Bobby Bright Likely is the New U.S. Attorney for Montgomery

Bobby Bright

Former U.S. Rep. Bobby Bright (D-AL) appears set to become the new U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, sources tell Legal Schnauzer.


George Beck, of the Montgomery law firm Capell and Howard, was the apparent front runner. But Beck has pulled out of the race, our sources say, and that leaves Bright as the last man standing in a process that has been horribly botched by the Obama administration.

Bright, if his nomination and confirmation go through, will replace Leura Canary, the abominable George W. Bush appointee who ramrodded the Don Siegelman prosecution and, for reasons that defy explanation, has served for more than two years under Obama.

Will Bright be a good choice? Well, that's hard to say. A Blue Dog Democrat who frequently voted against Obama on key issues, Bright served only two years in the U.S. House before losing last November to Republican Martha Roby. Bright served two terms as mayor of Montgomery and is credited with helping to revitalize the city's downtown, including the construction of the splendid Riverwalk Stadium, home to the Montgomery Biscuits minor-league baseball team.

According to his bio, Bright practiced law for 15 years before going into politics. To our knowledge, he has no experience as a prosecutor. But if he has a pulse and some semblance of ethics, he should be a major improvement over the wretched, horrific, and despicable Canary. (Give me a few minutes, and I will come up with a few more adjectives to describe "Ms. Leura," some of which might even be printable.)

A lawyer whose opinion I greatly respect says Bright will be a far cry better than Beck would have been. Beck, our source says, essentially would have been Leura Canary with testicles.

If Bright actually takes office, it will be a sad ending to one of the most pathetic chapters in American political history. And if Barack Obama goes down as a failed, one-term president, the handling of the Montgomery U.S. attorney choice will be a case study of what went wrong with a presidency that once seemed to offer so much hope.

It's hard to imagine how the Obama crowd could have screwed this up any worse. By every account I've heard, Mobile attorney Michel Nicrosi clearly was the most qualified candidate. Her name was the first one floated--and she should have been on the job for about two years now, actually trying to clean up the cesspool in Montgomery. But U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) huffed and puffed a little about a Nicrosi nomination--probably because he was fearful Nicrosi would uncover sleaze on him and fellow U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby--and Team Obama tucked its tail and refused to fight for her. To make matters worse, the White House allowed Canary to stay in office, cooking up bingo-related prosecutions where no crime likely exists, while letting Bob Riley and his gang of GOP henchmen run roughshod over the law.

Ponder every negative political trait you can think of--cluelessness, weakness, lack of ethics, lack of spine--and the Obama administration has displayed them in the Montgomery situation. We can only hope that Bobby Bright will salvage something from the wreck he is likely to inherit.