Are Democrats on the Verge of Extinction in Some Parts of the U.S.?

A recent article in The Birmingham News noted that Democrats, in the wake of the midterm elections, might be nearing extinction in Alabama. That makes you wonder if the same could hold true in other states.

It's an absurd notion, of course. Nothing reminds voters of Democrats' good qualities like several years of Republican rule. But the News' article raises a deeper issue that definitely is worth pondering.

It notes the profound impact of race on the rise of the Republican Party in Alabama--and elsewhere. And that raises this troubling question: Has America's white majority become so addled and agitated with race-based fears that it is incapable of making rational decisions to address the nation's problems?

We can't ponder that question without thinking back to "White America Has Lost Its Mind," a Village Voice article from a couple of months ago. Writer Steven Thrasher presented Sarah Palin, Christine O'Donnell, Glenn Beck, and other right-wing luminaries as evidence that white people in America are playing with a few loose shingles.

Thrasher's piece is alternately alarming and entertaining, and here is his central theory: White Americans started going around the bend when Barack Obama was elected president in November 2008.

In our minds, Thrasher definitely was onto something--and the midterm results seem to confirm it. But we can't help but ask this question: Did the unraveling of white America begin way before the rise of Barack Obama?

Thrasher's piece was a fascinating read before the election, and it might be an even more enlightening read now. But we're not sure that we agree with Thrasher's core theory. In fact, we would argue that he is being way too kind toward white Americans. We submit that signs of mental instability were present in our "honky precincts" long before most of us had ever heard of Barack Obama.

I feel qualified to comment on this subject because: (A) I am definitely a honky; and (B) Before finally pulling my head out of a certain orifice in the early 1990s, I was part of the problem. It shames me now to write these words, but I voted Republican through much of the 1980s. Do I have an explanation for this depraved behavior? Nope--other than, "I must have temporarily lost my mind."

You see, I know what it's like to have your mind twisted by the conservative noise machine. Been there, done that. But I think Thrasher is mistaken if he thinks it started with Barack Obama.

The Birmingham News, in its assessment of Alabama Democrats, seems to agree with me. Here is how reporter Charles J. Dean opens his piece:

What do dinosaurs and Democrats have in common?

They once roamed Alabama.

That's one of the jokes making the rounds after what was a triumphant election for Alabama Republicans and a disaster for state Democrats.

But behind the joke is a real question: In the wake of a historic election that saw Democrats lose every single statewide race and lose control of the Legislature for the first time in 136 years, is the Alabama Democratic Party, like the dinosaur, extinct?

Natalie Davis, a professor of political science at Birmingham-Southern College and a one-time Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, has harsh words for her party:

"This party has tired leadership and it offers voters nothing that speaks to their daily concerns and needs," Davis said. "Name me a policy proposal that has been passed with Democratic leadership which speaks to the needs of working families. . . . I have a hard time coming up with one."

Did the Democrats' problems, as The Village Voice contends, really begin with Barack Obama? Without his funky name, I suspect many Americans would forget that Obama is even black. Heck, the guy makes Don "No Soul" Simmons look like James Brown.

But The Village Voice says even a black president "lite," such as Obama, is too much for white America to handle. Here is how Thrasher puts it:

About 12:01 on the afternoon of January 20, 2009, the white American mind began to unravel.

It had been a pretty good run up to that point. The brains of white folks had been humming along cogently for near on 400 years on this continent, with little sign that any serious trouble was brewing. White people, after all, had managed to invent a spiffy new form of self-government so that all white men (and, eventually, women) could have a say in how white people were taxed and governed. White minds had also nearly universally occupied just about every branch of that government and, for more than two centuries, had kept sole possession of the leadership of its executive branch (whose parsonage, after all, is called the White House).

But when that streak was broken—and, for the first time, a non-white president accepted the oath of office—white America rapidly began to lose its grip.

That's darned good writing. And it's accurate--as far as it goes. But Thrasher needs to take a trip on the way-back machine. Why did white America begin to rapidly lose its grip with Obama's inauguration? Because it already had been losing its grip for years.

Consider the Clinton years. In December 1992, I distinctly remember seeing my first "Impeach Clinton" and "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Bush" bumper stickers--and President-Elect Clinton had not even taken office yet.

"Are these people nuts?" I remember saying to myself. The answer, it seems clear now, was yes.

And I would submit that the ungluing of white America actually goes back farther than that. I trace it to the founding of the Moral Majority in 1979, when Jimmy Carter was president. Many Americans believe that the Moral Majority, and the "Christian Right" that followed it, started out of a concern about abortion rights. Actually, Jerry Falwell started the Moral Majority in reaction to a Carter-administration plan to remove the tax-exempt status for private schools that practiced segregation.

With Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush ruling the White House for 12 years, white Americans felt a sense of security through the 1980s and into the early '90s. I am convinced that many whites thought Republicans would dominate presidential politics for the foreseeable future. So when Clinton proved them wrong about that, they reacted with extraordinary vitriol.

And it went way beyond bumper stickers. At the first opportunity, Republicans launched the Whitewater investigation, which dealt with matters long before Clinton was president--and even before he was governor of Arkansas.

Could you imagine Democrats investigating George W. Bush over events that started 14 years before he was president? Could you imagine the country tolerating such an abuse of prosecutorial power? I certainly can't. Hell, Barack Obama is afraid to support an investigation of apparent crimes while Bush was president.

White America put up with Whitewater because Bill Clinton was a Democrat. And in retrospect, that might have been a glaring warning sign that white America was starting to lose its mind.

As we noted in a recent post, a warped interpretation of Christianity seems to be driving our democracy into a state of dysfunction. That's why I lay much of the blame for our current mess at the feet of religious "leaders" such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson--and many of their lesser-known brethren.

How much delusional garbage spews forth from America's pulpits every Sunday morning? Huge amounts is my guess. Much of it is un-Christian, un-Biblical, and certainly un-American.

