambling, religion, threats. We'll be posting on that in a few days.

And if you want to look for skeletons involving the really big fish in the national GOP pond, consider this post from Alabama blogger Robby Scott Hill at his Revolution Magazine site. Hill is one of several Deep South bloggers and journalists who have followed the Big Wheel Recycling case. I'm not sure I can explain what it's all about, and I admit it seems a bit far-fetched. But when something involves south Alabama, north Florida, the Bush family, Karl Rove, lots of money, and dead bodies . . . I tend to think that most anything is possible.

According to Hill, Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Tinsley is the most recent individual with connections to the Big Wheel investigation to turn up mysteriously dead. Before that was Charles D. Riechers, head of the Air Force procurement program.

One blogger, at Gone Like the Wind, says the case involves a "Dixie Mafia" and links it to the Don Siegelman prosecution.

Those kind of skeletons make John Edwards' affair seem pretty tame.

Huntsville Reporter Examines Tangled GOP Web at the Heart of Siegelman Case

The mainstream press in Alabama hardly has distinguished itself with its coverage--or lack thereof--of the Bush Justice Department scandal.

The story, thanks largely to the Don Siegelman prosecution, has roots firmly planted in Alabama. But our state's mainstream press has mostly ignored the story, breaking little, if any, ground.

But Greg Privett, reporter at WHNT in Huntsville, has set himself apart from the Alabama journalism crowd with a series of compelling reports about the Siegelman case and the broader Bush Justice Department scandal.

Privett's latest piece came Sunday night, spotlighting the complex web of Republican characters--Bob Riley, Bill Pryor, Bill Canary, Karl Rove, Alice Martin, and Leura Canary--who are at the heart of the Siegelman tale.

I might add one name--Dax Swatek--to that unsavory crowd. Swatek has worked for three people on Privett's list--Bill Canary, Alice Martin, and Bob Riley. And because of his close ties to Canary, Swatek has a pretty clear path to Rove.

Swatek's father, William E. Swatek, is the ethically challenged Alabama attorney who filed a bogus lawsuit against me, starting my legal headaches and leading to this blog. Dax Swatek is a key figure in our Legal Schnauzer story, and our research is getting closer to yielding strong clues about who is behind my termination at UAB.

Here's the good news: Privett is just getting warmed up. He says WHNT, over the next several weeks, will present a series of investigative reports connected to the Siegelman case and a pattern of wrongdoing by people connected to the Bush DOJ.

Privett interviewed me a few weeks back about my termination at UAB, my Legal Schnauzer blog, and connections between my experiences and the Siegelman case.

We will keep you posted as we learn more about WHNT's plans for its investigative series.

The Real Story Behind UAB's Treasure Chest

When you work around the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) for 19 years, as I did, you hear a lot about research funding.

To borrow a phrase from baseball great Reggie Jackson, research dollars are the "straw that stirs the drink" at UAB.

More than $400 million in federal dollars flow into UAB each year, helping it rank No. 3 in the South in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding. Only Duke University and the University of North Carolina rank higher among Southern schools--at least according to the last figures I saw.

Since Duke and UNC both are in North Carolina, and a lot of folks don't consider the Tar Heel state to be part of the "true South," you could argue that UAB is the preeminent research institution in Dixie.

Since I was unceremoniously booted from UAB on May 19--a termination the university's own employee grievance committee found was wrongful--I've had cause (and the time) to conduct research on what makes the UAB research machine tick.

What I've found is a story of "funny numbers." And anybody who pays federal taxes--last time I checked, that's a whole lot of people--should be deeply concerned about it.

UAB's public-relations mechanism would have you believe that the university's boffo research numbers are the result of a special grant-writing brilliance that resides on Birmingham's Southside.

There's no question UAB has some superb scientists and some aggressive administrators. But my research indicates that accounting sleight-of-hand might have as much to do with UAB's whiz-bang numbers as anything else.

This all comes to mind as UAB announces the arrival of Will Ferniany as new chief executive officer of the UAB Health System. Ferniany comes to UAB from the University of Mississippi Hospitals and Health System in Jackson.

Does UAB have big plans for Ferniany? Sure sounds like it:

The system's newly named chief executive officer aims to take the University of Alabama at Birmingham from its long-standing ranking as one of the country's top 20 academic medical centers into the top 10.

As a former UAB employee of 19 years, I've been hearing that phrase for some time now--"Top 10 by 2010." Sounds magical, doesn't it?

But how did UAB get into the national top 20 in the first place? And what kind of foundation has it set as a springboard toward the top 10?

Public documents reveal a picture that isn't nearly as cute as some of UAB's slogans. In fact, these public documents reveal a story that is truly ugly--a story of fraud and greed and waste and cover ups and chicanery.

It's a story of higher education at its ugliest, and it's been unfolding on Birmingham's Southside for probably 15 years--at least.

It's also a story of federal law enforcement turning a blind eye to blatant wrongdoing. And the law-enforcement officer who let it go on just happens to have been a key figure in our story here at Legal Schnauzer.

Do you think that has anything to do with the fact that I'm no longer employed at UAB?

You probably can guess what my take is on that question. But we'll lay everything out and let you make up your own mind.

By the way, this is a story that has not been reported anywhere else. Oh, a couple of local publications have skimmed the surface of it. But the real story has been hidden in the files at the U.S. Courthouse in downtown Birmingham.

We like to think we have a nose for news here at Legal Schnauzer. And we've sniffed out the documents that tell the story of some seriously "funny numbers" at UAB.

You might never think of biomedical research in general--or UAB research in particular--in the same way again.

I know I won't.

Solzhenitsyn's Death Reveals the Moral Decay of Modern Conservatism

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the acclaimed Russian author and dissident, is viewed as a hero by many in the West.

Adherents of American conservatism particularly seem to hold Solzhenitsyn as an iconic figure. To conservatives, Solzhenitsyn undercut the moral standing of Soviet Communism by casting light on the brutal prison camps of Josef Stalin.

Throughout the 1970s and '80s, Ronald Reagan frequently quoted Solzhenitsyn, further cementing the Russian's exalted standing with the American right.

So it is supremely ironic that Solzhenitsyn's death last week helped reveal the moral rot at the center of modern conservatism.

A moral and ethical vacuum is readily apparent on the pages of National Review, the preeminent journal of the American right.

For the past week or so, National Review Online (NRO) has been filled with tributes to Solzhenitsyn. Here is a sampling:

* Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, R.I.P.

* Moral Giant

* Witness: Solzhenitsyn vs. Evil

What do the writers at NRO say about Solzhenitsyn?

The editors write: "There was no greater or more effective foe of Communism, or of totalitarianism in general."

Rich Lowry writes: "In his suffering, he gained insight into the twistedness of the human heart. 'Gradually it was disclosed to me,' he writes, 'that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either--but right through every human heart--and through all human hearts.'"

Paul Kengor writes: "Spared the martyrdom of the dead Russian believers who could not live to blow the whistle, it was left to him to witness to the outside world."

So NRO admires Solzhenitsyn for standing up to oppressive political states, for his insights on human evil, and for his willingness to be a witness against his persecutors.

How then, do we square these sentiments with the thoughts present in an NRO editorial titled "Unappealing Power Play?"

In their "Unappealing" piece, NRO's editors seem concerned that the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and the Office of the Inspector General might actually be getting somewhere in their investigations of the Bush Department of Justice (DOJ). The editors seem particularly alarmed that the walls might be starting to close in on former White House strategist Karl Rove.

In their haste to protect Rove, the NRO editors trash Alabama Republican whistleblower Jill Simpson, saying her "stories" (actually, sworn testimony) are "hearsay," that they "keep changing," and that "no one has ever corroborated them."

The editors, however, do not stop at defaming Simpson. They go so far as to provide legal strategy for Rove and his fellow loyal Bushies, Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten. "The best approach for Rove, Miers, and Bolten is to appeal," intones the NRO crowd. "An appeal would probably run out the clock on the current administration . . . "

Is it a sure sign of a warped mind when someone cannot even see the irony that drips from their own writings? If so, the collective mind of National Review must be warped beyond repair.

The NRO brain trust praises Solzhenitsyn for speaking out against an oppressive regime, for shining a light on evil, for being a witness to the truth.

But what about Jill Simpson, who at great personal cost has spoken out about evil in the Bush administration? What about her testimony regarding an evil that has so enveloped the Bushies that they actually have caused political opponents to be imprisoned?

And what about the truth? NRO apparently hasn't entertained the thought that Simpson's sworn testimony under oath might be true. And it even goes so far as to suggest how Rove & Company might go about ensuring that the truth never comes out.

NRO's editors, writing about Solzhenitsyn, throw around terms like "moral giant."

How in the world would they recognize one?

Message From a Political Prisoner

I had a profound experience recently, something I never dreamed would happen to me as a U.S. citizen.

In the morning, I read in the newspaper about the death of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian author and dissident who shined a spotlight on the evil of gulag prison camps under Josef Stalin's Communist regime.

My guess is that many Americans read about Solzhenitsyn's death and thought that he had chronicled events that only could take place in another time and another place.

But that evening I returned home to find a letter that reminded me that a touch of Stalinism is present right here--in the United States--right now. And I wondered: How many Americans know about this evil that is taking place right under their noses? How many Americans are too busy chatting on cell phones while weaving through traffic in SUVs to even care that we have political prisoners in the United States--in 2008?

My letter was from Wes Teel, a former state judge in Mississippi who is in federal prison in Atlanta after being convicted in the Paul Minor case. Wes and I have never met; we've never even talked on the phone. But we got acquainted via e-mail when I began to write about the Minor case last September.

Wes and his codefendants, fellow state judge John Whitfield and well-know plaintiff's attorney Paul Minor, had been convicted, and Wes was looking at reporting to federal prison in December 2007.

In our e-mail exchanges, I found Wes to be a man of keen intellect, common sense, and good humor--even in the face of going to prison for a crime he did not commit. I came to consider Wes a friend, and I shared his pain when he had a heart attack not long after reporting to federal prison. I shared his concerns about his wife, Myrna, who has multiple sclerosis and needed care while her husband was eight hours away in federal prison. I know he worried about his grandchildren and what they would grow up to think of a country that could imprison their grandfather simply for doing his job as a state judge.

On the surface, Wes and I might seem like unlikely friends. My blog started only because of the wrongdoing I had witnessed from lawyers and judges in Alabama state courts. Corrupt lawyers and judges have brought my wife and me to the edge of ruin--and here was Wes, a lawyer and former judge who was charged with being corrupt himself.

But here is one of many lessons I've learned from my Legal Schnauzer journey: Just because you've had a bad experience with someone in a certain profession, don't assume that everyone in that profession is a bad actor.

After studying the Minor case at length, I realized that Wes Teel and John Whitfield were honest judges. They ruled for Paul Minor's clients because that's what the facts and the law required them to do. And I realized that, based on the evidence I had seen, Paul Minor was an honest lawyer. Certainly in the cases the government had used to build its prosecution, Minor acted properly, and his client prevailed because they should have prevailed.

