CAN ALABAMA BE ROVE'S PROVING GROUND FOR ONE-PARTY STATE?

For months now, local republican officials, helped at first by Karl Rove, have been taking fascism for a test drive in Alabama. The state has seen outrageous political prosecutions, some politically inspired violence, and even a news blackout in Northern Alabama, that only this Sunday interrupted a CBS 60 Minutes Report, while it was being aired. A republican, Jill Simpson, familiar with republican Governor Riley's organization, blew the whistle on the conspiracy to frame former governor Don Siegelman, a democrat, for bribery. In the midst of these political upheavals, Jill Simpson's car was run off the road and totaled, and her house "caught on fire". Simpson had gone to nearby Georgia to file an affidavit, because she felt that was an appropriate precaution. This criminal conspiracy against Siegelman occured because he had cried foul over voting irregularities in the 2002 election that ousted him from office, and because he was starting to make another run, in 2005, for the office of Governor of Alabama.

In May 2007, one month before Don Siegelman was sentenced to an extended prison term, an Alabama Republican attorney, Jill Simpson, issued an affidavit claiming political interference in the outcome of the 2002 Alabama governor's race and naming Karl Rove as having taken an interest in the matter.

Because this accusation came out at the same time that the US Attorneys scandal was breaking, and because Siegelman had been prosecuted by two Bush-appointed attorneys, there was immediate speculation that the prosecution might have been the product of a politicized Justice Department.

(Muriel Kane and Larisa Alexandrovna, Raw Story, November 26, 2007)

With offices of Attorney General at federal and state levels in their hands, and the connivance of willing prosecutors and judges and election officials, this method of going after political opponents has become the essence of what Bush administration operatives call "lawfare": republican political war using all available jurisprudence.

WHNT in Huntsville Alabama was purchased by Oak Hill Capital Partners from the New York Times Company early last year. Oak Hill is owned by the Bass brothers, Bush fundraisers at the "Pioneer" level – raising over $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney campaigns in both 2000 and 2004. Lee Bass is perhaps the best known member of the Bass family for his role in George W. Bush’s failed energy venture called Spectrum 7 and later for his bailing out of Harken Energy. (Alexandrovna)

Aside from WHNT, no other CBS affiliate reported any blackout of the 60 Minutes segment on Siegelman. That's odd, isn't it?