Want a profound take on the 2010 midterms? Consider the words of William H. Stewart, a professor of political science at the University of Alabama:

Stewart said what happened Nov. 2 in Alabama was the final fulfillment of President Lyndon Johnson's prediction when he signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

"President Johnson at that time said the act would eventually lead to the death of the Democratic Party in the South, and he was essentially right," Stewart said. "What happened election night has really been coming for almost 50 years. I think the Republican Party began its ascent in 1964 and in 2010 it completed the journey in Alabama."

Where do we go from here? Steven Thrasher's piece in The Village Voice made me laugh out loud several times. But the harsh reality is this: White folks still make up a solid majority of the U.S. population. And when a significant proportion of that majority acts in irrational ways, it is not a laughing matter. It is downright dangerous.

Huge numbers of Americans in the midterm elections voted to restore the policies that brought us to the edge of economic ruin. That is a sign of warped thinking, which can have catastrophic consequences. And there is nothing funny about that.

If you are like me, you could use a little humor after examining this grim subject. So let's return to Don "No Soul" Simmons, an unforgettable character from the 1987 comedy classic Amazon Women on the Moon. If Obama is too much, what kind of black guy can white America handle? Maybe "No Soul" is the answer. (Warning: This clip includes "No Soul" Simmons singing Three Dog Night's Joy to the World, plus a hysterical cameo from B.B. King. If you aren't prepared for it, you might hurt yourself.)

Is Warped Christianity Threatening Our Democracy?

A misguided view of Christianity is chipping away at fundamental American principles, according to a new book about a shadowy religious/political organization in Washington, D.C.

Jeff Sharlet, in the new book C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy, shows how the group known as "The Family" influences foreign policy, the military, and other key elements of our government.

Based on personal experience, I would say a C Street-like mindset has invaded our courtrooms and corrupted our justice system at all levels. We also suspect that many boardrooms, and even universities, are infected with a values system that gives elites exalted status over everyday folks. In the end, this bastardized form of religion might pose a greater threat to America than Osama bin Laden ever could.

This is Sharlet's second book about C Street. In 2008, he wrote The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. In an interview about his new book, with Scott Horton of Harper's, Sharlet provides some frightening insight into the C Street mindset. Much of it is based on a relatively obscure passage from the Bible, Acts 9:15: “This man is my chosen instrument to take my name… before the Gentiles and their kings.”

The original passage was about the Apostle Paul. But members of The Family evidently think it applies to them. Horton asks, "How do the men who gather at C Street interpret this passage?" Replies Sharlet:

The clue is in the emphasis the Family puts on those last two words. “Their kings” is italicized in the document from which I quote it in the book, “Eight Core Aspects of the vision and methods.” It was distributed to potential new members of the Family, the organization behind C Street, at the 2010 National Prayer Breakfast, the Family’s only public event. Every year, the Family uses American political leaders—they refer to them as “bait”—to attract foreign leaders they want to evangelize. The focus is on leaders, or “kings.” The Family twists Acts 9:15 into a justification for a complete inversion of Christianity, a faith that, whatever else one thinks of it, was born of a radically egalitarian premise. To the C Streeters, Christianity is all about elites. They pay lip service to helping the poor, but they believe the best way to help the weak is to help the strong.

The C Street mindset has played out in political scandals involving John Ensign, Mark Sanford, and Chip Pickering. Says Sharlet:

What makes C Street and the Family so unusual in the landscape of American fundamentalism is their explicit dedication to the ruling class. Help the weak by helping the strong means tending to the interests of men such as Ensign, Sanford, and Pickering. In Ensign’s case, where C Street attempted to negotiate payments for Ensign’s mistress’s family, you see the principle of what some Family leaders call “biblical capitalism” put into practice — they bargained a price for services rendered. In Sanford’s case, they actually managed his distraught wife, instructing her to refrain from any angry words—they’d take care of reprimands—and to keep her husband sexually satisfied. And Pickering, Pickering was just tawdry—they looked the other way while he rendezvoused with his mistress, a telecom heiress, in his C Street room. Such cover ups, were, to the Family, God’s work—anything to keep their chosen ones, their “kings,” in power.

I've seen a similar mindset from conservative judges in Alabama courtrooms. After being on the short end of numerous unlawful rulings, I've found myself saying, "These judges act like they are kings. They seem to think they can ignore the actual law and rule however they please."

This mindset hardly applies only to my personal situation. We've seen it at play in the Don Siegelman case, the Paul Minor case, and other Bush-era political prosecutions. I've seen evidence of it in several domestic-relations cases, where the "elite" party receives favorable treatment--and if children have to suffer because of it . . . well, that's tough.

Jeff Sharlet, I believe, has hit on an issue that has profound implications for American society. In fact, it has the power to ruin us.

Many elites, through their own selfishness or a warped view of religion (or both), believe it is more important to keep certain "chosen ones" in powerful positions than it is to uphold our democratic principles.

This kind of thinking, if unchecked, could lead to a disaster that will make 9-11 seem tame by comparison.  As awful as 9-11 was, America has shown a remarkable ability to recover from it. But if we fail to see that our society is rotting from the inside . . . well, there might be no way to recover from that.

Here's How to Fix the Honest-Services Fraud Law

U.S. Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court declared the federal honest-services fraud law unconstitutionally vague in late June, and a move already is afoot to reinvent the statute.

Based on early reports, it appears the Justice Department and Congress are taking the wrong approach. Anyone who has followed either of those institutions in recent years should not be surprised by that. But this is an important issue, and the fix on the fraud law needs to be done the right way.

We don't claim to be experts on the crafting of federal statutes. But we have studied the honest-services issue extensively, and we have some ideas on how the law should be worded.

First, we have conflicted feelings about the honest-services law. On the one hand, we are pleased that the Supreme Court's ruling in a case involving former Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling means the defendants in the Don Siegelman and Paul Minor cases have an enhanced chance to get their convictions overturned. Those two cases never should have come down to a technicality on the honest-services law; appellate courts should have overturned the convictions on numerous other grounds. But the Siegelman and Minor defendants could benefit from the high court's finding that the law now applies only in cases involving bribes and kickbacks--and we are all for anything that allows innocent people to go free.

