Don Siegelman Appeal..Last year Don Siegelman spent the holidays in a cold and lonely cell far from home.

It could happen again.

Don was not a wealthy man to begin with and now through no fault of his own, he owes millions of dollars in legal fees. Having no income during the nine months he was in prison, plus not being able to work full-time since his release, has caused financial stress for his family.

A donation of $5, $10, $50 or more from any of your readers can help him get get past the hard times he and his family are going through - and it will let him know that we still care.

You can donate to Don Siegelman's legal defense fund here, via paypal
http://www.donsiegelman.net/donations_page_paypal.html or by sending a check by mail.


Siegelman Legal Defense Fund
P. O. Box 430116
Birmingham, Alabama 35243


Also, writes Don Siegelman, "the U S Congress must be encouraged to vote Rove in Contempt to uncover the truth! Please log on now to www.ContemptForRove.com to send your message to Congress."


If anyone on this list has a user account at the Daily Kos, you can supportthis fund raiser by voting it up so it has a shot at hitting the rec list.Thanks, Bruce Wilsonhttp://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/25/65640/261/1015/666139

Statement From Don Siegelman]
I am now engaged in two important fights: One for my own freedom and the other to see that Karl Rove in brought to justice. I need your financial help to keep these fights going.

The government has reportedly spent over 40 million dollars to prosecute me. I have pulled virtually everything out of my life's saving to fight these false charges. I need you to give generously. My Legal Defense Trust Fund can take donations of corporate, PAC, foundation or personal money of any size.

While I am fighting for my own freedom, the U S Congress must be encouraged to vote Rove in Contempt to uncover the truth! Please log on now to www.ContemptForRove.com to send your message to Congress.

This fight must be won to unravel the injustices that have been perpetrated against our democracy.

With your help, Karl Rove and his accomplices will be held accountable for their abuse of power.

Thank you,

Don Siegelman
Governor of Alabama 1999-2003

From 1999 to 2003 Don Siegelman was the popular Democratic Governor of Alabama... until what a bipartisan array of politicians including Wesley Clarke and Republican Former US Attorney General Richard Thornburgh have criticized as a politically motivated effort, tied to Karl Rove and also connected to former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, that convicted Siegelman of dubious felony charges and sent him to federal prison. [ you can read and watch CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Time, Rolling Stone and New York Times coverage of Don Siegelman's story, at Don's website ]

A bipartisan group of 52 former states attorneys general have filed a legal brief on Siegelman's behalf, in the appeals case to come before the 11th Circuit Court this December 9th.

But even if Don Siegelman is exonerated rather than thrown back in federal prison the legal fees for Don's years-long legal battle has consumed his entire retirement saving account plus an additional borrowed $900,000.

As Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane eloquently write,

For most Americans, the very concept of political prisoners is remote and exotic, a practice that is associated with third-world dictatorships but is foreign to the American tradition. The idea that a prominent politician -- a former state governor -- could be tried on charges that many observers consider to be trumped-up, convicted in a trial that involved numerous questionable procedures, and then hauled off to prison in shackles immediately upon sentencing would be almost unbelievable.

But there is such a politician: Don Siegelman, Democratic governor of Alabama from 1999 to 2003. Starting just a few weeks after he took office, Siegelman was targeted by an investigation launched by his political opponents and escalated from the state to the federal level by Bush Administration appointees in 2001. [full Raw Story investigation with timeline, on the Siegelman prosecution]

http://www.donsiegelman.net/Pages/MAIN/aboutdon.html

Impeach the Little Bastard - Because people deserve to know the truth

We! Magazine

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

Republicans have abused the power of the Presidential pardon since Gerald Ford used it to preemptively pardon the criminal Richard Nixon. It was argued that Americans, with their delicate sensitivities, weren’t mature enough to cope with the idea that an elected official might face a fair and public trial for crimes he may have committed or had committed while in office.
If the JFK assassination undermined American innocence (and Gerald Ford tried to spin fairy tales about that, too), then the Nixon pardon undermined American confidence in themselves as a place where justice could be served.

Lightning struck again some 18 years later, when George Bush used the power of the pardon to kick apart the case being pursued against the criminal Ronald Reagan, and in which some scummy little felons and traitors such as Oliver North and G. Gordon Liddy got to run free and sneer loudly at the country that gave them their undeserved liberty.

Losing in Vietnam didn’t do nearly as much damage to American self-respect as the sight of G. Gordon Liddy braying into his radio microphone that people should shoot federal agents in the head as a way of demonstrating their Liddy-style patriotism.

A lot of people watched this, and watched right wingers openly gloating over it, and wondered what the fuck had gone wrong with America.