The Minor case taught me that not even all Republican judges are corrupt. Another codefendant was Oliver Diaz, a justice on the Mississippi Supreme Court who was tried and acquitted twice. And Diaz is a Republican.

I realized that the bad guys in the Minor case were not lawyers, judges, or even Republicans. No, it is that certain breed of Republican that has been infected by a virus that seems to have started with George W. Bush and Karl Rove and wound up sickening our entire justice system.

Wes Teel is a victim of that justice system. His letter made me sad, angry, and ultimately, determined:

Here is how Wes' letter begins:

Dear Roger:
Greetings from the federal gulag system. Unlike the old Soviet gulag, we are not in Siberia freezing our appeals off. Instead, I am hundreds of miles from my home, unable to assist my sick wife, and doing nothing but wasting time--not to mention all of the taxpayer's money, to house, feed, and care for me.

Wes said he works as a dorm orderly:

I certainly don't mind working, or this particular job; however, it seems to me a vast waste of resources. For the most part, if prison is supposed to rehabilitate a person, there are few opportunities to do so. There are no college classes available, no meaningful job-training classes. (Unless you want to be a janitor--I'm serious!)

Wes said he misses his wife and family terribly and has had only one visit since December 2007. If he had been sent to federal facilities in Yazoo City, Mississippi, or Pensacola, Florida, it would have made more sense, Wes says:

The only good thing about this experience is that it has greatly increased my faith in God. I truly believe we go through troubled times so that we will learn to depend on God, and not ourselves.

Wes' appeal has been filed in federal court, but he said true relief for him and other political prisoners probably will have to come from the political arena. He emphasizes the important role of Congress in getting to the bottom of the Justice Department scandal.

Wes' faith in the legal profession has been jolted. He recalls his wife saving money to buy him a law-school ring upon his graduation some 30 years ago. He wore the ring for more than 30 years, but he has not been able to put it back on after seeing what transpired in Judge Henry Wingate's federal courtroom in the Minor trial:

My previous faith in our legal system--a system I have honored all these many years--had been hopelessly destroyed. I could no longer wear jewelry which symbolized honor, truth, and justice when I was denied these by the prosecutors and the court.

Wes encouraged me to keep fighting in my personal battle with our broken justice system. And he offered powerful insights about what troubles our nation:

We are no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, as Lincoln so eloquently stated. We are now a government of the polls, by the elections, and for the elections. It seems that all that matters is winning elections, keeping in power, and destroying the lives of political opponents. Simply defeating one at the election booth is not enough, and retaining power in office instead of protecting our freedoms, is the all-consuming goal for many.

What does it mean to be a political prisoner in the United States?

Due to the conviction, unless it is overturned, I am essentially no longer a citizen. I can't vote, possess a firearm, hold a bond, run for public office, or ever practice law again. Despite all of this, I have a vested stake in the success of our Republic. I want my grandchildren to grow up and be proud of our constitution and our government. I pray that change will one day come, and my precious grandchildren can come to enjoy the freedoms instituted by our Founding Fathers and paid for by the blood and sacrifice of many patriots.

Trail of Justice Department Scandal Creeps Closer to the White House

The evolving scandal in the Bush Department of Justice (DOJ) has focused so far on what we might call "outposts," prosecutor's offices in Alabama, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

But a new report from investigative reporter Murray Waas indicates the trail is leading right to the step of the Bush White House, where Karl Rove once reigned supreme. Waas reports that the internal Justice Department investigation now includes allegations that senior administration officials played roles in providing false and misleading information to Congress.

This raises the possibility of criminal charges against administration officials. And it brings the investigation closer and closer to Rove.

At the heart of Waas' story is the firing of Arkansas U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins, who was replaced with Rove acolyte Tim Griffin. A White House letter sent to Congress in February 2007 states that Rove had nothing to do with Cummins' dismissal. But new evidence before investigators in the Office of the Inspector General indicates White House officials drafted and approved the letter while they had first-hand information showing the assertions were false.

Senior Justice Department officials now say the investigation could become about a cover up, in addition to allegations of politically motivated firings and prosecutions.

A report from Inspector General Glenn Fine is expected before Labor Day, reports Scott Horton at Harper's magazine. In an excellent overview piece, Horton notes the Bush DOJ's persistent problem with "truthiness." This is defined as instinctual, "gut" statements that are not supported by facts or logic--and invariably turn out to be false.

The stage is set for a battle between the agents of "truthiness" and the proponents of "truth." The words sound like, but a massive gulf lies between them.

Writes Horton:

This is but one strand of a story which leads with increasing clarity directly to the White House, and straight to the office of Karl Rove.

The latest disclosures bring a focus on one issue that the Inspector General will have to address: the persistence of Justice Department “truthiness.” By the sterner view, it is obstruction of a Congressional investigation and lying to Congress: acts which warrant a criminal investigation, possible felony prosecution, and professional disciplinary measures for attorneys, possibly including disbarment. But the prevailing view inside of Justice today is different. It holds that there’s nothing wrong with telling fibs to Congress—it’s all part of the game. If the report takes the path that the latest disclosures suggest, then it will point clearly to the need for a special prosecutor, a person of unquestioned integrity and ability, to make decisions about the indictment and prosecution of Mr. Rove and the immediate past top leadership of the Bush Justice Department. Mukasey has firmly resisted such calls so far, but in doing so he has put his own reputation at risk.

Michael Mukasey tells us that he wants to restore integrity to the Justice Department. That would start with respect for the truth. But Mukasey has made Brian Roehrkasse—an outrageous and well-documented vendor of falsehoods–his principal public relations officer. And yesterday he took a further step down the same road by appointing as his new chief of staff Brian Benczkowski, another political flak best know for defending torture and for a falsehood-laden letter he delivered to Congress defending misbehaving prosecutors. When the report on the U.S. attorneys’ scandal surfaces, the Justice Department response will most likely be managed by Roehrkasse and Benczkowski, two individuals who should be right in the spotlight of the controversy. At Mukasey’s Justice Department the drawbridge is going up, and the battlements are being manned by the agents of “truthiness.” Truth is about to attempt to recapture the Justice Department. And the institution’s reputation and future hang in the balance.

Tobacco, Gambling, and "Justice" in the Age of Rove

Why have prominent Democrats in the Deep South been the victims of apparent political prosecutions under the Bush Justice Department?

The prosecutions of Paul Minor in Mississippi and Don Siegelman in Alabama can be traced to legal and political battles over tobacco and gambling, according to a compelling new article by Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane at Jackson Free Press.

Why are trial attorney Paul Minor and former Mississippi state judges Wes Teel and John Whitfield currently in federal prison? Alexandrovna and Kane point to Minor's courtroom victories over tobacco companies in the 1990s. Teel and Whitfield appear to have been "collateral damage" in an effort to shut down Minor's financial support of Democratic causes.

Minor represented plaintiffs in a case that wound up with the four largest American tobacco companies paying $246 billion to states in the largest civil settlement in history.

The tobacco companies--R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, Lorillard, and Philip Morris--were not happy to see Minor make millions from the deal and then become a generous contributor to Democratic candidates and campaigns.

Republican supporters of the tobacco companies were even less pleased. GOP bitterness over the tobacco settlement led to a tort-reform movement, designed to give corporations the upper hand in legal battles with consumers. At the center of this movement was Karl Rove, who had served as a consultant for tobacco giant Philip Morris.

Rove helped Republicans take control of state courts in Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama. And when George W. Bush became president in 2000, it appears that Rove launched a plan to investigate and prosecute prominent progressives in the Deep South. Two of those progressives were Paul Minor in Mississippi and Don Siegelman in Alabama.

Alexandrovna and Kane show how the two states at the Heart of Dixie were entertwined in the GOP strategy. Siegelman's plan for an education lottery in Alabama was considered a threat to gambling interests in Mississippi. So disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff led a campaign to raise money to defeat Siegelman's plan and protect the gaming interests of Mississippi Choctaws, an Abramoff client.

Meanwhile, a plan was afoot in Mississippi for Republicans to take over the governorship for only the second time since Reconstruction. Paul Minor, a major Democratic donor and a leading opponent of tort reform, was under federal investigation, and word of that probe leaked at the height of the governor's race.

That helped ensure that Haley Barbour would defeat Democrat Ronnie Musgrove in the governor's race.

And what about Barbour's background? He's a former lobbyist for Philip Morris and Big Tobacco.

Since taking office in 2004, Barbour has called a special legislative session to ban class-action lawsuits and cap damages in most tort cases. He also won a lengthy court battle to withdraw funding from a program that had been successful in reducing smoking among middle- and high-school students.

A Schnauzer Warning: Beware of Bottom Feeders!

One of the "side benefits" of being cheated by lawyers and judges is that my wife and I have become intimately familiar with one of the sleaziest industries in the country.

These outfits are so sleazy that folks in the know call them "bottom feeders." This is a family blog, so I can't provide some of the other terms that have been used to describe these outfits.

Is this an obscure industry, one most regular folks are unlikely to come in contact with? Not hardly. If you have a credit card, you are quite likely to come in contact with these parasites. (Oh, that's another good name they are given!) And if you don't come in contact with them, someone you care about almost certainly will.

So call your friends and neighbors, and gather the women and chillun' (a little Southern terminology there), because the Schnauzer is about to teach a lesson from the School of Hard Knocks. It's a lesson that could keep you from being fleeced someday by these vultures. (Gosh, another good term!)

What purveyors of poop, what sultans of slime, are we talking about? They are called third-party debt buyers. And if you are like my wife and I were a little more than a year ago, you have no clue who they are. But if you don't know about third-party debt buyers, and the games they play, it could cost you dearly someday.

Until certain lawyers and judges started raiding our personal treasury several years ago, my wife and I were fortunate to enjoy excellent credit. In fact, credit-card companies hated me because I always paid my monthly balance, and did it on time, and they don't make money off folks who do that. My wife (surprise, surprise!) is a bit more "liberal" in her spending habits. But she had never had any problems with paying bills in a timely fashion.

In fighting a bogus lawsuit filed by corrupt Alabama lawyer William E. Swatek, and seeing Shelby County Circuit Judge J. Michael Joiner (Swatek's golfing buddy) repeatedly make unlawful rulings to keep the lawsuit alive, our financial picture grew more dim than usual.

It didn't help that my own attorneys were more interested in kissing up to a corrupt judge than they were in helping me. They charged me big-time while actually serving the interests of a judge with whom they wanted to stay in good graces. (Much more about my own attorneys and their corrupt actions coming soon.)

Our finances took enough of a hit that we started receiving phone calls and letters from companies we had never heard of. They had names like "NCO," "CACH LLC," and "Portfolio Recovery Associates LLC"--and they all had a similar message: "You owe us money, and you had better pay up, bub."

This was our welcome to the netherworld of third-party debt buyers.

Here's how the game works:

Let's say you have a credit card with American Express. Your finances take a downturn for whatever reason--or maybe you're just forgetful--and you miss the due dates on three payments. AMEX will shut down your card, declare it in default, and demand payment in full.

Under federal law, AMEX has 180 days to try to collect. During that time, with some card companies, your balance could balloon by 50 percent or more.