The down side, however, is that the Skilling ruling essentially makes the honest-services law worthless. Other federal law already covers bribes and kickbacks, so the honest-services law--as it stands now--is pretty much unnecessary.

While prosecutors unquestionably used the old honest-services law in an abusive fashion, such a statute is needed. The point of the law is to punish misconduct where there is a non-financial motive--or where a financial motive cannot be proven.

Scott Horton, of Harper's, reports that the Senate Judiciary Committee is considering a revision that would allow the prosecution of "undisclosed self-dealing." That language, Horton points out, is just as vague as the old language.

What to do? Here are a couple of Schnauzer suggestions. We certainly do not present these as any sort of "final word" on the subject. But we think they might be a starting point toward forming an honest-services law that passes the constitutional vagueness test and punishes the kind of non-financial crimes the statute was designed to address:

Our research indicates the honest-services law is needed in at least two key areas:

* Political appointments--This was at the heart of the Siegelman case. The former Alabama governor accepted a contribution to an education-lottery campaign and then appointed the donor (former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy) to a hospital-regulatory board. It's undisputed that the contribution itself was legal. It's also undisputed that Scrushy was qualified to serve on the board; he had served on the same board under three previous governors. Because of that, the public was not actually deprived of Siegelman's honest services, and he and Scrushy did not violate the old law. To understand that, however, you have to dig into the case law. And the Supreme Court has found that the statute itself needs to be clear about what is criminal activity and what is not. So we propose that the new law include language that goes something like this: "An official deprives the public of its intangible right to honest services when he or she appoints individuals to positions for which they clearly are not qualified. A public official who accepts a donation and then appoints the donor to a position has not violated the statute--as long as the appointee has professional credentials that make him/her qualified to hold the position."

* Nondiscretionary Decision-Making--This was at the heart of the Minor case. Three former state judges, who had received campaign support from attorney Paul Minor, were found to have corruptly ruled on cases involving Minor's clients. There was only one problem, however, for the prosecution: All three judges had either recused themselves from the matters involving Minor, or they ruled correctly based on the facts and law in front of them. The public was not deprived of the judges' honest services because they ruled correctly in the cases, meaning Minor did not receive any improper benefit. Our research indicates that honest-services law often can come into play when an official is required to follow certain laws, procedures, rules, and regulations--but does not follow them. So we propose that the new law includes language that goes something like this: "An official deprives the public of its intangible right to honest services when he or she makes nondiscretionary decisions that violate applicable laws, procedures, rules, and regulations. An official who is required to act in a certain way and fails to do so violates the statute." 


This language would be aimed squarely at some of my favorite people--corrupt judges. I have repeatedly witnessed both state and federal judges who ignored black-letter law in order to rule in a way that unlawfully favors certain parties. In the cases I've seen, I don't know if the judges have received bribes or kickbacks--and that might be difficult for prosecutors to prove. But they clearly have violated the old honest-services law, especially when you dig into the case law. A provision such as the one above would make it clear, in the statute, that such dishonest dealings are criminal in nature.

Judges are not the only officials who violate the law in their nondiscretionary decision-making. But they are among the worst offenders. And the new law needs to have the kind of teeth that will make judges think twice before they cheat the parties who come before them.

Consider other kinds of bad actors who need to be subject to a new honest-services fraud law. Imagine a small-town mayor who is having an affair with a woman who owns several pieces of property along the town's main commercial strip. The mayor violates local zoning laws in order to give his paramour variances that allow her businesses a leg up on competitors. The woman has not paid the mayor a bribe or kickback, but she has provided another form of "benefit." The variances allow her to rake in cash, while depriving other businesses of a level playing field. In a broad sense, the public at large is deprived of the mayor's honest services, even though no bribe or kickback is involved.

The town almost certainly receives federal funds in some form, so that makes this a case for U.S. prosecutors. This is the kind of situation the honest-services fraud statute needs to address.

Should our Schnauzer suggestions be the final word on the subject? Of course not. But hopefully, we've provided the beginnings of a road map for a new honest-services law that will be less prone to abuse and more prone to punish the many bad actors who hold positions of trust.

A Rich Republican Puts His "Family Values" On Display In An Alabama Courtroom

Many progressives probably have heard so much about "pro family" Republicans that they could almost hurl.

If you are such a progressive, you will really want to hurl when you read about one deep-pocketed Republican and his display of "family values" in an Alabama courtroom. We're talking about Ted W. Rollins, CEO of Campus Crest Communities and the driving force behind a recent Wall Street IPO that is estimated at $380 million.

Rollins is part of the family behind Orkin Pest Control, one of the wealthiest clans in America, with deep ties to the Republican Party. In Alabama court documents, however, Ted Rollins portrayed himself as a relative pauper, causing his ex wife and two daughters to live on the kind of support that might be expected from a janitor.

Sherry Carroll Rollins, his ex wife, and their daughters, Sarah and Emma, have almost been on welfare and food stamps. At one point, they would have been homeless if an Alabama friend had not intervened. But that doesn't seem to bother Ted Rollins. After all, he has a $380 million IPO. And that's from just one of several companies he has helped spearhead over the past 20 years or so.

Here is all you really need to know about Ted W. Rollins: He is head of a company that recently issued a $380 million IPO, and court documents indicate his family is worth billions (with a "b"). But thanks to the extremely curious actions of Alabama judge D. Al Crowson, Rollins pays $815 a month in child support (that's the total, covering both children) and $500 a month in alimony.

For good measure, Crowson found that Ted Rollins had overpaid Sherry Rollins by $8,795, and he was ordered to offset his alimony payment by $300 a month until the overpayment was paid in full. That means Sherry Rollins received $200 a month alimony for more than two years. And that's from an ex husband who, based on court documents, appears to be a millionaire several times over.

Thankfully, I have no personal experience with divorce or child-support issues. But I'm told that $815 and $500 a month are the kind of child support/alimony that might be ordered from a salary-earning schmuck like myself. That it was ordered for a member of the Rollins family, the folks behind Rollins Inc. and its numerous highly profitable enterprises, is dumbfounding.

