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Keep the Change: Obama Backs Bush's Political Prisoner Operation PDF Print E-mail
Written by Chris Floyd   
Wednesday, 08 July 2009 16:25
We all know about the vaunted -- not to mention shameless -- "continuity" between the Bush and Obama administrations in foreign policy and "national security," with Bush's generals, and even Bush's Pentagon honcho, still running -- and expanding -- the Terror War under Barack Obama's orders, while he also wages legal war in the courts to uphold Bush's authoritarian perversions of the Constitution, and defend the war criminals in Bush's gulag -- some of whom Obama has elevated to even greater heights of power.

But surely there is some real "change" going on elsewhere in government, isn't there? How about at the throughly rotted Justice Department, where Bush cronies turned federal law into a partisan weapon, even jailing opposition political figures on trumped-up charges, like the worst kind of third-rate, tinpot tyranny? Surely Obama and his highly progressive Attorney General, Eric Holder, are going to clean out the fetid swamp of lawlessness at Justice, aren't they?

Er, no.

As Scott Horton notes at Harper's, the Obama Justice Department has just fired a courageous federal attorney who had sent a letter to the highly progressive Holder detailing more of the unbelievably brazen machinations of Karl Rove's cronies who put former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman in prison on specious charges after a trial before a highly partisan, interest-conflicted judge. As Horton reports:

In a nine-page June 1, 2009 letter to her boss, Attorney General Eric Holder, Tamarah Grimes, a member of the Justice Department team that prosecuted former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, itemized an astonishing list of acts of misconduct by her colleagues as they developed what they called “the Big Case.”

  • [These included]: Two key witnesses were cajoled, coached, and pressured to change their testimony to better support the charges. This specifically included the key evidence given by one witness on which Siegelman was convicted. But, as Grimes notes, the witness in fact had no recollection of the events–he was pressured to recount them in a way that suited the prosecutors....
  • Members of the prosecution team communicated directly with a pro-prosecution juror while the case was pending and afterwards...
  • Every aspect of the case was overseen by U.S. Attorney Canary. She had nominally recused herself from the case because her husband, a friend of Karl Rove and the most prominent G.O.P. elections advisor in Alabama, was advising a campaign against Siegelman for which the prosecution provided essential grist.

Eight days after submitting these meticulously documented complaints, many of which echo concerns stated by others in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Montgomery, Grimes received a reply of sorts. She was fired. Grimes notes in a press release that she was informed of her dismissal in a letter from Terry Derden of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys.

Read the whole post for more dirty details. Horton goes on to note that just as Obama has promoted top Bush officials intimately involved in CIA torture, he has also retained "the clever consigliere of the Bush Justice Department, who amazingly continue to control all aspects of the case involving Siegelman five months into a new Democratic administration (including Leura Canary, who is still on the job in Montgomery)." As Horton puts it: "The Justice Department’s conduct looks increasingly like a Sicilian mob group: you commit the crimes the bosses order and you keep quiet about it, or the consequences will be fearsome."

That's very true; but it doesn't just apply to the Justice Department. The whole imperial court is run more and more like a crime syndicate, with periodic battles to determine which faction will be in charge of divvying up the loot. The Chicago gang has temporarily supplanted the Texas boys, but both pay obesiance to the big bosses back East, with the Bush-Obama "bailout" plans funneling trillions of dollars of public money to the mob kings of Wall Street. And of course, in classic gangster fashion, our bipartisan foreign policy elite use murder, violence -- and the constant threat of murder and violence -- to impose their will on the global neighborhood.

In any case, Don Siegelman remains a political prisoner of the United States of America -- unlike former Republican senator Ted Stevens, whom the Obama Justice Department swiftly released due to prosecutorial misconduct that comes nowhere near the brazen fixing of Canary and her crew.

As it (almost) saith in the Scriptures: They cry 'change, change,' but there is no change.
Comments (8)add comment
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Joan Brunwasser said:

0
 how right you are
Those of us who have been covering the Siegelman case were initially hopeful that Obama would redress this case and the many other, similar ones. We fully expected him to put the justice back into the DoJ. It will take a heck of a lot of public pressure to get done what should have been a no-brainer.
 
July 10, 2009 | url
Votes: +1

Magginkat said:

0
 RE: Keep the Change: Obama Backs Bush's Political Prisoner Operation
Your description of the Obama Admin and the so-called Justice Dept is right on the money.
Don Siegelman is most likely the only honest governor that Alabama has had in generations. The thugs who compiled the phony case against him and the judge who holds a grudge should be prosecuted & imprisoned for life with no parole.