The task of trying to get you to pay probably will be farmed out to a debt-collection firm, some of which are reputable and some of which are . . . well, remember that term "bottom feeder?" We are getting to them.

If 180 days passes and no payments are made, federal law mandates that AMEX charge off the account to profit and loss (P&L), and this nugget of information is passed on to all three credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and Trans Union). Suddenly, your credit rating doesn't look so hot.

As for American Express, don't feel too bad for them. Federal law allows them to take a hefty bottom-line write off. That's why original creditors such as AMEX generally don't sue people for payment. It's bad for business, and there is no incentive for them to fool with litigation.

What about you? Your credit rating has taken a hit, but are you out of the woods otherwise? Oh, no. You are probably about to meet a third-party debt collector.

Companies like AMEX are allowed to take these charged-off accounts, known as "junk debt," and sell them in mass to third-party debt buyers. Those companies then will turn around and harass the beejeebers out of you, trying to get you to pay a debt that already is a distant memory to the original creditor.

NCO, CACH LLC, and Portfolio Recovery Associates are three of the best known, and most notorious, third-party debt buyers. Outfits like these generally pay 2 to 3 cents on the dollar for a junk-debt account. If they can get you to pay just a fraction of what they claim you "owe" them . . . well, you can see how the cash can pile up pretty quickly for them.

Let's say they claim you owe $10,000 on a junk debt they bought from American Express. Chances are, they paid about $200 for that debt. Now, if they can get you to pay just $1,000 on the alleged debt, they make a 500 percent profit. Of course, they are going to try to get you to pay the full $10,000. If they manage to pull that off, imagine what kind of profit they are making. Consumers who fall for this scheme cause junk debt buyers to dance around and sing Glory to God in the Highest.

But you don't want these dirtballs singing hymns on your dime. So here's a little hint: Odds are that these third-party debt buyers cannot prove that you owe them money. They might be able to prove that they own the debt. But in the massive transfer of bad debt from one party to another, rarely does the new owner get the kind of paperwork that would prove you owe the debt. In other words, chances are pretty good, that the debt buyers case could not stand up in court--at least if you were fortunate enough to get an honest judge.

How do junk-debt buyers make their money?

* By using intimidation tactics, many of them unlawful, to get consumers to pay as high a percentage of the "debt" as possible.

* By filing lawsuits and hoping the consumer does not show up in court, giving the debt buyer an easy default judgment.

How can you make debt buyers very unhappy?

* By not ignoring them.

* By learning how to fight them.

Texas-based Bud Hibbs is one of the nation's most prominent consumer advocates, and his Web site is a must read for anybody who is rasslin' with debt collectors.

What does Hibbs have to say about junk debt buyers? "These are the lowest end of the industry," he says. "Here is where you will find violation of law an art form. It's not just lawlessness; they descend to depths of depravity that give everyone the shivers."

Strong words. And my experience goes right along with what Hibbs is saying.

Debt collectors are governed by a federal law called the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). But do collectors follow its provisions?

Well, let's hear Bud Hibbs on that subject: "Debt collectors who break the law make more money than those who do not. Fear is the universal tool used by debt collectors to separate consumers from their money. And if breaking the law means a bigger paycheck, greed overrides morality."

Greed overrides morality? Gosh, if I didn't like "Legal Schnauzer" so much, I might change the name of this blog to that. That sums up so much that my wife and I have experienced over the past eight years or so.

This piece from Bud Hibbs is one of the best overviews of the debt-collection business that I have seen. Another Hibbs piece on debt collectors and their wily ways is available here. A good overview of what debt collectors can and cannot do is available here.

I hope readers will check out Bud Hibbs' work and then follow along for my journey through the shark-infested waters of the debt-collection world.

My wife and I have come face to face with three third-party debt buyers--NCO, CACH LLC, and Portfolio Recovery Associates. Two of them, NCO and CACH, enlisted the services of Birmingham law firms-- Ingram & Associates and Halcomb & Wertheim--to help reel us in. All three companies, and their Birmingham surrogates, have violated the FDCPA.

Portfolio Recovery took an interesting route, using an outfit known as the National Arbitration Forum (NAF), which is a scam unto itself. NAF is based in Minnesota and has been the subject of some very interesting investigative reporting. In fact, the entire junk-debt buyer industry has received attention from inquisitive reporters, and we will be shining a light on that.

How do these bottom feeders operate? Portfolio Recovery enlisted a California law firm called Eskanos & Adler to come after us. And the California bunch has used some curious tactics. These have included:

* Having a courier company (DHL) leave documents in our shrubs, where I stumbled upon them after they had been rained on several times;

* Claiming I had been "served," even though I never signed for said documents--because they had been left in our shrubs!

* Claiming I had been sent documents that I never received;

* Butchering provisions of the FDCPA up one side and down the other. For example, we never received written notice of our right to have the debt verified. Even though we had never received verification of the debt, the California dreamers continued with their collection efforts.

* Failing to send me proof that I had ever signed a credit-card agreement with the underlying creditor (MBNA) or that I had ever agreed to a binding-arbitration agreement.

* Sending me copies of affidavits rather than originals that would prove the documents were actually sworn. Also sending an affidavit that is not even dated. It has a month and a day, but no year.

* Violating rules of the California State Bar, which states an attorney may not take advantage of wrongdoing by another lawyer. An attorney named Arthur Tessimond, with an outfit called Mann Bracken, is handling our case for Portfolio Recovery, and I sent him detailed information showing that my wife and I had essentially been the victims of theft by Alabama lawyers and judges. Evidently Mr. Tessimond doesn't give two hoots about California bar rules, or our status as crime victims, because he has kept right on with his collection efforts.

* Getting a Birmingham lawyer named William Ratliff appointed as "arbitrator" in our case. Ratliff is with the Birmingham firm of Wallace Jordan Ratliff & Brandt. Would he be a neutral observer in a dispute between a creditor and a consumer? Well, sure doesn't look like it. His firm advertises that it represents creditor rights. Don't see any mention of his interest in consumer rights. Ratliff's bio indicates that he has an interest in creditor rights, commercial litigation, etc. Again, don't see a thing about consumer rights. Wonder how many cases Ratliff has handled for the National Arbitration Forum. Wonder how many times he has ruled for a consumer. Wonder how much money he makes from these assignments with NAF. Wonder how much his firm makes from representing banks, credit-card companies, and other financial-services outfits. We will be seeking answers to those questions here at Legal Schnauzer.

Those are just a few of the tricks that junk debt collectors use; they have many more up their collective sleeves, and we will be laying it out in gory detail. I hope it will help you be prepared if they try to ensnare you one of these days.

The Original Legal Schnauzer, Part III

Here is another in our series about the real Legal Schnauzer, our wonderful girl Murphy (1993-2004), who helped us survive the worst of our legal nightmare and serves as the inspiration for this blog.

This is Murphy and her "mom" at the beach in Gulf Shores, Alabama. Notice the matching mother/daughter hats. (Yes, we freely admit that we were "nuts" about Murphy, and this photo proves it.) Also notice Murphy's ears in their straight up and out style. We called this her "Flying Nun" look. (Those of you too young to remember The Flying Nun sitcom probably won't get the joke. Maybe this will help explain it.)

Just how nuts were we about Murphy? My wife bought a baby carrier for the trip and used it to carry Murphy with us on strolls along the beach. Talk about a show stopper!

People from all over the country--Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, you name it--stopped to talk about our "schnauzer in the baby carrier." A number of folks took pictures of Murphy in the baby carrier. "We've got to show this to our friends back home," they said.

We talked for a long time with a man who was a widower and appeared to be in his early 60s. While his wife was living, she had gotten a miniature schnauzer. The man liked the dog OK, but he had considered it his wife's dog and didn't pay a lot of attention to it. But after his wife died, the man was amazed at how attentive and caring the dog was toward him. In their shared grief, he and the schnauzer became inseperable. "It's almost as if the dog knew I was broken hearted and was trying to help me heal," the man said through tears. "That little dog taught me a lot about the true meaning of love."

Is Government's Case Against Siegelman Falling Apart?

Tommy Stevenson, of the Tuscaloosa News, raises that question in an interesting post about federal prosecutors' response to Don Siegelman's appeals brief.

Stevenson notes that news reports about the government's reply leave a number of questions hanging. For example, did prosecutors make a compelling case that e-mails distributed among jurors were fakes?

Siegelman attorney Vince Kilborn said the government's reply does not make a dent in his client's basic argument--that no explicit quid pro quo was proven.

In a second intriguing post, Stevenson raises this troubling question: Once George W. Bush and his henchmen are out of the White House come January, will there be people in both political parties saying, "Let's sweep the Bush era under the carpet and move forward; got to keep our eyes on the future?"

Stevenson says that kind of pressure will come--surely from Republicans and probably from some Democrats. But Stevenson points to the Siegelman case as a prime example of why criminals in the Bush administration must be held accountable.

Siegelman enjoys a certain level of freedom now, but there is no guarantee that he will keep it. Who knows how his appeal will turn out? And what about the financial and emotional wreckage that has been heaped upon the former governor and his family?

I might add a point to the ones Stevenson raises: As Siegelman himself has said, this story is not just about him. In the Mississippi case involving Paul Minor and former state judges Wes Teel and John Whitfield, three men sit in federal prison for crimes they did not commit.

Shouldn't we make sure that someone is held accountable for that?

What about Cyril Wecht in Pennsylvania and Georgia Thompson in Wisconsin? What about Alex Latifi in Huntsville, Alabama, who has seen his business ruined by U.S. Attorney Alice Martin? What about Republican whistleblower Jill Simpson, who has seen her property and professional life damaged?

For that matter, what about my wife and me? We've seen most of our life's savings wiped out. We no longer own our house free and clear. I've had my job wrongfully taken from me. (And I strongly suspect my wife has lost out on jobs because of our battles with corrupt Republicans. Judges can easily have a pen register placed on a phone, and I think an honest investigation would show that such a device cost my wife umpteen job possibilities over a roughly three-year period. In fact, evidence suggests that such a device probably was placed on my work phone at UAB. Did the university know about that and allow it to happen? I've asked myself that question a lot lately. More on this coming down the line.)

The people responsible for starting our legal nightmare clearly have ties to Bill Canary and Karl Rove. And my research is pointing in ever stronger ways toward people with connections to the Bush Justice Department costing me my job.

Do I want to see to it that someone is held accountable for the harm that has been done to me and my family? You're darn right. And I suspect that the many other people who have suffered under the Bush Justice Department feel exactly the same way.

That anyone would even think of sweeping these crimes under the proverbial rug is an insult to all of us--victims and regular citizens alike. And it's an insult to the basic constitutional foundations--the rule of law, due process, equal protection--that our country is built upon.

What Happened to Daily Dixie?

I was just beginning to enjoy (in a strange sort of way) my regular jousts with Dan Roberts, the proprietor of the Huntsville-based Daily Dixie blog.

I had grown used to having my mental health questioned and analyzed, and I was sort of looking forward each day to discovering what new term Roberts would come up with to describe my general nuttiness.

So imagine my surprise when I entered the blogosphere this morning to find that Daily Dixie had vanished into the mist--or as we Southerners like to say, Gone With the Wind.