No wonder Ted Rollins wanted to have the divorce case unlawfully moved from South Carolina to Alabama. As we reported yesterday, Sherry Rollins had sued for divorce in Greenville, South Carolina, where the family had lived, and adultery was one of the primary grounds she cited. A South Carolina judge had issued a temporary order that called for Ted Rollins to pay $3,355 a month in child support, $5,000 a month in alimony, and continue paying the mortgage, taxes, and insurance on the marital home.

When the mortgage went unpaid, Sherry Rollins and her children were forced from their home. Mrs. Rollins fled to Alabama, where her two sons from a previous marriage were living. Contrary to black-letter law, Ted Rollins was allowed to sue Sherry Rollins in Alabama and wound up with a reduction of roughly $2,500 in his monthly child support and $4,500 in his monthly alimony.

What a deal! No wonder this guy's rich.

How did he pull it off? Hold on to your breakfast because you are liable to lose it when you read what comes next.

Court records indicate that Ted Rollins' current child support/alimony payments are based on a Child Support Obligation Income Statement/Affidavit, known as a Form CS-41 in Alabama. (See Ted Rollins' CS-41 form at the end of this post.)

Ted Rollins listed his gross monthly income as $4,166.67, which comes to $50,000.04 a year. That's real close to what I made as an editor before I was cheated out of my job at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).

Interestingly, Ted Rollins claimed on his CS-41 that his only source of income was from Reynolds Mortgage and Investment Company of Brentwood, Tennessee. There's no mention of St. James Capital LLC, a family-owned business of which he had been president for several years. No mention of Campus Crest Communities, which he had started by then. No mention of any income from self employment, such as rent, proprietorship of a business, joint ownership of a partnership or closely held corporation. Ted Rollins swore under oath that he had no income other than $50,000 he made from a mortgage outfit in Tennessee.

While the divorce case was in South Carolina, court documents indicate that Ted Rollins claimed his income came from St. James Capital, making $4,166.66 per month. Isn't it interesting that the figure he cited in South Carolina matches almost to the penny the figure he cited in Alabama--but it's from a different company?

A South Carolina judge did not seem to be buying Ted Rollins' claims about his assets. Here is what the judge wrote in one order:

Defendant is a member of the Rollins family, one of the wealthiest families in America. While he asserts that his monthly income is only $4,166.66 per month, that level of income is not consistent with the standard of living enjoyed by this family during the marriage. Defendant has been historically involved in a number of family businesses. He may be one of the heirs to the family fortune, which is estimated in the billions of dollars. Convincing evidence was presented concerning Defendant's involvement in these businesses and of personal expenses regularly being paid for certain of the family businesses.

The writing apparently was on the proverbial wall in South Carolina. A judge had seen evidence that Ted W. Rollins was worth a whole lot of money, and it looked like a final divorce order would reflect that.

What's a rich guy to do? Well, he can cause his wife and children to get kicked out of their house and watch them flee to another state where they have relatives. Then he can unlawfully sue his wife in that state and get a final divorce order that allows him to pay cut-rate figures for child support and alimony.

Who helped Ted Rollins pull this off? We will be raising that question in future posts, looking closely at the Bradley Arant law firm in Birmingham, which has represented Mr. Rollins and Campus Crest Communities in a number of legal matters. Attorneys Dawn Helms Sharff and Walter Sears have been particularly involved with Ted Rollins.

Bradley Arant, of course, is known as one of the largest and most conservative law firms in Alabama.

Those conservatives and their "family values." You've gotta love 'em.

(To be continued)


Rollins CS-41 Form

Here's How Wealthy Republicans Receive Unlawful Favors in Alabama Courts

Ted W. Rollins

Americans went to the polls last week and voted overwhelmingly for the Republican Party, which historically has favored the wealthy over everyday folks. Voters apparently were anxious to cure our economic and social ailments by putting the GOP in charge. You might want to file that one under "Be Careful What You Wish For."

It's not breaking news that moneyed interests have all sorts of advantages in our capitalistic system. But we've seen firsthand evidence that those advantages can extend even to our court system, which is supposed to ensure "equal protection" for all.

In fact, we've seen one case where a member of a wealthy Republican family received favors in an Alabama court that are downright unlawful, possibly criminal. In the wake of last week's GOP tsunami, it seems likely that such injustices only are going to increase.

Consider Rollins v. Rollins, a domestic-relations case that was filed in Shelby County, Alabama, where I live. In fact, this travesty took place in the same courthouse, in Columbiana, Alabama, where my legal headaches began.

We wrote recently about the "public disintegration of the Rollins family," an unfortunate tale that has been receiving plenty of ink in the Atlanta press. The Rollinses, after all, are one of America's richest families, thanks to their interest in Orkin Pest Control and other enterprises, including outdoor advertising, broadcasting, truck leasing, and more. Whenever you see that an entity is associated with Rollins Inc., you can rest assured that big money is involved.

So how did the Rollins family intersect with our little corner of the world here in Alabama? It started when Sherry Carroll Rollins filed for divorce in Greenville, South Carolina, from Ted W. Rollins, the son of John W. Rollins. John W. was one of two brothers who built the Rollins empire.

Campus Crest Communities, one of Ted W. Rollins' ventures, recently entered the New York Stock Exchange with an IPO estimated at $380 million. You can see that he is continuing the family tradition of dealing in big bucks.

Court records indicate that Sherry Rollins' divorce case, at first, was moving along in a normal fashion. A South Carolina judge had issued a temporary order that called for Ted Rollins to pay $3,355 a month in child support for the couple's two daughters, $5,000 a month in alimony, and continue paying the mortgage, taxes, and insurance on the marital home.

Records indicate that the mortgage was not paid, and Sherry Rollins and her children were forced from their home. Mrs. Rollins fled to Alabama, where her two sons from a previous marriage were living.

What happened next? Ted Rollins failed to pay the court-ordered alimony and child support, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. For you or me, that would mean we were in deep doo-doo.