And then, for the next eight years, the same vicious and amoral clowns who guffawed over the sight of Nixon lazing in the California sun and tried to make a tin hero out of the moronic Reagan, tried to destroy the Clinton presidency by impeaching him over trivia.

Now, we have a crowd that makes the Nixon scummies and the Reagan sleazers look like pikers. For the past eight years, we’ve seen the most criminal and anti-American administration in history. They haven’t settled for third rate burglaries and selling arms to terrorists, no. They stole an election to get in, and then proceeded to spend years looting the national treasury, lied the country into a war whose real aim was to abet in that looting, let terrorists attack the country, refused a serious investigation into it, and used it to pass measures that slashed the rights of Americans while politicizing the judicial branch of the government, and attempted to establish one-party rule, supported by a corrupted judiciary and a crooked voting system.
And while they were at it, they committed war crimes, and gave America the same reputation the old Soviet Union used to have, of torture and unjust imprisonments without trial and secret prison camps.

They robbed the country blind, and humiliated and debased it in the process. They didn’t govern America; they didn’t even rule it. They simply raped it.

And now, mercifully, the reign of these vicious, anti-American little Republican scumbags is coming to an end.

But will any of them ever pay for their crimes? Trillions of dollars have gone missing from the common weal, either sunk into wars for profit, siphoned off to the undeserving rich, or evaporated in the implosion of a capitalist bubble that was given all the internal air pressure it wanted. Three thousand people died in 9/11, and another 5,000 Americans have died in Afghanistan and Iraq. We’ll probably never know how many died in Iraq just for living there, or how many were herded off to American gulags to die of torture, or spend years wondering if they would ever get a trial, let alone ever be set free. Elections were suborned, and Clinton was hardly the only public servant to be attacked by the Republican slime-and-destroy machine, now in the paws of the nation’s district attorneys. At least one governor was framed and sent to jail. In today’s paper, there was a story of a indictment of Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales in which the judge, another corrupt, bent Republican stooge, actually tried to dismiss the charges before they were legally filed.

What the fuck is wrong with America, you ask? It got taken over by corrupt, amoral Republican crooks, and nobody has the balls to make them pay for their crimes. And now, they are just clinging on, hoping that the entire country won’t collapse before the mess is foisted off on President-elect Obama, and trying like hell to blame him for the situation they created.
And while they are doing that, they are waiting for Putsch’s preemptive pardons, the ones that ensure that they will never have to face their responsibility for the millions of lives lost and the trillions of dollars squandered or stolen. They’ll never have to stand in open court and explain why they insisted Saddam had nukes when he didn’t, or why NORAD was ordered to stand down on the morning of 9/11, or why Governor Siegleman was sent to jail, or why Putsch suddenly fired all those Federal attorneys and replaced them with ones willing to investigate Democratic candidates for office.

The Republicans, who laughingly describe themselves as the party of personal responsibility, desperately need those presidential pardons issued preemptively so they can skate, never pay a dime, and crow that if they were criminals, why weren’t they ever put on trial?
If that doesn’t sicken you, then you are morally bankrupt or worse, a Republican.
That’s why it is so important that impeachment proceedings be started now in the Democratic House of Representatives against George W. Bush. He won’t actually be impeached in the 58 days remaining before he leaves office, making an impeachment moot. There isn’t time.

But the Constitution, the one which grants Presidents the power to pardon, has one exception: A president may pardon, “except in cases of impeachment.” As I read it, it means that not only may a president not pardon any high public officials who are facing impeachment, but it means that a president who is facing the impeachment process may not use it in any way that could undermine the process against himself.

Putsch will abuse it and use it to take himself and his cronies off the hook. Don’t doubt that for an instant.

And don’t doubt that it will be another emotional and moral body blow to Americans, who had just regained a little self-respect and a lot of hope from electing Obama and throwing off the Republican reign of sleaze.

It isn’t just a matter of vindictiveness against Putsch, although personally I would be delighted if he spent the rest of his natural life rotting away in a jail cell. It’s because America, which has always prided itself on justice, and avenging wrongs, has faced terrible injustice and wrongs for the past eight years, and needs the opportunity to address it through rule of law, in open court, and by the standards of the civilized world.

Don’t let Putsch get away with his crimes. Impeach the little bastard now, and make him eventually face a jury to explain himself.

I'm The One They're Talking About

With all the vitriol I've been hearing from the right-wingers of late, I can't help but recognize myself as the target of their vicious attacks. So I thought I'd take this opportunity to out myself, just so they know who it is they're spending so much time talking about.

Yes, I'm that American-hating broad who believes in life, liberty and equality for all Americans, not just those of a "socially acceptable" color, religion, address, pay scale or political affiliation.