One reader has already raised the question that immediately popped into my mind: Did Roberts' jihad against me and Legal Schnauzer somehow play into his decision to take down Daily Dixie?

I have no idea. My understanding is that he also had been attempting to trash Glynn Wilson, of Locust Fork News. Maybe taking on two progressive bloggers at once was too big a task for the Dixie Guy.

You don't have to be an expert in media law to realize that Roberts probably defamed me in his recent posts related to Legal Schnauzer. But I haven't threatened legal action against him. And if someone has threatened legal action on my behalf, I wish they would clue me in.

Perhaps the most curious thing about the "Dixie dumping" is that Roberts didn't just write a post, saying, "I'm tired of blogging for a while, think I'll put up a 'Gone Fishin' sign." Lots of bloggers do that, but leave the site up--at least for a little while.

Roberts took down the whole darn thing evidently. It's like waking up one morning to discover the house next door, which was there when you went to bed, is gone.

Did someone suggest to Roberts that maybe it would be a good idea to dismantle his blog and dump any evidence that indicated he had been producing defamatory material?

Heck, I don't know. I'm as buffaloed as anybody, and if my memory is correct, his final post was about me.

Roberts' writings recently had a Karl Rovian quality, with frequent use of variations on the word "lunatic." And Roberts' dismantling of his blog reminds one of Rove's efforts to do away with e-mails. But then, I could be reading too much into this--after all, I'm paranoid

We welcome any insights from readers on the demise of Daily Dixie.

Jill Simpson Takes on National Review

Republican whistleblower Jill Simpson is demanding a retraction from National Review for false and misleading statements in an August 5 editorial.

Priscilla Duncan, Simpson's Montgomery-based attorney, says National Review made numerous false statements in its piece, "Unappealing Power Play." The article addresses efforts by Karl Rove and other Bush administration officials to avoid testifying before Congress.

Here are some of the statements with which Duncan takes issue:

NR: A House Judiciary Committee inquiry into the Don Siegelman prosecution is "based solely on the testimony of one Dana Jill Simpson, an Alabama GOP campaign volunteer."

PD: "She was one of several persons who have testified regarding the political aspects of (Siegelman's) prosecution. Included among them were law professor Scott Horton and former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones. Conyers inquiry was not solely based on her statement as you stated."

NR: Simpson testified to Conyers "in a private interview."

PD: "She did not testify to Conyers in a private interview--where do you people get this stuff? The hearing was in the form of a deposition to majority and minority counsel--three each. She was questioned for four hours, sworn to tell the truth and there were no restrictions on inquiry."

NR: Simpson's stories are "pure hearsay, they keep changing . . . "

PD: "Ms. Simpson's account has never changed, only the questions."

Duncan raises a potential motivation for Rove, one I had never thought of. She says Rove might intentionally be trying to get Simpson to bring a defamation action against him so he can find out what she knows in the civil discovery process and avoid a perjury trap before Congress. Pretty crafty on Turd Blossom's part.

Finally, Duncan tells National Review how "the hog ate the cabbage." (To use a good Southern term.)

As Ms. Simpson says, "Slander is the ultimate revenge of a coward." Rove has trampled through government like a wild boar in a turnip patch for too many years. Now that he's being hunted, he is hiding in the woods from the House Judiciary Committee. He needs to come out in the sunshine, tell the truth and stop being terrified of Ms. Simpson.

That it takes a small town lawyer in Alabama to do it, casts shame on all you puffed up big-city pundits. Barry Goldwater would be embarrassed by you and so would William F. Buckley.

I love it! In fact, I love it so much that I want to run the entire letter. Schnauzer readers ought to enjoy this:

A comprehensive statement of Karl Rove's use of the media to attack Jill Simpson--
Priscilla Duncan
helzphar@mindspring.com

Subject: RE: Unappealing Power Play

A Response To the Editors of The National Review
Dear Editors:

I am the legal counsel for Dana Jill Simpson, and we are demanding a retraction for the false and misleading statements in your August 5 editorial.

Ms. Simpson wrote an affidavit that was released just before Gov. Don Siegelman sentenced last year. She was only the first of several persons who have testified regarding the political aspects of his prosecution. Included among them were law professor Scott Horton and former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones. Conyers' inquiry was not solely based on her statement as you stated.

Ms. Simpson's sworn testimony to the Judiciary Committee was structured exactly as Conyers and Lamar Smith requested. That testimony was backed up with about four pounds of Ms. Simpson's documents, which you apparently haven't taken time to examine.

She did not testify to Conyers in a private interview -- where do you people get this stuff??-- The hearing was in the form of a deposition to majority and minority counsel -- three each. She was questioned four hours, sworn to tell the truth and there were no restrictions on inquiry. Ms. Simpson and I even offered to Republicans to answer questions over the telephone prior to the inquiry, but they evinced no interest.

During the time we were in Washington, we never met with Conyers or any member of the Committee or any member of Congress for that matter. Ms. Simpson has never met Conyers.

Ms. Simpson's account has never changed, only the questions. Many of the "stories" as you refer to them, were detailed earlier to journalists or lawyers, but were not released due to their selection of topic. Other issues simply were not explored. 60 Minutes interviewed Ms. Simpson in three cities for more than 6 hours and telephoned numerous times on fine points. The two minutes of Ms. Simpson's interview that 60 Minutes chose to use was not selected by Ms. Simpson. If there really were inconsistencies in her testimony, Karl would have something else to offer besides calling her "a lunatic," a word Google associates with Rove 99,800 times.

In her Congressional testimony Rove is mentioned 16 times. Obviously, no one on your staff has read it, and you are repeating false information vomited out by Mr. Rove and his henchmen. Rove attacks Ms. Simpson because he knows she knows more. Her information about such matters is vast. Rove can't afford to testify without knowing it all, and for this reason he has attempted to lure her into a defamation action against him for the scurrilous lies he has told about her in GQ, Weekly Standard , Powerline , News Busters and now The National Review.

I am sure Rove has steadily cursed the Republican counsel in the Judiciary Committee for not grilling Ms. Simpson with more gusto last fall -- but then, Rove ran out of Washington like a scalded dog two weeks before Ms. Simpson testified on Sept. 14. He resigned Aug. 31.

As Ms. Simpson says, "Slander is the ultimate revenge of a coward." Rove has trampled through government like a wild boar in a turnip patch for too many years. Now that he's being hunted, he is hiding in the woods from the House Judiciary Committee. He needs to come out in the sunshine, tell the truth and stop being terrified of Ms. Simpson.

That it takes a small town lawyer in Alabama to do it, casts shame on all you puffed up big-city pundits.Barry Goldwater would be embarrassed by you and so would William F. Buckley.

Priscilla Duncan

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjczMDRhNWY3NDA0ZDMxNDViNDhmZGFlMzEzM2JkZmE

Daily Dixie Explains Himself--Sort Of

Dan Roberts, who publishes the Huntsville, Alabama-based Daily Dixie blog, has a writing style that might charitably be called schizophrenic.

Roberts is so "all over the map" with his musings that one wonders if Roberts himself knows what he thinks. That, of course, makes it pretty hard for the reader to figure out what Roberts is up to.

Normally, I wouldn't care what Roberts was up to. But when I discovered Friday morning that he had authored a "hit piece" on me, questioning my mental health and pretty much making sport of the public corruption I've chronicled here at Legal Schnauzer, I figured maybe I should pay more attention to his blog.

So I've tried to read his Schnauzer-related posts and comments carefully, with hopes of coming to some conclusions. The only conclusion I can make is this: In the header for Daily Dixie, Roberts refers to himself as a "lost soul" in Alabama. I think "confused soul" might be a better term.

I've made a genuine effort to take Roberts and his work seriously. But he hasn't given me, or any objective reader, a reason to do that much longer.

Consider Roberts' piece from yesterday, "Why I did the Legal Schnauzer piece."

He shreds his own credibility right off the bat. He says he had determined that Legal Schnauzer is "the kind of blog you have to read continuously to understand"--I agree with him on that--and he had chosen to "not really follow it."

No problemo. I'm sure my blog isn't everyone's cup of tea, and I don't write it for mass appeal. My hope is to reach readers who have a genuine interest in the state of our modern justice system--from the perspective of a regular guy who has seen it up close.

The problem is that Roberts' words of yesterday don't jive with his words of roughly three weeks ago. At that time, he wrote that he found Legal Schnauzer "entertaining and informative." He wrote that UAB's actions regarding my termination were "setting off flags" for him.

Now he says he never really followed the blog, and he calls me "paranoid," "delusional," and "loony." You see what I mean by all over the map?

Roberts said he was inspired to check into my blog when he received several e-mails from readers in the wake of Raw Story's piece about my termination at UAB. The e-mailers, Roberts wrote, "were hoping I could vouch for Mr. Shuler's account or at least his general believability."

Strange. Why would anyone contact Dan Roberts to check out the validity of my story or my "general believability?" I don't know Roberts, and he doesn't know me. Why not contact Lindsay Beyerstein who wrote the Raw Story article? She's very nice and smart as a whip. I'm sure she would have been glad to answer questions. Scott Horton, who only writes for Harper's magazine and only serves on the law faculty at Columbia University, was quoted extensively in the article, and his e-mail address is readily available. Why not contact him? Robin Wilson, of the Chronicle of Higher Education, picked up on the story, evidently because she found it credible. She only works for the premier publication in the area of higher education. Why not contact her? Heck, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) entered documents citing Legal Schnauzer during a Congressional hearing. Since that material was entered into the Congressional Record, I assume Cohen found it credible. Why not contact him?

But Dan Roberts? A reasonably objective person is going to contact him about my believability?

Roberts admits that he only "skimmed" Legal Schnauzer because the posts are "very long and it's hard to follow." But he read enough to call my mental health into question. Hmmm.


Finally, Roberts centers on the seven-page letter I wrote to Alice Martin, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, presenting evidence of federal crimes by at least one attorney and multiple state judges in her district.

Now Roberts is showing some smarts here. If you are going to skim Legal Schnauzer, the Martin letter is a good place to start; it provides a solid overview of my experiences in Alabama court. But Roberts evidently can't be bothered to read even this one document closely--or maybe he just doesn't comprehend it.

But the corruption in my case isn't hard to comprehend. In fact, it is outrageously blatant, and the perpetrators are so used to getting away with this kind of stuff (harming many Alabamians, not just me) that they didn't even try to hide it.

In my very first post here at Legal Schnauzer, I drew a parallel between my experiences in Alabama courts and a baseball game. Roberts says in his bio that he enjoys a cold, frosty brew from time to time, and that usually means a guy (or gal) likes and understands baseball.


So here is the comparison: An umpire in baseball has discretion to make certain calls--whether a pitch is a ball or strike, whether a runner is safe or out, whether a batted ball is fair or foul. He's supposed to work within the rules of the game, but he can use his judgment to make these calls. An umpire, however, does not have discretion to make other calls. He cannot, for example, decide that visiting-team batters get three strikes and home-team batters get six strikes. He cannot decide that the visiting team gets three outs in an inning and the home team gets eight outs.