What did it mean for Ted Rollins? Not much. He filed a lawsuit for divorce against his wife in Alabama--and Shelby County Judge Al Crowson actually allowed it. For anyone who's had a few days of Law School 101, that last sentence should shock the conscience. That's because such a transfer of a case across jurisdictional boundaries simply cannot be done.

It can be done, however, in GOP-controlled Alabama when your name is Ted W. Rollins--and you are part of one of America's richest families. It probably did not hurt that Ted Rollins had worked for years with Bradley Arant Boult and Cummings, one of the largest and most conservative law firms in Alabama.

In fact, Ted Rollins has especially close ties to Bradley Arant lawyers Dawn Helms Sharff and Walter Sears. Bradley Arant, of course, is home to Rob Campbell, son-in-law to Alabama Governor Bob Riley. The firm has received huge sums of state dollars during the Riley era, and we will be taking a close look at the firm's action in future posts--especially as they relate to Ted W. Rollins.

Why was it unlawful for Ted Rollins to move a divorce case from South Carolina, where it already was well under way, to Alabama? It's a simple matter of jurisdiction, which is supposed to be a serious matter under the law. Judges are not to take action on a case where they do not have jurisdiction. And even the most clod-headed of attorneys should know that. The lawyers at Bradley Arant certainly should know that.

Such fundamental matters are governed by all kinds of law. One of the most clear-cut Alabama cases is styled Wesson v. Wesson, 628 So. 2d 953 (Ala. Civ. App., 1993). The case states, in very clear language:

Once jurisdiction has attached in one court, that court has the exclusive right to continue its exercise of power until the completion of the case, and is only subject to appellate authority.

A lawyer for Sherry Rollins filed a Motion to Dismiss, correctly pointing out that the Alabama court had no jurisdiction and the case could not be heard in Shelby County. But Judge Al Crowson, who mysteriously retired as Rollins v. Rollins was winding down, ignored the motion and let the case move forward. (See Motion to Dismiss at the end of this post.)

Did Ted W. Rollins benefit from having his case heard in Alabama? Oh yes, indeed. Did his friends at Bradley Arant also benefit? Sure looks like it. And we will show you exactly how it happened.

(To be continued)


Rollins v. Rollins Dismiss

Voters Blame Obama for Bush's Wall Street Bailout

What happens when American voters, in large numbers, are out of touch with reality? We are about to find out, according to an intriguing analysis of the 2010 midterm elections. And it probably will not be pretty.

Exit polls indicate that one of the primary reasons many voters gave for shunning Democrats is President Barack Obama's association with the Wall Street bailout. Yes, that's the same Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) that was started by . . . George W. Bush, Obama's Republican predecessor.

That's just one of many head scratchers that Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin present in a New Republic study titled "Job Loss and Liberal Apathy: A New Interpretation of the 2010 Election Results."

After reading The New Republic piece, one could make a strong argument that the 2010 midterms are the most glaring example of irrational voting in American history. In essence, voters blamed Obama and Democrats for something that George W. Bush and Republicans did.

If the issues at hand were not so serious, one would be tempted to guffaw upon reading the Teixeira/Halpin piece. Instead, a rational person can only shake his head and wonder if our society has become so dysfunctional that our future is imperiled.

Consider this from Teixeira and Halpin:

More voters (35 percent) blamed Wall Street for today’s economic problems rather than President Bush (29 percent) or President Obama (23 percent). But these Wall Street-blaming voters supported Republicans by 56-42 percent. The Obama administration’s association with bailing out Wall Street bankers, who are heavily blamed for the bad economy, apparently had a negative effect on Democratic performance in this election.

Actually, there were signs before the election that this was going to happen. On August 12, CBS News produced an article titled "More Americans think Obama, Not Bush, Enacted Bank Bailouts, Poll Shows."
Reported CBS News:

Nearly half of Americans incorrectly think President Obama started the bank bailout program, otherwise known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), a new poll shows.

Just 34 percent of Americans surveyed by the Pew Research Center correctly said that TARP was enacted by the Bush administration. Almost half--47 percent--think Mr. Obama started the bank bailout, according to the survey, conducted July 1-5. There was no partisan divide on the issue.

What's the reality? CBS makes it clear:

The TARP program was created in 2008 to stabilize the financial system. The Treasury Department has committed more than $500 billion to more than 800 firms through the program. While Mr. Obama did not enact TARP, his administration has largely been responsible for administering it.

The facts are clear: TARP was created in 2008, and Obama did not take office until January 2009. Yet voters, many of them surely Tea Partiers, blamed Obama for a program that he did not create. That's like blaming Jimmy Carter for Watergate or Bill Clinton for Iran-Contra.

As CBS points out, the Obama administration has been saddled with trying to make TARP work--hence, it has been "associated" with the program. And reasonable folks certainly could debate how well Obama and Democrats have handled that task. But did Democrats create the program? Not even close. Did they cause the problems that led to TARP's creation in the first place? Nope.

Astute observers saw some time ago that TARP was going to be a political headache for Democrats. In early September, Brad Bannon of U.S. News and World Report, wrote "Bank Bailout Spawned Obama and Dems’ Tea Party Problem." From Bannon:

President Obama has almost no chance of getting Congress to approve the vital jobs initiatives he proposed this week. And the opposition to his initiatives, which are so vital to economic growth, is the residue of President Bush’s Temporary Assistance Rescue Program, which candidate Obama favored and the Democratic Congress approved. . . .

Barack Obama and congressional Democrats share in the blame for the opposition to vital economic programs that the country badly needs. The failure of Democrats to take a populist stand against Wall Street poisoned the well for President Obama’s economic agenda. When Democrats bit into the corporate apple in the fall of 2008, they created many of the problems which they are dealing with now.

The bottom line? Obama mishandled the political fallout from the bailout. But many voters who have placed their faith in Republicans actually believe Obama started the program. It can't be good for our republic when that many people are so wildly misinformed.