I'm that leftie pro-choicer who thinks that every child should be a wanted child, and that the ultimate decision to give birth should be the difficult yet intensely personal decision of the woman whose body and life is involved. I also believe that people who really care about saving babies might want to think about the ones who are already born – especially the ones born in places our government is currently blowing off the map, or might plan to in future.

I'm that infamous anti-Christian who actually believes that I am my Brother's Keeper – and that includes supporting legal immigration and social safety-nets that provide food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless, care for the sick – you know, all that yadda-yadda stuff that Christ used to preach about back when people who called themselves Christians had a passing familiarity with his teachings. I also believe that just because Christ was tortured to death doesn't mean he was promoting the idea as something we are free to do to others with his approval.

I'm that unscrupulous libertine who has deluded myself into thinking that if the gay couple down the street get married, they're not going to destroy every heterosexual marriage in the neighborhood – and by the way, I've yet to hear a coherent argument as to how that would happen if they did.

I'm that unpatriotic wench who thinks that sporting a flag pin in your lapel doesn't mean squat if you're wearing it while supporting pay-cuts for the troops, or budget cuts to veterans' care, and more tax cuts for millionaires – or, for that matter, calling anyone and everyone who disagrees with you "unpatriotic" because you really have nothing of substance to say, but just love the sound of your own meaningless rhetoric blasted over the airwaves.

I'm that blatant sexist who thinks that if someone like Sarah Palin has nothing more to offer than being "hot" while seeking the office of the vice presidency, she'd better have something more in her training bra than a wad of Kleenex – like actual knowledge of the responsibilities of the job, for starters.

I'm that socialist leftie who thinks people should reap the financial rewards of their own hard work while the CEOs of the corporations they toil for share the resulting profits, rather than pocket them all while throwing crumbs to those whose labor created those profits in the first place. Yup, that's me - another anti-capitalist, spouting my big mouth off when oil companies earning record profits get tax subsidies, as though they don't deserve them.

I'm that big city chick, who couldn't possibly share the same values of Joe the Plumber, or the midwestern farmer, or the small-town librarian - or anyone who, unlike me, was raised in the right pocket of Americana - wherever that may be.

I'm that no-good Bush-basher who had the gall to notice that an idiot who couldn't string two words together without getting both of them wrong would inevitably lead this country into an unwinnable war (or two), financial ruin, complete moral failure, and global disgrace.

And while I'm at it, I may as well come completely clean – because, let's face it, you've got me dead-to-rights: I'm also a tree-huggin' environmentalist who believes in such outrageous ideas as protecting the environment, upholding the Constitution, equal treatment under the law, and civil rights – and the hypocrisy of people who call ME un-American makes me speechless (almost!) with fury.

So now that you know who I am, please feel free to vent about me all you want. I'm proud of who I am, what I believe in, and what I stand for.

But don't be embarrassed by not recognizing me in a crowd – you see, there are tens of millions like me, and you know what they say: All those liberal anti-Americans look alike. And we're all about to vote alike – which means voting your asses out of office.

And the next time you think about calling people like me anti-American, you might want to look back at what this election has been all about - and who the REAL Americans truly are...........Nance Greggs at Democratic Underground


"I'll second that" - - Magginkat - www.ProudLiberalBitch.com



Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the morning, Satan shudders & says... "Oh shit....she's awake!!"....http://grandmamaggies.blogspot.com/

The Times They Are A-Changing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D9S48A81os&feature=related

Come gather 'round people where ever you roam

And admit that the waters around you have grown

And accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you is worth savin'

Then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone,

For the times they are a' changin'!

Come writers and critics who prophesy with your pen

And keep your eyes wide the chance won't come again

And don't speak too soon for the wheel's still in spin

And there's no tellin' who that it's namin'

For the loser now will be later to win

For the times they are a' changin'!

Come senators, congressmen please heed the call

Don't stand in the doorway don't block up the hall

For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled

There's a battle outside and it's ragin'

It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls

For the times they are a' changin'!

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land

And don't criticize what you can't understand

Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command

Your old road is rapidly agin'

Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand

For the times they are a' changin'!

The line it is drawn the curse it is cast

The slow one now will later be fast

As the present now will later be past

The order is rapidly fadin'

And the first one now will later be last

For the times they are a' changin'

Go Home Granny Palin! Go Home Joe The Un-Plumber! So Long McSame!

A quick farewell note to Tuesday night's losers & to the sorryass republican administration which has done so much damage to this country & it's reputation.



Go home Granny Palin. Now you can tell the truth about your grandson, not that anyone gives a hoot. It was just one of many lies from you and McSame.

