Eddie Curran and Scott Horton Go At It

The second installment of Eddie Curran's op-ed piece about the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman is now available on the Web. You can read the piece here.

Part two is vastly different from part once, which we dissected here. Part one was a solo job, Eddie Curran unfiltered, and consisted mostly of name calling and bomb throwing directed at Republican whistleblower Jill Simpson and Harper's legal-affairs contributor Scott Horton. In the end, Curran landed no substantive blows, and part one went nowhere.

Part two might actually shed some light on events in the Siegelman case. Be warned: This is a lengthy piece of work, taking up 18 Web pages on the Montgomery Independent site. But I suspect it will be worth the effort to read it closely, and here is why: This is not an Eddie Curran solo piece.

I haven't been able to read the piece in its entirety. But the headline alone tells you this is different: "Did Siegelman Get a Fair Trial? Curran, Horton Square Off."

Part two appears to focus mainly on U.S. Judge Mark Fuller and his handling of the trial. We get a heavy dose of Curran, but we also get Horton's responses. Editor Bob Martin weighs in with several salient editor's notes.

Don't want to comment much without having read the entire piece. But I think the give-and-take format--between the reporter credited with breaking the Siegelman story and the legal analyst who has led the charge in questioning the prosecution--is a good idea.

Also, Martin weighs in with an insightful column about the past week's activities in the Siegelman saga. I particularly like this line about Karl Rove:

Then Tuesday on Fox News, Rove admitted he had spoken with Simpson. Rove told Fox that he'd never met Jill Simpson, then he recanted on that , saying well, maybe he did. But added that he "never asked her to do a darn thing." .

Martin has this about former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods:

Perhaps the most persuasive statements on Siegelman's behalf came from former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods, a lifelong Republican. He was one of 52 active or former state attorney generals who petitioned Congress to investigate the Siegelman indictment and trial. "The case should have never gone to trial," Woods said. "There was no quid pro quo (this for that transaction between Siegelman and Richard Scrushy). The jury was deadlocked twice and the judge ordered them back."


Then, Martin has this about the response of the Alabama Republican Party and chair Mike Hubbard:

Simpson is akin to a person with a contagious disease. Nobody wants to associate with her and her party is even trying to publicly disown her. Here's what State GOP Chair Mike Hubbard has to say about Simpson:
"Our staff has done an exhaustive search of Alabama Republican Party
records going back several years, and we can find not one instance of Dana
Jill Simpson volunteering or working on behalf of the Alabama Republican
Party - as stated by 60 Minutes. Nor can we find anyone within the Republican Party leadership in Alabama who has ever so much as heard of Dana Jill Simpson until she made her first wave of accusations last summer."

I would suggest that Rep. Hubbard check her local county where I believe he will find Ms. Simpson is (or was) listed as GOP Co-chair. I talked at length with Ms. Simpson a few months ago and found her to be very precise and knowledgeable about this situation. Frankly, I would not want to be on her list. She has a lot of records in her filing cabinets.