What else do we learn from Teixeira and Halpin? Get this: White working-class voters went overwhelmingly for Republicans. In fact, it appears that demographic, more than any other, is responsible for the result:

The most significant shift against the Democrats occurred among the white working class—defined here as whites without a four year college degree. Congressional Democrats lost this group by 10 points in both 2006 and 2008. Yet this deficit ballooned to 29 points in 2010—a deficit even larger than 22 point margin Democrats suffered in 1994. That created an awfully big hole for Democrats to crawl out of, especially given relatively depressed turnout among Democratic-leaning constituencies.

Raise your hand if you can think of anything Republicans have done for working class folks, of any color, especially over the past 30 years--when the Party of Lincoln evolved into the Party of Haley Barbour.

How does The New Republic sum it up?

What’s interesting is who voted for the Republicans and why. Independent voters, white working-class voters, seniors, and men broke heavily against the Democrats due to the economy. Turnout levels were also unusually low among young and minority voters and unusually high among groups that lean right, contributing to a midterm electorate that was extremely favorable to Republican candidates.

Was there any good news for Democrats? Maybe it's this:

The election did not appear to be a repudiation of the new health care reform law. About as many said they wanted to see it remain as is or be expanded (47 percent) as said they wanted it repealed (48 percent). Nor did it appear that voters were embracing the GOP position on tax cuts. A 52-percent majority of voters wanted to either keep only the Bush tax cuts for those under $250,000 or let them all expire compared to 39 percent who wanted to keep all the tax cuts.

Political commentators are notoriously prone to over-interpreting election results. Strategic and policy decisions certainly made some difference in the magnitude of losses, but in a horrible economy it’s difficult to escape the reality that Democrats were poised to lose a significant number of seats no matter what they did.

All of this makes me miss the late, great George Carlin. I would love to hear his take on this absurd election. To my knowledge, it was Carlin who first raised the notion that many Americans are too stupid to be entrusted with a task as important as voting. It was Carlin who uttered these immortal words:

If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks.'

We could use a few belly laughs. So let's enjoy a classic George Carlin rant about voting. These words really resonate today:

What If the BP Oil Well Had Still Been Gushing On Election Day?

Several million words probably have been written or spoken about the results of Tuesday's midterm elections. My favorite piece, so far, comes from Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post, who opines that the Republican tsunami was driven mainly by a sudden realization from America's white masses: "Dear God, we've got a black man in the White House!"

I suspect Robinson is awfully close to the truth, so I couldn't help but wonder, "Given that Barack Obama, indeed, is black, is there anything Democrats could have done differently that might have altered the outcome?"

Regular readers know I think Obama made a huge mistake with his "look forward, not backwards" approach to the apparent crimes of the George W. Bush administration. Be that as it may (as lawyers like to say), here is maybe the No. 1 political mistake Democrats made: They allowed the BP oil well to be capped before the election.

Would the election have been different if the BP well had still been spewing in the Gulf of Mexico when voters went to the polls on Tuesday? Given the somewhat anecdotal evidence we've seen in Alabama, I think the outcome would have been radically different. Heck, the Democrats might have even gained seats in both the House and Senate and picked up any number of governorships.

Why do I say this? Well, our Legal Schnauzer Philosophy Department has developed a new political theory. We call it the "White People Will Automatically Vote Republican Unless Something So Godawful Happens That It Shakes Them Out of Their Stupor And Causes Them To Think Democrats Aren't a Bunch Of Commies After All" Theory.

Our theory is based on the notion that the white electorate has become like a computer with default settings. Their default setting for voting is set on "GOP"--unless something shakes them out of their comfort zone and causes them to say, "Dammit, now I've got to go into preferences and figure out how to change the default setting so that I can possibly vote for that other party . . . what's it called again?"

We think the Gulf oil disaster might have been such an event--if BP and the government hadn't figured out how to cap it a few weeks back.

Consider what happened here in Alabama while BP crude was washing up on our pristine shores. We are one of the most grotesquely right-wing states in the country, but even here, people seemed to start thinking, "You know, maybe it's not such a good idea to elect Republicans who turn around and let oil companies do pretty much as they please in the Gulf of Mexico, with precious little oversight."

While the oil was spewing, two political events took place in Alabama that indicated people were fed up with corporatist candidates who seemed likely to cozy up to Big Oil. In the Democratic primary for governor, Ron Sparks knocked off corporate suck-up Artur Davis in a landslide. And in the Republican primary, Dr. Robert Bentley stunned Bradley Byrne, who had been the hand-picked successor to GOP governor Bob Riley and the favorite of moneyed interests across the state.

Bentley beat Byrne in a runoff on July 13. Two days later, BP announced that the well had been capped. We still don't have a full grasp on the environmental and economic harm that has been caused by the gusher. But it's now roughly 2 1/2 months since the well was capped. And based on Tuesday's election, it's as if voters forgot the disaster ever happened.

BP once again is making profits, and the public no longer seems to care about the issues that caused the well to blow in the first place. There's no telling how close we came to having the Gulf of Mexico ruined beyond repair--and there is no question that lax regulation promoted by the Bush administration helped allow it to happen. But the well was capped, and in a classic case of "out of sight, out of mind," voters decided to jump on the GOP train once again.

The whole episode reminds us of the fundamental differences between Republican and Democrats. If Republicans had been in charge and seen a political advantage in allowing the BP gusher to continue, there is no way in hell the well would have been capped until after Nov. 2. An environmental disaster like we've never seen before? The ruination of an irreplaceable natural resource? Who cares? There is political hay to be made--and we're going to make it.

A Democrat, however, was in the White House. And like most Democrats, Barack Obama has a functioning conscience. And like many Democrats, Obama can be politically tone deaf. So what did he do? He did the right thing, dammit! He allowed the well to be plugged, and now we've got at least two years of Republican-fueled dysfunction to look forward to.

Obama could have come up with some reason for delaying the capping of the well. A few million fish would have died, several hundred thousand people probably would have gotten sick, and God only knows what other dreadful events would have happened. But Obama, rightfully, could have laid it all at the feet of Republicans--and sat back and relaxed while Democrats romped on Nov. 2.

With the election safely tucked away, the well could have magically been capped on, say, Nov. 12. It could have been the kind of autumn surprise that George H.W. Bush helped pull on Jimmy Carter back in 1980. Obama and Democrats could have reaped huge political dividends.