Go home Joe the "Plumber".....We don't want any more frauds & phonies hanging around our White House. Your fifteen minutes of fame are over and done with! So long sucker. By the way Skinhead, you are one ugly dawg!

Take old man McSame & his pill popping Stepford wife with you. Run along now, losers. For Pete's sake, take George Bush. Ship him off to that pig farm in Texas until we can prosecute him for his crimes against the Constitution of the United States.

We have had eight long years of your lies, cheating, stealing, & other crimes, and we are not interested in any more of your obscene, self-serving government. You forgot all about We The People and went about YOUR business as though we did not exist. Of course we notice that you are using our tax dollars to conduct your business.

Already the vile emails from your goons is pouring into my mailbox. Get over it losers! Remember those words. You damn sure threw them at us as your stupid, moronic, pig farm dweller moved into the White House. You were stupid enough to think that quack would have a beer with you! LMAO. Ole Chicken George is still wiping his hands on his pants legs after he shakes hands with you!

One of my early memories of that vile little man's administration was his appearance at graduation at one of the military academies. A young black man who was graduating, ran up to get his diploma, grabbed Bush & hugged him as he danced up and down with excitement at getting his diploma. Bush was in shock and as the young man let go, he stepped back and started wiping the sleeves of his jacket off as if to brush something away that had been left by the young man. That action spoke loudly about the elitist George Bush & what was in store for us.

Have a beer with you indeed!?! Surely you know by now that this was one of the biggest jokes pulled on you silly fools. George thinks he is waaaaaay better than you!
Take it to heart. We are not interested in your hate mongering, fear inducing campaigns against the people of the United States. We have ten million more votes than you losers. That's TEN MILLION big ones jerk and it probably would have been 20 million had it not been for your purges of the voter rolls.

A North Carolina newspaper says "An unhappy and unsettled America picked an unlikely president Tuesday -- Barack Obama, a young black lawmaker from Illinois who sparked a sweeping political movement with an eloquent promise of change and, most importantly, hope."


You got that losers? We are damned unhappy that you and your quack president crapped all over our Constitution and made our country look worse than some of the foul dictatorships around the world. We are most unhappy with all the jobs that have left this country thanks to your rabid, greedy old war lords. We are unhappy about an illegal war that has murdered, injured or maimed over 20,000 of our soldiers & over a million Iraqi people. May all your rotten souls fry in hell for an eternity for that obscene attack on a small defenseless country that has never done us any harm & didn't have the means to threaten us in any manner. Your lies about this murderous action will be remembered & condemned for many years to come.

That's the legacy of that loser cowboy you shoved down our throats in the name of Christianity. Grin and bear it George. You are, beyond any doubt, the worst person to ever occupy the Oval Office. You have never been my president. You are a fraud, a liar, a cheat, a thief, who was installed by the Supreme Court, and that's how you will be remembered. Live with it loser!

Speaking of Christianity..... If George Bush is a Christian, then I am the Virgin Mother!

This headline from one of the newspapers in the Blue State of Florida says what needs to be said:
Barack Obama swept to victory as the nation's first black president Tuesday night in an electoral college landslide that overcame racial barriers as old as America itself.

Don't even think about harassing President Obama the way you did President Clinton. What goes on in his family is none of your damn business so don't turn your "Liberal media" dogs loose on them. Something tells me that you would regret it, big time, if you try to demonize President Obama and his family the way you did our last legally elected President, Bill Clinton.


As I finish this note, Granny Palin is on TV babbling about finding a common ground, a fantastic campaign, get back to work at MY governors office, blah, blah, blah... The woman is nuts! There is no such thing as common ground with a fool like Sarah Palin or with the republican party. We also know what bi-partisanship means to you greedy, self-serving bastards. It means kissing up to you slimeball republicans. Get over it creeps. A new day has dawned and with it comes exposure of your nasty habits.

Today we rejoice -- On January 20th we start the hard work of cleaning up after another foul republican administration. I sympathize with President Obama, that he has pick up the pieces of our Constitution and put it together again but I have a feeling that this young man is up to the job. I say that as someone who supported Senator Hillary Clinton at the beginning of this long campaign.

I have a feeling that this "Community Organizer" is just what the country needs after 8 miserable years under king George, Tricky Dick #2 and the most foul administration to ever occupy the White House.

Counting the days until you are finally out of our faces, George! So long loser! Just chalk it up to business, as usual for you, another miserable failure. This country will rise again. The only way you have to go is down! The sooner you get started the better. You have nothing but your ill gotten dollars.

We have the hope of President Obama!


Magginkat

Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the morning, Satan shudders & says... "Oh shit....she's awake!!" http://grandmamaggies.blogspot.com/