A question for Roberts (and anyone else who cares to play along): If you go to a baseball game, and the umpire gives the home team eight outs in an inning, what kind of an umpire do you have? Answer: You have a cheat.

It's pretty much the same situation with the judges in my case. When one party files a properly executed motion for summary judgment and supports it with sworn evidence (as I did), and the other party does not present any evidence at all (as the opposing party did), the moving party's evidence must be considered uncontroverted and summary judgment must be granted.

Law doesn't get much more clear and simple than that. And for good measure, Alabama law says that such a ruling is "nondiscretionary"--just like in baseball, where it's "three strikes and your out." The judge doesn't get to make up his mind; the law, in such instances, makes it for him.

And yet, three times--three times--Shelby County judges could not get this right. And the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals and the Alabama Supreme Court refused to overturn it--taking the cowardly way out by issuing a "no opinion affirmance" (in the case of the Court of Civil Appeals) and refusing to grant certioari (in the case of the Supreme Court).

The law also does not grant discretion when one party tries to amend their complaint 65 days after the deadline for doing so--in fact, after the other party (me) had already filed a timely motion for summary judgment. An amendment that is filed 65 days late simply cannot stand under the law. But Shelby County judges couldn't get that right either--and appellate courts also let it slide.

At one point, Roberts seems to suggest that filing an amendment 65 days late is a trivial matter. Well, the amendment, in this instance, added a complaint for conversion. That's the charge that a jury eventually found against me on and awarded damages of $1,525. Never mind that, under the law, the jury could not possibly even hear that charge. Shelby County judges allowed it, and Attorney William E. Swatek used the unlawful judgment to orchestrate a bogus "auction" of my house and get a sheriff's lien in place--meaning, thanks to corrupt judges, my wife and I no longer own our own house free and clear.

In his bio at Daily Dixie, Roberts talks at some length about the importance he places on property rights. Wonder how he would like it if his house was stolen by corrupt judges and lawyers. Wonder if he would consider that unlawfully allowed amendment to be trivial if it caused him to have a lien on his property.

Am I delusional for finding it curious that Bill Swatek's son has worked for numerous high-profile Republicans, including judges, and all of the judges involved in these unlawful rulings were Republicans?

Roberts seems aghast--aghast, I tell you--that I would suggest the judges who butchered my case committed crimes. Well, he should try telling that to the Bush Justice Department, particularly to Dunn Lampton, a U.S. attorney in Mississippi. Lampton prosecuted two former state judges and one sitting state supreme court justice for allegedly doing the very thing that occurred in my case: Intentionally making unlawful rulings to favor a certain party and using the U.S. mails in furtherance of the scheme.

That was at the heart of the charges in the Paul Minor case, and three men currently sit in federal prison because of the prosecution. Roberts might want to check it out.

If Roberts checks it out objectively, though, he will notice one difference between the Minor case and my case. In the Minor case, the judges ruled correctly in the underlying cases that were the basis for the government's case. This means three men are in federal prison for crimes they did not commit. In my case, multiple state judges in Alabama clearly ruled contrary to established law--and did it on numerous occasions. They used the U.S. mails in furtherance of this scheme, and whether Roberts likes it or not, that's a crime--honest-services mail fraud (18 U.S. Code 1346).

By the way, some folks might discount the crimes I witnessed because my case did not involve a large sum of money. But money has nothing to do with honest-services mail fraud. Oh, money is involved in many 1346 cases. But money is not at the heart of the crime. The crime is about this simple notion: Citizens of Alabama (all citizens, not just me; and in all states, not just Alabama) have an "intangible right" to the "honest services" of public officials. When that right is abused, the law says it constitutes "theft" of honest services. And when the U.S. mails or wires are used in furtherance of the scheme, it's a federal crime

Remember that word "theft." Because that's what the judges in my case are--thieves. That's a word most of us can understand--even Roberts and his readers.

Did I think Alice Martin was actually going to investigate and prosecute the crimes that I witnessed? Heck no. I figured she was a political hack, and she proved me correct. But Martin's compadre, Leura Canary in the Middle District of Alabama, had no problem charging Don Siegelman with multiple counts of honest-services mail fraud, under circumstances that weren't remotely as clear cut as the ones in my case. In fact, roughly two-thirds of the charges against Siegelman involved honest-services mail fraud, so it's not like the Bush DOJ treats that crime lightly.

This is why many progressives--and honest Republicans--accuse the Bush Justice Department of political prosecution. That's exactly what it is. Don Siegelman and the Paul Minor defendants--all Democrats--do not commit honest-services mail fraud, but they get prosecuted anyway. The judges in my case--all Republicans--do commit honest-services mail fraud, and nothing is done about it.

Anyone who can't see the problem with that . . . well, their moral compass is so maladjusted that I'm afraid I can't help them.

I probably can't help Roberts either. But on the off chance that he is sincerely interested in understanding the issues in my case--and their connections to the Siegelman and Minor cases--I can point him to this post.

It's called "Mail Fraud: A Primer," and it's a succinct description of what honest-services mail fraud is all about. It's straight from the law books; it's not my opinion, I didn't make it up.

Any objective human who makes an attempt to understand that law, and then applies it to the facts in my case, will see the crimes that I have written about.

I'm sure it's easy, and probably fun, to call me a loon or a nut. But if Roberts and his readers remain in the dark on the issues raised at Legal Schnauzer, it's not because I haven't tried to show them the way.

If they are still in the dark after today, that's a choice of their own making.

Feds Pressured Scrushy to Give False Testimony Against Siegelman

Federal prosecutors pressured former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy to give false testimony against former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, Huffington Post reports today.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Feaga repeatedly said he wanted Scrushy to testify that an explicit quid pro quo was present in his dealings with Siegelman, according to a letter from Scrushy attorney Arthur Leach to John Conyers, chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

David Fiderer, of Huffington Post, reports that Justice Department officials both in Alabama and Washington, D.C., agreed to give Scrushy favorable treatment if he would present false testimony about Siegelman.

Scrushy gave a contribution to Siegelman's campaign for an education lottery in Alabama and was appointed to a seat on a state health-care board. But Leach said that Scrushy refused to testify that he and Siegelman had a "something-for-something" agreement. Scrushy had served on the health-care board under previous Alabama governors.

In his letter to Conyers, Leach writes:

"As to the information the government wanted from Richard Scrushy, AUSA [Assistant U.S. Attorney in Alabama] Steve Feaga was always very direct as to what he wanted Mr. Scrushy to say. He wanted Richard to say that there was a quid pro quo, that is, an agreement between Richard Scrushy and Governor Siegelman to the effect that Richard would make a campaign contribution and the Governor would appoint Richard to the CON board. We repeatedly told Feaga and Franklin that there was no quid pro quo. The conversations with Feaga always ran a familiar course. We would discuss the facts as we understood them from our client and Feaga would say, "this is what I must have" and he would outline a quid pro quo which we repeatedly informed him our client could not provide because neither the campaign contribution nor the appointment to the CON board happened that way."

Feaga and fellow Alabama prosecutor Louis Franklin eventually agreed to let Scrushy out of the case in exchange for a nominal plea in state court, Leach writes. But Andew Lourie, acting chief of the Public Integrity Section in Washington, would not agree to it:

"During this discussion Mr. Lourie told me that he did not want to take me down a wrong path and that his position was fixed on a plea to misprison of a felony. I asked him whether that meant that he would not consider a misdemeanor and he told me that he would discuss it but he did not think he would approve it. He told me he would not agree to dismiss the case. Lourie said based upon the proffer that misprison of a felony was the best fit in terms of a plea and that Richard would just have to add a new portion to his proffer, that is, Richard would have to change his statement to the government."

And what would that changed statement say?

"Lourie suggested that Richard admit that he knew that the Governor was committing a crime by demanding (that is extorting) a contribution, that Richard should have rejected the Governor's demands, but because he did not, Richard would admit that he committed a crime. Mr. Scrushy rejected any such plea as completely inconsistent with the facts."

Leach told Lourie that Alabama prosecutors had agreed to get Scrushy out of the case. But Lourie indicated that officials "over his head" had nixed the idea:

"He told me that he could not discuss the decision making process any further and that he really should not have shared what he did with me and that he would be in trouble if it were known that he had shared the little information he provided to me.

"My client would not agree to plead guilty to misprison of a felony because he did not agree - and would not say - that he had done anything illegal in his dealings with Governor Siegelman."

Americans Need to Remember What Unions Have Done for Them

I've known for some time that it isn't considered cool to be pro-union in many quarters these days. Republicans have convinced mass quantities of Americans that unions are only good for taking their dues and protecting slackers in the workplace. Heck, we even learned recently from The Wall Street Journal that Wal-Mart is warning employees that a Democratic Party win in November could hurt the company by making it easier to unionize.

But I think many middle-class Americans would be wise to think again about how much they owe to the union movement--and how vulnerable they are when they work in a non-union environment.

This point came up recently when my wife reported a conversation she'd had with a coworker. The 20-something, middle-class woman said she was going to vote for John McCain because she was concerned that Barack Obama and other Democrats would be too friendly to unions.

"Next time she says that," I told my wife, "ask her if she likes having Saturdays and Sundays off, if she likes having vacation time and health benefits, if she likes working roughly 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. rather than, say, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Does she think many Americans enjoy those kinds of benefits, and limited work hours, because management wants it that way? Does she not realize that she enjoys a semi-humane work environment now because of what unions have pushed for in years past?"

The answer is apparently not. And that is a problem with many of the programs and rights that Progressives/Liberals have pushed for over the years. Think of the many progressive initiatives--Social Security, Medicare, employee rights, consumer rights, environmental protection, banking regulation, pro-choice laws--that are taken for granted by many Americans.

These programs and laws have been so successful, become such a part of our country's fabric, that many citizens have forgotten that someone had to fight for them--and they can be lost or ruined in the future. Especially when you vote for people like George W. Bush and John McCain.

Unions certainly have been on my mind recently in the wake of my termination at UAB. Unions came to mind the day my supervisor, Pam Powell, called me into her office and gave me a verbal warning for violating policies that don't exist. When I pointed out to her that I had not violated any policies, and that this was not the first time in recent months she had made false statements regarding my job performance, Powell and departmental HR rep Janice Ward presented me with a written warning that was so full of lies that even UAB's own grievance committee found they had no credibility.

Why were Powell and Ward able to concoct a scenario claiming I had acted in a "hostile" and "belligerent" manner? Because I was alone in a closed-door meeting with just the two of them, both representing management. In a union work environment, someone representing my interests would have been present. In fact, in a union environment, Powell and Ward never would have pulled this little stunt because they would have known they couldn't get away with it.
But has UAB taken any disciplinary action against Powell and Ward for writing a memo that the university's own grievance committee has found was false? Not that I can see. But hey, they are "management." And my experience has taught me that an employee in a non-union environment like UAB has absolutely no protection.

This "me against the world" atmosphere has been present throughout my termination experience at UAB. In my administrative-leave meeting, it was me and four management types. When I was informed of my termination, it was me and two management types. When I was asked to attend two meetings regarding the grievance-committee findings, it was me and three management types.