Speaking of Jimmy Carter, he probably is the most ethical, moral, and genuinely religious president in our nation's history. Now Obama is following him on the same moral high ground--the kind that leads to political defeat.

When will Democrats ever learn? You don't get anywhere in this country by doing the right thing!

The Dixiecrats Are Gone, But Their Influence Lives on in the 2010 Midterm Elections

Boutwell Auditorium

Many pundits attributed yesterday's midterm election results to the rise of the modern Tea Party movement. But a political scientist argues that the Republican advances of 2010 have their roots in 1948. That notion hits close to home because those roots of 62 years ago were planted in my home city, Birmingham, Alabama. And it reminds us that white resentment over integration and associated issues never has gone away.

Wilmer J. Leon III argues in an essay at Truthout that the Republican uprising of 2010 is just an extension of the Dixiecrat movement that split the Democratic Party in 1948. Leon, a political scientist at Howard University, says Tea Partiers are Dixiecrats dressed up in new clothing.

No one should be surprised that modern-day Dixiecrats would rise up just two years after the election of America's first black president. Writes Leon:

When you take a step back and look at our political landscape from a broader historical perspective, what you see is that our current dysfunctional situation is not a recent development, but the culmination of a conservative backlash that can be traced back to 1948 and the rise of the States' Rights Democratic Party, which quickly became known as the Dixiecrats.

What drove the Dixiecrats of 1948? The answer is simple, writes Leon:

The Dixiecrat Party was formed after 35 Democratic delegates from Mississippi and Alabama walked out of the 1948 Democratic National Convention. These delegates were protesting the adoption of Sen. Hubert Humphrey's (D-Minnesota) proposal of civil rights planks calling for racial integration and the reversal of Jim Crow laws in the party platform.

For a progressive living in Alabama, the Dixiecrats are like the crazy uncle we try to forget is living in our attic. We've written before about the Dixiecrats and noted their transformation into the Goldwater supporters of 1964, the Reaganites of 1980, and the Tea Party of 2010.

This is history that rises up to our back door because the Dixiecrats held their convention in 1948 at Boutwell Auditorium in downtown Birmingham, about 15 miles from where I sit writing this post. What was that convention about? Leon describes it:

They met in Birmingham, Alabama, and nominated Gov. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina for president. They opposed abolition of the poll tax, while endorsing segregation and the "racial integrity" of each race. Their campaign slogan was "Segregation Forever!" and their platform also included the call for "states' rights." Like the modern day Tea Party, the Dixiecrats called for freedom from governmental interference in an individual's or organization's prerogative to do business with whomever they wanted. Thurmond received more than one million votes in the 1948 election, won four states and 39 electoral votes.

Today's Tea Party message is cloaked mainly in fiscal terms, with concerns about the "deficit" and "out of control spending." But Leon says something darker is going on:

The Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights report "Tea Party Nationalism: A Critical Examination of the Tea Party Movement and the Size, Scope and Function of Its National Factions" says from the outset, "... the majority of Movement supporters are people of good will." But integrated into their calls for a reduction of the budget deficit and smaller government are concerns about race, sexual orientation, national identity, national birth rights and who qualifies to be an American. As the Tea Party Movement has taken shape amid this fiscal rhetoric; racist, white nationalist, anti-immigrant, homophobic and anti-Semitic elements have found their way into the "Movement."

Tea Party's keynote Sarah Palin calls for "states rights" and says, "it's pretty simple. It's a smaller, smarter government, not growing government to control more of our lives and our businesses and make decisions for us." This sounds a lot like a page taken right from the Dixiecrat playbook.

Yes it does. And after yesterday's election results, it makes us wonder how much progress we've really made in 62 years.

November 2, 2010: The Day Our Democracy Teetered?

If our democracy someday collapses, historians surely will sift through the wreckage to find a date that might have signaled what was to come. It looks like November 2, 2010, might be the date they will be looking for.

Surveys show that Americans will go to the polls today and vote overwhelmingly for Republicans, possibly restoring GOP leadership in the U.S. House--and maybe even the Senate. That's like taking the guy who ransacked your house and supporting him for sheriff.

If Republicans indeed make major advances in today's midterm elections, it will be a colossal failure of both political parties and the American electorate. We fear that a democracy infected with such irrational thinking might not be long for this world.

How nutty is this talk of a possible GOP sweep? From 2000 to 2008, George W. Bush ran one of the most inept and corrupt administrations in American history. He inherited peace and prosperity from Democrat Bill Clinton and turned them into war and waste. The Bush White House failed on almost every substantive issue you can think of--the economy, foreign affairs, domestic security, justice, the environment. Bush, with the help of his fellow Republicans and conservative Democrats, brought our financial system to the edge of collapse and unleashed the worst economy since the Great Depression.

When Bush's reign mercifully ended in 2008, Americans wisely determined it was time to put adults in charge, ushering Barack Obama into the White House and putting Democrats in control of both houses in Congress.

After two years of tepid leadership from Obama, Democrats can point to at least one major achievement--they helped avoid a complete economic disaster that almost certainly would have ensued if Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin were in charge.

The Democrats should have accomplished more. But avoiding a second Great Depression is, in itself, a major accomplishment. Unfortunately, Obama and company have failed to make that case to the American people.

That's why this is a failure of both parties. The Republican Party has devolved into such a dysfunctional mess that it is incapable of governing. Democrats, meanwhile, continue to specialize in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Obama reminds me of a relief pitcher who entered a baseball game with a 14-2 lead. Fearful of challenging hitters, he decided to nibble on the corners. That caused him to walk hitters, and combined with a few big hits from the other side, he saw his lead dwindle to 14-11. Today, the other team is about to tie the game--and maybe even take the lead.

I've heard about a pitching coach who would visit the mound when one of his charges was afraid to challenge hitters and offer this bit of advice: "Babe Ruth is dead. Throw the f-----g ball over the plate!"

Yes, Babe Ruth is dead. And so is the Republican Party as a governing entity. But Barack Obama refused to throw dirt on their grave.