Some of the people who run our government these days make one almost wish for the days of the old west when a good hanging would put a stop to the corruption.... at least for a while.

 
July 10, 2009 | url
Votes: +0

Sean O'Neil said:

Sean O'Neil
 the obnoxious fleecing of America continues unabated
here we see the pinnacle of what those in Federal power actually want -- full immunity from prosecution for the foul crimes they commit.

clearly Barack Hussein Obama is no different than George W Bush when it comes to which masters he serves. the apparent "change" -- one from cowboy/fratboy to miraculous mulatto -- has been no change at all.

Eric Holder is like Condi Rice or Colin Powell -- superficially Black, but in the soul an angry and selfish White person.

the same is true for Mr Obama.
 
July 10, 2009 | url
Votes: +0

Nikki Thomas said:

Nikki Thomas
 Hypocrisy
This says a lot about the hypocrisy of an Obama who basically ran against George Bush in the 2008 election although his name wasn't on the ballot.

-Nikki-

selling photography 101



 
July 10, 2009 | url
Votes: +0

Debbieaussie said:

Debbie Kimlin
 ...
"hope" a word that in the context of US(and therefore the world) politics now needs scare quotes. So very sad.
 
July 10, 2009
Votes: +0

DeanTaylor said:

0
 Chomsky Dispelling Corporate Media Myths: the Persistence of Memory...
In his current on-line article (Chomsky.info), Chomsky clears through the MSM babble (including that of the duplicitous Paper of Record) and examines the evidence. Tom Friedman and the New York Times: to withold SOME information pertinent to the issue--this is TO LIE.

"June 2009 was marked by a number of significant events, including two elections in the Middle East: in Lebanon, then Iran. The events are significant, and the reactions to them, highly instructive.
The election in Lebanon was greeted with euphoria. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman gushed that he is 'a sucker for free and fair elections,' so 'it warms my heart to watch' what happened in Lebanon in an election that 'was indeed free and fair and not like the pretend election you are about to see in Iran, where only candidates approved by the Supreme Leader can run. No, in Lebanon it was the real deal, and the results were fascinating: President Barack Obama defeated President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.' Crucially, 'a solid majority of all Lebanese -- Muslims, Christians and Druse -- voted for the March 14 coalition led by Saad Hariri,' the US-backed candidate and son of the murdered ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, so that 'to the extent that anyone came out of this election with the moral authority to lead the next government, it was the coalition that wants Lebanon to be run by and for the Lebanese -- not for Iran, not for Syria and not for fighting Israel.' We must give credit where it is due for this triumph of free elections (and of Washington): 'Without George Bush standing up to the Syrians in 2005 -- and forcing them to get out of Lebanon after the Hariri killing -- this free election would not have happened. Mr. Bush helped create the space. Power matters. Mr. Obama helped stir the hope. Words also matter.'
Two days later Friedman's views were echoed by Eliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign relations, formerly a high official of the Reagan and Bush I administrations. Under the heading 'Lebanon's Triumph, Iran's Travesty,' Abrams compared these 'twin tests of [US] efforts to spread democracy to the Muslim world." The lesson is clear: 'What the United States should be promoting is not elections, but free elections, and the voting in Lebanon passed any realistic test. ... the majority of Lebanese have rejected Hezbollah's claim that it is not a terrorist group but a 'national resistance' ... The Lebanese had a chance to vote against Hezbollah, and took the opportunity.'
Reactions were similar throughout the mainstream. There are, however, a few flies in the ointment."

full article: http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20090709.htm







 
July 11, 2009
Votes: +0

Marcus said:

0
 rivals
Do mob leaders go to such great lengths to clean up for their "rivals" once assuming power? To say Obomba is even in a different crime family than Bush is an exaggeration to me. He kept the Secretary of Defense for the love of christ. Try mentioning that tidbit to Obombamaniacs and I promise you many of them will simply refuse to believe it, that Gates is still the SOD, rather than bothering with equivocations. Obombers are the sickest people on the planet. Guillotine or bust.
 
July 11, 2009
Votes: +0

yankee 30 said:

0
 ...
"New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman gushed..."

Thomas Friedman is a flatulent misfuk. How much gushing did he do over the free and fair election in Palestine in 2006?

Undoubtedly he gushed revolutionary euphoria over the election of Saakashvili in 2004.

Apparently it warms his heart to watch the rot set in.
 
July 11, 2009
Votes: +0

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