Not So Sweet Home Alabama

Scott Horton, of Harper's magazine, continues to provide brilliant reporting and analysis of the U.S. Attorney scandal in Alabama. He and Glynn Wilson of Locust Fork World News & Journal have been leading the way since Dana Jill Simpson's affidavit first came to light, alleging that Karl Rove and Bill Canary helped instigate a politically motivated prosecution of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman.

Here, Horton paints a backdrop of Alabama's ongoing struggle with justice, drawing on Harper Lee's classic, To Kill a Mockingbird. He even notes that since Simpson first took steps to go public about the Siegelman prosecution, her house has burned down and one of her vehicles has been run off the road and totaled. Kind of makes you think there's something to the allegations in her affidavit.

Here, Horton outlines the limp reporting of Alabama's mainstream press and Rove's equally limp response when asked about the scandal recently during a visit to Athens, Alabama.

Here, Horton writes that it was honest Republicans, not Democrats, who first brought the Alabama scandal to his attention. This indicates that Jill Simpson is not the only brave soul out there.

All three of the themes Horton outlines will play out here in Legal Schnauzer:

* The same Republican operatives (Rove and Canary) who evidently were at the heart of the Siegelman prosecution led the effort in the 1990s to turn Alabama's state courts into a Republican playground. Those state courts, our blog will show, have been corrupt for some time. And the Rove/Canary connections tie directly to my case. Bill Swatek, the attorney who filed the bogus lawsuit against me, is the father of Republican operative Dax Swatek, who has ties both to Canary and Jack Abramoff. Dax Swatek also has ties to current Alabama governor Bob Riley, who was Siegelman's opponent in the ultra-close 2002 election.

* As in the Siegelman case, Alabama's mainstream press has done a masterful job of ignoring corruption in Alabama's state courts. But hey, that's what Legal Schnauzer is for.

* While I don't know of any honest Republicans in my story (yet), I do know of honest people in Alabama's justice system who are willing to speak out about judicial corruption in our state courts. I will be introducing you to at least one of those people soon.