I've yet to attend a meeting during this process where anyone other than me had the least bit of concern for my rights or well being.

And the same kind of thing can happen to millions of Americans who happily work in non-union environments and think that management will treat them right. I thought UAB management was fair and reasonable for 18-plus years. But then one day someone in a position of power applied the right kind of pressure, and UAB's "reasonable supervisors" turned into management ninjas from hell, almost overnight. And I'm out of a job without ever having had anyone represent my interests in the process.

Oh, if this gets to a courtroom, and that's probably where it's headed, someone will be representing my interests. But if I had any kind of employee protection, the kind unions provide, this never would have happened in the first place.

UAB management types trumped up a bunch of phony charges because a non-union environment allowed them to do it.

Notes From SchnauzerLand

My Termination Lands on UAB President's Desk
UAB President Carol Garrison, Ph.D., now has my termination resting firmly in her lap.

As we reported yesterday, UAB human resources director Cheryl Locke had decided to uphold my termination even though her own employee grievance committee recommended that I be reinstated. Under UAB policy, I had five working days from receipt of Locke's letter to appeal her decision to Garrison. I hand-delivered my notice of appeal to Garrison's office last Friday morning.

A couple of interesting thoughts come to mind while we await Garrison's ruling. As we reported several days ago, Garrison already has issued a public statement in response to folks who had contacted her with concerns about what had happened in my case. Gary Mans, UAB's public-relations director, even posted the statement as a comment at The Chronicle of Higher Education Web site. Garrison's statement says my termination was based solely on my work performance, even though her own grievance committee has found I never should have been terminated at all. The statement from Garrison indicates she already has made up her mind on the subject, so one must wonder what kind of objective hearing I am going to get.

Bobby Barnes, of UAB Employee Relations, explained the appeals process to me--and in so doing, he made a revealing comment. He said that President Garrison "would meet with her lawyers" to consider my appeal. That seemed to be a strange way to put it. Why would Garrison need to consult lawyers about whether something was right or wrong--especially when her own committee already has determined that my termination was wrongful? Sounds like UAB is more concerned about its possible legal exposure than it is with doing the right thing.

Raw Story Is in the Running for a Big Honor
Congratulations to our friends at Raw Story for being nominated for an investigative-reporting award by the Online News Association. Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane are nominated for their series "The Permanent Republican Majority," which details the political prosecutions of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and Mississippi attorney Paul Minor (along with two former state judges).

The finalists in each category can be viewed here, and Raw Story clearly is keeping some impressive company. This nomination is richly deserved, and here's hoping the Raw Story folks come out on top when the winners are announced on September 13 in Washington, D.C.

What's With the Human Resources Game Anyway?
I've worked in professional environments for 30 years now, and until recently, I've never had much interaction with folks in human resources. Other than filling out the occasional form or asking the occasional question, I've left the HR types alone and they've left me alone. Most of the folks I had encountered in the HR field seemed like gem-dandy people.

So I've been more than a little perplexed at what I've experienced from UAB's HR mechanism over the past three months or so. They screwed up by putting me on administrative leave, they screwed up by firing me, they screwed up my benefits, they still have a number of my personal belongings after they refused to let me gather my own stuff, they've allowed the president of the university to make false public statements that contradict what HR itself has determined, they've issued written statements that are nonsensical at best.

I would be interested to hear from readers who either work in HR or have had extensive experience with HR departments. Is this how the profession is supposed to work? And what about Cheryl Locke, UAB's HR director, rejecting the recommendation of her own grievance committee and making proposals that clearly are designed to get me to return to work only to be fired again a few months down the road for some trumped-up third written warning.

Does the profession have some sort of ethical standards, and is Locke acting within them? What do other HR professionals think of a director who handles a situation the way mine has been handled?

Bill Moyers Shines Light on Abramoff Sleaze
I strongly urge Legal Schnauzer readers to check out the latest installment of Bill Moyers Journal from PBS. Moyers' "Capitol Crimes" series provides an in-depth look at the crimes of disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The Abramoff piece ran last Friday in many locations, but it is available online at the Bill Moyers Journal Web site.

Moyers focused on national aspects of the story, but the Abramoff case hits close to home here in Alabama. Moyers notes Abramoff's close association with Michael Scanlon, former aide to Alabama Governor Bob Riley. And he reports on the millions of dollars Abramoff and Scanlon squeezed out of the Mississippi Choctaws in an apparent effort to help the tribe avoid taxes on gambling proceeds.

Of course, it has been reported that a nice chunk of that money wound up in Alabama to help Riley "defeat" Democrat Don Siegelman in a 2002 gubernatorial race marked by Baldwin County vote totals changing in the middle of the night.

New Investigative Blog Makes Its Debut
Some good news on the investigative-journalism front. The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) has launched a new investigative blog called PaperTrail. CPI is known for doing some outstanding work, and this should be a welcome addition to the blogosphere. You can check out PaperTrail here.

My only concern is that the CyberJournalist story about PaperTrail says it is the "hard-hitting,
investigative blog Washington is missing." I hope that doesn't mean CPI intends to make PaperTrail a "beltway blog." Investigative reporting is sorely needed all over the country, not just in Washington.

Response From Tainted Prosecutors
Glynn Wilson, from Locust Fork World News and Journal, has a strong piece about the government's response to appeals in the Don Siegelman/Richard Scrushy case.

The government's brief is impressive for its girth, 170 pages. But Siegelman attorney Vince Kilborn says his client's primary contention--that the prosecution failed to prove an explicit quid pro quo as required by federal law--remains on solid ground.

Irony, UAB, and the Legal Schnauzer

We are grateful to discover irony, and humor, wherever we can find it these days. So I just had to mention a couple of items that fall under those categories.

On the irony front, regular readers know by now that I was fired from my job at UAB, allegedly because I was engaged in blog-related activity on my work computer. Never mind that UAB's own employee grievance committee found I was doing no such thing and recommended that I be reinstated.

Here's the thing: In the most recent communication I received from UAB, human resources director Cheryl Locke intoned at some length about this allegation that I had spent an "inordinate" amount of time with personal or blog-related activity on my work computer.

So what do I see most every day now when I check my blog statistics? Tons of readers from servers at the "University of Alabama at Birmingham--University Computer Center." Those are UAB employees, folks. And they are reading my blog--on company time.

Heck, it looks like about a fourth of my readers today were UAB employees, checking out Legal Schnauzer roughly between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. I'm guessing Cheryl Locke was reading Legal Schnauzer as she wrote her memo explaining why she was upholding my termination--for allegedly doing blog-related activity at work.

I kind of hate to bring this up because all of these UAB employees probably will be afraid to read my blog at work now--and my stats will go down. But the irony was just too rich to pass up.

On the humor front, our friends at the Grievance Project send along this post about a Web site that goes by the name attorney legal*. E.M., who runs Grievance Project, says it looks like attorney legal* somehow takes my posts (and, I assume, the posts of other law-related bloggers) and turns them into a foreign language before they somehow get turned back into English. As you can see, some interesting things get lost (and found!) in the translation.

UAB Resorts to Pretzel Logic, Part II

In a previous post, we noted the twisted logic UAB human resources director Cheryl Locke uses in trying to justify upholding my termination--even though her own employee grievance committee had recommended that I be reinstated.

Let's spend a little time deconstructing Locke's letter. This exercise should show us that even an otherwise bright person with an Ivy League degree (as Locke has) can resort to putrid rhetorical tactics when attempting to justify the unjustifiable.

Cheryl Locke: "On April 15, 2008, you were issued a written warning for exhibiting inappropriate and unprofessional behavior during a verbal counseling session. Terms used in the written warning to describe your behavior included 'extremely hostile and threatening.'"

Legal Schnauzer: Who used these terms to describe my behavior? Pam Powell, my supervisor and the person to whom I had written an e-mail on January 15, providing written proof that she had made multiple false statements in December 2007 about my job performance. UAB's grievance hearing showed that Powell reacted to my January 15 e-mail by, five days later, ordering an investigation of my computer usage. Let me repeat: Powell ordered an investigation of my computer usage just five days after I had let her know via e-mail that I had caught her in multiple lies regarding my job performance. Can we say retaliation? Powell also is the supervisor who had been harassing me for about four months before I finally complained to her superior, Dale Turnbough (who told me she would talk to Powell and take care of it), and then filed a formal grievance against Powell with Locke's own department. UAB policy says that an employee is to use the grievance process without fear of reprisal or penalty. But after I filed my grievance, I was placed on administrative leave and then fired. Locke conveniently leaves this out of her letter, just as she leaves out Powell's clearly retaliatory actions over a four-month period of time.

CL: "Shortly thereafter, investigation results revealed that after being cautioned you continued spending an inordinate amount of time on personal matters on your UAB computer and doing other activities related to work. On May 19th, your employment was terminated for insubordination and neglect of duty."

LS: Locke has a major problem here: I was at the grievance hearing, and she wasn't. Here's what the hearing showed: (1) Pam Powell repeatedly was asked to document her claims that she had warned me regarding computer usage. She could not provide any; (2) The investigation actually showed that I had never touched the first keystroke on my blog while at work, which is exactly what I told Employee Relations director Anita Bonasera when I was placed on administrative leave; (3) The investigation did not show I was spending an inordinate amount of time on personal matters on my UAB computers. First of all, "inordinate" is a comparative term, and it means nothing without having something with which to compare my computer use. But UAB didn't have that because it singled me out. Was anyone else in my office checked for their computer use? Nope. So how does Locke know my computer time on "personal matters" was inordinate? The answer: She doesn't. (4) The investigation showed that I was spending a modest amount of time checking articles related to Alabama news, as I was supposed to do according to my job description. Who determined that this work-related activity involved "personal matters." Why, Pam Powell, of course--who, as we've already shown, was orchestrating a harassment campaign against me because I had caught her making false statements about my job performance. (5) Actually, UAB trumped up three charges against me--insubordination, neglect of duty, and falsification of time records. Zero evidence of insubordination or falsification of time records was presented at the hearing, and the committee members spent almost no time asking about them. In my most recent meeting with her, Locke said the committee's report focused only on neglect of duty. By her own words, the committee dismissed the other two charges.

CL: "The committee, after reviewing the documents and interviewing all relevant parties, unanimously agreed that your behavior on April 15 was inappropriate and unprofessional but not hostile and threatening."

LS: To quote the great sportscaster Keith Jackson, "Whoa, Nellie!" Pam Powell, my supervisor, was the one who threw around all of these buzzwords: "hostile," "threatening," "unprofessional," etc. Locke is saying that the committee found Powell had no credibility regarding her use of the words "hostile" and "threatening." But they found that she did have credibility with the use of the words "unprofessional" and "inappropriate?" That doesn't make a lick of sense.

CL: "The committee also unanimously agreed that you abused UAB time by doing non-work related activity on your computer. Although the committee agreed that your conduct in both instances was improper, it did not agree with the decision to terminate your employment. It believed that a second warning was more appropriate."