If today turns into a disaster for Democrats, the seeds for it probably were planted before Obama even took office. Here is how we reported it in an earlier post about Scott Brown's U.S. Senate victory in Massachusetts:

We would suggest that the seeds of last night's fiasco for Democrats were planted much earlier than that--on January 11, 2009. That's the date that ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked President-Elect Barack Obama about the possible appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate crimes of the George W. Bush administration.

Obama replied by saying that he was inclined to "look forward as opposed to looking backwards," indicating that he was willing to give Bush criminals a free pass. It was that show of weakness, buttressed by similar statements that Obama has made since then, that many Massachusetts residents probably remembered as they went to polling places yesterday.

We suspect that Obama's refusal to take a principled stand on matters of justice was the No. 1 reason Democrats lost a seat that Kennedy had held for almost half a century.

Obama's refusal to take a principled stand on matters of justice, his refusal to hold the Bush administration accountable for its myriad crimes, probably will cost Democrats again today.

We tend to think of CNBC's Chris Matthews as a pompous windbag. But we agree with Matthews' assessment that Obama has had two major failings. (See video below.):

* He campaigned as an "inclusive" candidate but has governed as an elitist;

* He failed to adequately explain to the American people how we got into our current fix--and what we need to do to get out of it. Lincoln did it in the Civil War. Franklin Roosevelt did it in the 1930s. Obama, Matthews correctly states, has failed to "take people along" with him.

Obama and his fellow Democrats had mountains of evidence that the Bush administration was a monumental failure--and bold action was needed to get us out of a hole the GOP spent eight years digging.  But Democrats, other than Bill Clinton, failed to make that case. And now they are in the pathetic position of hoping that polls under-represented likely voters who have given up land-line phones and use only cell phones. Here is how election analyst Nate Silver explains the "cell phone effect":

This one is pretty simple, really: a lot of American adults (now about one-quarter of them) have ditched landlines and rely exclusively on mobile phones, and a lot of pollsters don’t call mobile phones. Cellphone-only voters tend to be younger, more urban, and less white — all Democratic demographics — and a study by Pew Research suggests that the failure to include them might bias the polls by about 4 points against Democrats, even after demographic weighting is applied.

This race should not have come down to that; it should not even be close. Conventional wisdom holds that the party in control of the White House always loses seats in the next midterm election. First, that conventional wisdom does not always hold true:

Do Presidents Always Get "Shellacked" in Midterm Elections?

Second, it certainly should not have held true in November 2010. Had Democrats made the case that the George W. Bush administration was an unmitigated disaster and it would take time to recover from it--an incredibly easy case to make--they should have actually gained seats across the board.

We've established that both parties have failed us, so what about the American people. In the past, when our country has been in a vulnerable position, we have found ways to look forward, to take progressive action even if it meant enduring some "growing pains." In 1964, with the country facing a possible crisis in race relations, Americans voted overwhelming for Democrat Lyndon Johnson and his plans to ensure basic civil rights for blacks.

We are facing an economic crisis today, one that has been years in the making and is nowhere near resolved. And yet voters probably will go to the polls and vote for the very people who caused the problems in the first place.

That kind of irrational thinking does not bode well for our democracy.

The Best Lawyer Joke Ever!

I recently started reading a new book called Our Corrupt Legal System: Why Everyone Is a Victim (Except Rich Criminals).

Regular readers will understand immediately why I would be interested in a book with a title like that. But I'm happy to report that the book, by Australian journalist Evan Whitton, has much more going for it than a captivating title. It is an insightful and scathing critique of the common-law adversarial justice system, which began in Great Britain and spread to its colonies, including the United States and Canada.

To top it off, Whitton includes the best lawyer joke we've ever heard.

What is the crux of Whitton's argument? He says the British adversarial system has failed us and should be replaced with an inquisitorial model that prevails in much of Europe. Whitton provides a simple chart that shows how the two systems stack up:

                                                Investigative                      Adversary
Seeks truth                               Yes                                   No
Conceals evidence                    No                                    Yes
In charge of evidence             Judges                               Lawyers
Length of hearings                 About a day                       Months
Conviction rates                     95 %                                50 %
Innocent in prison                     Rare                                 1-5 %

The Age newspaper of Australia recently presented a profile of Whitton and examined his latest work:

Whitton has spent 30 years covering crime, corruption and courts, using a keen eye, an inquisitive mind and rare research talents to produce unique essays that shine lights into dark places. His opinions are backed by facts, and the former journalist of the year has concluded our court system is irreparably broken.

Even more startlingly, he has discovered there is something morally lower than a working hack from the press: criminal lawyers. It would appear he believes such creatures think that Integrity is a small island in the South Pacific and Scruples a board game played following after-dinner mints.

Whitton holds lawyers in even lower esteem than I do. No wonder I like this guy. And he has a prescription for what ails our sickly justice system:

He argues in his new book Our Corrupt Legal System, Where Everyone is a Victim (Except Rich Criminals) that the British adversarial system has failed and we should move to the European inquisitorial model.

He says the European system is cleaner and less open to abuse than our present process, which is unnecessarily complicated and designed not to discover but to hide the truth. He believes lawyers, judges and politicians (many of them former lawyers) are wedded to a process that is too expensive and fails too often.

He writes that the European model empowers judges to find evidence and discourages lawyers from concealing it. Trials are quicker and more just.

Whitton has a sense of humor about the whole corrupt enterprise:

''The adversary system is biased against people in business, industry, medicine and the media and in favour of criminals,'' Whitton writes. ''The bias makes business for trial lawyers and the rule of law a joke in the worst possible taste.''

Lawyers work for their clients and routinely ignore facts that do not suit their arguments, he says. ''Controlling evidence enables them to omit the damaging bits; spin out the pre-trial and trial process; procure enough pelf to retire comfortably, if they choose, to the social status of untrained, uninformed and passive judge.

''Judges, of course, do the decent thing: they try to stay awake.''

Oh, and about that lawyer joke . . .

How do you save a lawyer from drowning?

Shoot him before he hits the water.