LS: Let me get this straight: The committee has just found that Pam Powell was not credible in her charges of hostile and threatening behavior on my part. But they believe her charges regarding non-work related (NWR) activity on my computer, even though she didn't investigate any of her other employees? This charge regarding NWR comes totally from Powell, and when asked in the hearing to present documentation regarding NWR, she couldn't do it. The committee already has said it didn't believe major portions of her story. But they believe this business about NWR? Again, makes not a lick of sense.

CL: "Accordingly, the committee recommended that the original written warning remain with modified language, and that in lieu of termination, you be reinstated to employment with a second written warning for excessive Internet usage for non-work related purposes."

LS: I'm sorry, but I actually laughed out loud when I read this. The committee is apparently saying that the original written warning was so off target that it's language had to be modified, but they recommended that it be upheld? Again, I sat through the entire hearing, and I saw no sign that the committee members were stupid. In fact, I was impressed with the seriousness and fairness they seemed to bring to the occasion. So why should I believe that this was actually their recommendation? The committee supposedly made a written report, and Locke has made sure that I haven't seen a copy of it. If the committee actually recommended this, it makes me think the whole process was fixed by management from the outset. Again, I was impressed with the committee members, and I find it hard to believe they would make a nonsensical recommendation like this. Evidence at the hearing showed that Pam Powell could not document anything, her own witnesses did not support her story, and I should not have been disciplined in any way. Tape recordings of the hearings exist, and if UAB doesn't destroy them, the tapes clearly will show that the hearing was about as one-sided, in my favor, as you can imagine. If it had been a baseball game, the final score would have been something like 19-0.

CL: "In a meeting on July 1, 2008, I advised you of the committee's recommendation and my intent to return you to work with the two written warnings in your personnel file. I also informed you that you would return to work in a yet to be determined comparable position at the same rate of pay in a different department. I told you that my staff and I would work to make your return successful and encouraged you to give thought to areas that might interest you. We agreed you would take some time to consider these terms."

LS: Again, notice that Locke talks about the committee's recommendation, but she doesn't actually show me their report. Also notice that even she doesn't try to lay the business about me returning to a different department on the committee. No, that's apparently a UAB management special. Locke makes no mention of why this apparently is so important to UAB management. But I can tell you where this comes from. UAB has had leadership problems for about 12 to 15 years, but a lot of terrific people work at the university. In my general area, I worked with a bunch of smart, dedicated folks, and they know I was cheated out of my job. They know I wasn't neglecting my work, and several of them know quite a few details about the legal mess I've experienced. Some of them also have a general idea about the wrongdoing I've exposed on my blog. UAB doesn't want me back around those folks again, because most of my former coworkers are too smart to buy the crock of steaming feces UAB is trying to sell. In other words, UAB is doing its darnedest to suppress the truth--just the kind of thing a public research university should be doing, isn't it?

Let me make just a couple of additional points:

* In her letter, Locke seems shockingly unfamiliar with UAB's policies. In fact, I've not come across a manager in the whole place who seems to have a clue about what UAB policy actually says. Locke gives the impression that written warnings can be handed out like Halloween candy. UAB policy says the first step in most disciplinary actions should be oral warning. A first-time written warning is to be given only for major misconduct or a major offense. (See You & UAB Handbook, page 58.) UAB's own committee has admitted I didn't exhibit major misconduct or commit a major offense (or any offense at all, for that matter), but yet I'm supposed to have two written warnings?

Locke gives the impression that it is A-OK for an employee to be immediately discharged, without warning (as I was), for most any old thing. But UAB policy presents a list of the type of offenses that call for immediate discharge. (See You & UAB Handbook, page 61.) These include offenses such as fighting, conviction for a felony, possessing firearms or knives at work, appearing at work while drunk or under the influence of illegal drugs. Offenses alleged in my case did not come close to this standard. But I, a 19-year employee, was immediately discharged.

When Locke proposes that I return to work with two written warnings in my file, she conveniently fails to mention that UAB policy says any employee who gets three written warnings in an 18-month period of time is automatically discharged. (See You & UAB Handbook, page 58.) When I raised this issue with Locke and stated that her proposal looked like a bad-faith effort to set me up to be fired all over again, she (to her credit) made no attempt to deny it. What if I got a third written warning, perhaps for wearing the wrong color of socks, from some unspecified manager? "That would be up to your supervisor," Locke said. So much for her commitment to my return being successful.

Finally, Locke gives the impression that an employee grievance committee has all kinds of power--they can generate new written warnings that didn't exist before, they can edit existing written warnings to make them more palatable. Gosh, I guess they can even cure the heartbreak of psoriasis. But UAB's actual policies tell a different story. (See You & UAB Handbook, pages 64-66.) Issues that can be heard by a grievance committee are outlined. And it appears that a committee is to give an "up or down" recommendation on the grievance before it--and nothing else. The issue before the committee in my case was a termination. That's what they were supposed to consider, and they did, issuing a recommendation that I be reinstated. But Cheryl Locke, without any evidence to back it up, tells me the committee also issued all kinds of provisos that are way beyond their authority. Good grief, maybe we should let a UAB grievance committee edit the Magna Carta or the Old Testament.

* One final point about my former co-workers, who as I mentioned earlier, are a gem dandy bunch of folks. An irony in all of this is that I never would have thought of writing a blog if two of my coworkers didn't have blogs. I've written many times that Legal Schnauzer is inspired by Murphy (1993-2004), our wonderful miniature schnauzer who helped us survive the worst of our legal nightmare.

But I probably wouldn't have even known what a blog was if two of my 20-something coworkers, Doug Gillett and Stanley Holditch, hadn't been active bloggers. In fact, they both are on my blogroll. Doug is the creative force behind Hey, Jenny Slater, which focuses largely on University of Georgia football and a French broadcaster who is an incredible babe. (I forget her name, but Doug has her picture all over his cubicle, and she truly is a showstopper. Several times I've been talking with Doug about some important topic--probably the latest Georgia game--and I will catch a glimpse of the French babe--and I totally lose track of what I was saying.) Stanley is the maestro behind Fleabomb, which focuses on Birmingham's eclectic cultural scene, with some progressive politics thrown in for good measure. I encourage Legal Schnauzer readers to check out their blogs.

Doug and Stanley are smart, interesting, funny, creative types--the kind of people you delight in calling co-workers. (In fact, all of my former co-workers are great folks--if you exclude a few management types. Why do the insecure, self-absorbed, narcissistic, ethically challenged types always gravitate toward the top? Never figured that one out.) I guess you could say that Doug and Stanley inspired me to think about doing a blog. And my wife, and Murphy's memory, inspired me to actually write one.

Interestingly, my case is not the first time the issue of blogging and work has come up in my former office. And I think you will find it interesting to see how UAB handled an earlier situation, compared with out how it handled mine. That is coming soon.

What's Driving Daily Dixie?

When I read Daily Dixie's attack piece on me Friday morning, my first thought was, "Gee, this seems to have come out of the blue."

But upon further review (as they say in the National Football League), I'm starting to think it wasn't so "out of the blue" after all. It has the feel of an orchestrated effort to blunt, or perhaps prevent, some future event.

What might that event be? Well, let's consider a few facts.

Greg Privett, investigative reporter at WHNT in Huntsville, is working on a story about Legal Schnauzer and my termination at UAB. Privett interviewed me at length a few weeks back, and I understand that he and a cameraman were in Birmingham last week to, among other things, shoot footage on the UAB campus for the story.

I don't know what other reporting Privett has done on the piece. But my guess is that he probably has tried to get comment from someone at UAB. Perhaps he's tried to get comment from U.S. attorney Alice Martin because evidence points to her playing a role in my termination.

From my own professional experience, I know that word can travel pretty fast when it becomes known that a reporter is working on a story. And that word can travel very quickly among folks who are less than thrilled about the story being done at all.

My saga recently has been reported by a number of news outlets that are national in scope--Raw Story, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Thom Hartmann Show, the Peter B. Collins Show. But the mainstream press in Alabama has pretty much ignored it, and I imagine that's just how the state's Republican power brokers want it.

Thanks to Greg Privett and WHNT, that might be about to change.

So we have a Huntsville television station working on a story about my blog and my termination at UAB. Then we suddenly have a Huntsville-based blogger attacking me. Is that a coincidence? I doubt it.

Does Dan Roberts of Daily Dixie take a critical look at the facts surrounding my termination or my legal case? Heck no, he evidently isn't capable of doing that. So he throws the same kind of mud at me that GOPer's have been slinging at Jill Simpson for months--I'm nuts, I'm loony, I'm delusional, I'm paranoid.

Very clever stuff from our guy Roberts. And here's the strange thing: Just a few weeks ago, he wrote that he thought UAB's actions in my termination didn't smell right, that it was "setting off flags" for him. Now, he says I'm delusional, etc.

What changed? My guess is that word got around about Greg Privett's story for WHNT, and a few GOP types decided to launch a campaign to discredit me. A blog based in Huntsville probably seemed like a good place to start.

Just as has happened with Jill Simpson, they can't attack the facts of my story. So they raise questions about my mental health. One of the oldest tricks in the book.

Are GOPers really all that worried about a possible story on my termination? Heck, I don't know. But I think such a story would add to the growing body of evidence that Alabamians like Don Siegelman, Sue Schmitz, and Alex Latifi were wronged by the Bush Justice Department.

It's not that my experience necessarily rises to the level of these other stories. Those all involved wrongful criminal charges brought against people involved in public service or government- contract work. I'm just a regular guy who was cheated out of his job.

That "regular guy" component of it, I think, would resonate with quite a few Alabamians. A lot of middle-class folks might not be able to identify with Siegelman, Schmitz, or Latifi. But they probably can identify with someone who has worked 19 years at a state institution and gets fired on charges that would have to improve drastically to reach the level of flimsy.

Some people might see such a story and think, "Good grief, if this guy at UAB got cheated, maybe Siegelman and those other people really did get the shaft."

Alabama Republicans probably don't want those thoughts making the rounds. And I suspect that's what was behind the Daily Dixie diatribe.

UAB Resorts to Pretzel Logic

With the Summer Olympics right around the corner, spots on the U.S. women's gymnastics team almost certainly are taken. But if a spot on the team opens up, I nominate UAB human resources director Cheryl Locke to fill it.

Locke shows the ability to twist herself into some remarkable contortions with the letter I received via certified mail last week, upholding my termination at UAB.

The point of Locke's letter, dated July 18, is this: Our own employee grievance committee has found that you were wrongfully terminated and recommended that you be reinstated, but I'm going to uphold your termination anyway.

You can see where Locke, or any other human being, would have a hard time supporting that position. But she takes a crack at it anyway.

Continuing with the gymnastics theme, I might note the importance of the dismount in a gymnast's routine. You can perform all sorts of remarkable stunts on the balance beam, for example, but if you mess up the dismount, your score is going to go kaput.

Locke pretty much falls flat on her face on the dismount. And that's because, despite all of her efforts to turn herself into a human pretzel, she never had a leg to stand on in the first place. Her routine was doomed from the outset

The contents of Locke's letter were not a surprise to me. In our most recent meeting, she said that, despite her own committee's recommendation, she would uphold my termination because I refused to except her terms--that I return to UAB with two written warnings in my file and that I accept an (unspecified) position other than the one I held previously. I had reported the details of that meeting here and here.

My reaction when I saw her explanation in writing? I guess sadness would be the best description. I've been proud to be a UAB employee for 19 years, and while the institution has its faults (like any big operation), it certainly could be argued that it is Alabama's No. 1 success story. After all, it brings in more federal research dollars than the University of Alabama (in Tuscaloosa) and Auburn University combined.

To see UAB resort to Nixonian tactics in an effort to cover up a wrongful termination that clearly was driven by external political forces is, well . . . it's sad. UAB should be above that. Any academic institution, a place that claims to be about ideas and exploration and service and instruction, should be better than that.

Also, Cheryl Locke has an Ivy League education (Brown University). And it's sad to see someone with that kind of pedigree resort to the tortured logic that is present in her letter to me. You would think a sense of shame alone would keep her from putting such nutty thoughts on paper. But I guess even folks with Ivy League degrees can turn into "yes people" when their superiors insist that a certain result be achieved--even if it isn't supported by facts, logic, reason--or the law.

One final thought: Women, and all people who care about equal rights for women, should be ashamed of what is taking place at UAB. Every key player in my termination, at least the ones on the surface, is a woman. Every person in my chain of command at UAB--Pam Powell (my supervisor), Dale Turnbough (Powell's supervisor), Shirly Salloway Kahn (Turnbough's supervisor), and Carol Garrison (university president)--is a woman. Locke, of course, is a woman, and my administrative leave meeting was conducted by Anita Bonasera (a woman). Our departmental HR representative is Janice Ward (a woman).

Every woman I've mentioned knows that my termination is bogus. Some of them might not know exactly what, or who, is driving it. But my guess is that at least half of them know exactly what is going on. Has any of them had the guts, or the character, to stand up and say, "This isn't right, and I'm not going to participate in it." Nope.

Besides me, the only man in the whole process has been Bobby Barnes of Employee Relations, and he only became involved because Kelly Mayer (a woman) had a conflict.

I've long been a supporter of women's rights; it's one of the main reasons I'm a Democrat. I want my wife and mother and sister and nieces to be treated fairly and equally under the law. If my wife and I had a daughter, I sure as heck would want her treated fairly and equally under the law. For what it's worth, this blog has been inspired by our miniature schnauzer Murphy, who was a girl. And I would have put my life on the line for her.

Heck, after reading reviews of the new movie Mama Mia, I hauled out one of my wife's Abba albums last night and gave it a listen. (Those catchy tunes are still jangling through my cranium.) Am I in touch with my feminine side or what?

I can recall thinking a few years back--having lived through Watergate, Iran Contra, the savings and loan scandal, etc.--that the world probably would be a better place if far more women were in charge of things.

Well, my recent experience at UAB is causing me to reassess that position. It's not that I'm suddenly hostile to women's rights; I'm not. But anyone who thinks an organization is going to be more ethical, empathetic, rational, reasonable, caring, or efficient just because women run it . . . well, I think they might be in for a surprise.

The UAB Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight is showing that women can be every bit as dishonest, clueless, conniving, spineless, and morally shaky as men can.

As for Locke's letter, it probably doesn't merit much attention here. But it might be instructive for us to consider the depths to which people in academia will stoop in an effort to support the unsupportable. I suspect they are most likely to stoop to these depths when someone from outside academia--but with power over the institution--applies the right kind of pressure.

So in an upcoming post, we will deconstruct Cheryl Locke's pretzel logic.

(To be continued)

The Daily Dixie Brouhaha

Like a lot of bloggers, I get all kinds of harassing and threatening e-mails from people who don't have the courage to identify themselves.

Anonymous correspondents have insinuated that they killed my dog. They showed that they had obtained my Social Security Number (probably by breaking the law) and hinted that they intended to use that information in unlawful ways. They made false allegations against me regarding my work and threatened that they were going to cost me my job. (And I, in fact, was fired by UAB about a month after that threat.)

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. If you are going to blog about serious subjects (particularly those connected to politics), you'd better have a thick skin--or you'd better shut off the comment mode on your blog and not publish your e-mail address.

Legal Schnauzer has been up front from day one about who I am, what I am writing about, and how I can be reached. That kind of transparency is critical when you are writing about a subject like public corruption. But that transparency has made me an easy target for folks who are uncomfortable with the truths revealed herein. And such transparency almost certainly cost me true ownership of my own house--and my job.

So you can say I'm used to being attacked. But an attack came the other day from an unexpected source--Dan Roberts, the proprietor of the Alabama-based blog Daily Dixie. I've never known much about Roberts or his political leanings. But my impression was that he was a reasonable sort, so I put him on my blogroll (and I'm on his) and checked in on Daily Dixie from time to time.
I had no idea that Roberts had written about Legal Schnauzer until one of my anonymous e-mailers, the one who likes to make taunting references to our deceased dog Murphy, let me know about it Friday morning. My e-mailer seemed to take delight, almost a personal pride, in Roberts' piece, so I figured it must be quite a piece of work.

And I was right. It's a piece of work all right.

Not sure what kind of work. You could call it a hatchet job, but that would be giving Roberts too much credit. The term hatchet job implies that a person has put some thought and effort into their endeavor and that they've dug up some unpleasant facts to fire at their target. Roberts' piece, titled "The Legal Schnauzer's Micro-War," has none of that.

It has the feel of someone writing Roberts an e-mail with a few attack points about me and encouraging him to post it--and Roberts saying, "Sure, why not?"

You get an idea of how inane Roberts' post is going to be with the first sentence. "I've been skimming over Mr. Shuler's blog," he tells us, "and I've finally formed a solid opinion."

You "skimmed" a blog--one that covers eight to 10 years worth of fairly complex legal activity--and you have a "solid opinion" of it? You understand right off that Roberts doesn't have a clue what he is talking about.

That, however, doesn't prevent him from wading into the fray. Does he actually deal with the issues raised by my blog? Heck no, that would require effort, and Roberts is a "skimmer."

So he follows what I call the "Jill Simpson" strategy: Take the person presenting uncomfortable truths and proceed to question their mental health. He or she is "nuts," "loony," "unstable," "delusional" and so on. Heck, Roberts even does me the favor of doing an official diagnosis, informing me that I must have "paranoid personality disorder."

Wow, I didn't realize Roberts had credentials in psychiatry! Who knew?

Here's another great strategy: Put words in your target's mouth. Roberts goes on ad nauseum about my supposed allegations that Karl Rove and Bob Riley have personally taken steps to "destroy my life." Never mind that I've never made those allegations. They sound good to Roberts, I guess, so he lets them fly.

And then there is this classic chestnut: Talk tough about demanding evidence, and then when someone offers to show you the evidence--and even explain it for you--you say, "Aw, I'm too busy, or it would cost too much money, to do that."

Check out the comments where I repeatedly offer to give Roberts a guided tour of the evidence in my case. Then count the number of excuses he comes up with to beg off.

The truth? Roberts isn't remotely interested in the voluminous evidence of wrongdoing committed by certain Republican lawyer/judge/prosecutor types in my case. Why go to the trouble when it's so much fun to throw barbs about someone's mental health?

I have no idea what Roberts' intentions were with his post. But after I sent a comment or two to him, he admitted that he probably shouldn't have written the post at all. That tells you just about everything you need to know about Roberts and his handiwork.

I was offline for technical reasons on Friday, so I wasn't able to respond to the Daily Dixie piece here. But I did write a diary about it at Daily Kos, cross posted at Left in Alabama. For those who are interested, you can check out the diary here.

Don Siegelman Must Have Spewed When He Read This

Wish I could have been with Don Siegelman when he read the editorial titled "Political Pollution" in this morning's Birmingham News.

Get a load of the first paragraph:

Just when you think the Bush administration can't possibly do Don Siegelman any more favors, along comes more news of political misdeeds in the agency that prosecuted the former governor.

If Siegelman had a mouthful of coffee when he read that, he must have spewed it clear across his kitchen. I make that assumption because when I read it, I spewed a mouthful of orange juice across our kitchen.

This is Alabama's leading newspaper folks, and here's how it frames the story:

THE PROBLEM WITH THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS THAT IT KEEPS DOING FAVORS FOR DON SIEGELMAN!

Let's consider the "favors" the Bush administration has done for Siegelman:

* They ignored evidence that votes in the 2002 gubernatorial election were electronically manipulated, costing Siegelman an apparent victory;

* They brought a bogus case against him in Birmingham that was so weak a judge promptly booted it out of court;

* They brought an equally bogus case against him in Montgomery, but with the help of a corrupt prosecutor and a judge with a clear axe to grind (and both with strong ties to the Republican Party), they managed to get a conviction that is not supported by fact or law;

* They caused Siegelman to miss a chance to unseat Republican Bob Riley in the 2006 gubernatorial election;

* They caused Siegelman to spend nine months in federal prison for crimes he didn't commit;

* They cost Siegelman tens (probably hundreds) of thousands of dollars and brought him to the edge of financial ruin; and

* They put Siegelman's family through untold anguish.

I'm sure I'm leaving out some of the many "favors" the Bush administration has done for Siegelman. Perhaps alert readers can add to my list.

But you get the general idea: According to The Birmingham News, the big problem with the Bush Justice Administration is its tendency to grant numerous "favors" to Democratic officeholders and supporters!

I need to get on the phone and call Mississippi attorney Paul Minor and former state judges Wes Teel and John Whitfield. It might take a while to reach them, seeing as how they are in federal prison. But I want to make sure they know about the "favors" they are receiving from the Bush Administration.

And I've got to call Alex Latifi, the Huntsville defense contractor who saw his prosperous company ruined by a bogus investigation from "loyal Bushie" Alice Martin. I'll be darned, I bet Latifi had no idea that Martin was doing him such a "favor."

Heck fire, come to think of it, I guess I'm the recipient of "favors" from the Bush administration. The evidence is overwhelming that people with connections to the Bush machine have stolen my rights to my own house and cost me my job at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).

I didn't even stop to thank them for granting me so many "favors." How could I have been so thoughtless?

And get this: The entire tone of the editorial suggests the News brain trust is amazed, amazed I tell you, that political considerations have ruled the day in the Bush Justice Department.

Ah, Alabama journalism. Just can't beat it.

Are Progressive Blogs Being Targeted?

My blog is up and running today after being down yesterday because Blogger had to do a "spam review" of my blog.

For some reason, the fine folks at Blogger had the notion that Legal Schnauzer was throwing off spam.

The Hissyspit journal at Democratic Underground says a number of liberal/progressive bloggers have experienced similar problems in recent days and hosts an interesting discussion on the matter.

One reader notes that it's possible that similar problems are happening with conservative bloggers. But the reader at No. 15 says it has happened to a number of liberal bloggers because the flag button at Blogger can be easily abused.

Right wingers can pick out a blog they don't like and click repeatedly on the flag button, claiming it's a spam blog. The blog is automatically delisted (locked up was the term I was given) until a human review is completed.

Sounds like No. 15 knows what he/she is talking about. If that's the case, I'm going to take it as a compliment that right wingers felt my blog was deserving of such hi jinks.