Some thoughts (and a little bit queasy)

By now, I am semi-retired from this thing and certainly not within anyone’s loop anymore. But if a reader should happen across these pages, a couple of thoughts remain.

The Scott McClellan book has Siegelman implications. For the people who subscribe to wide-ranging conspiracies that encompass the highest level of our government, and for those who feel that there is overwhelming circumstantial evidence of governmental deception, McClellan offers verification and confirmation. This is important because with all of the real and imagined conspiracies, whether criminal or political, there is usually a grand web of connect-the-dots that “proves,” in the believer’s minds, that a nefarious deception is occurring. But until the physical habeas corpus emerges, until an eyewitness comes forward, until the damaging document is unearthed or the email cache is found on a forgotten unprotected server, there will always be a level of deniability, there will always be room for unassailable self-righteous proclamations. But the voice of one reliable witness, or the evidence from one authenticated document, can expose the empty denials, unravelling the deception. One substantiated lie calls into question all of the other ardent statements of fact or denial. So for instance, when Karl Rove says that he didn’t learn about Siegelman’s indictment until he read about it in the newspaper, or when Rove says he never heard of Jill Simpson, or when he makes a host of assertions about a case he claims to know nothing about, we have to factor in that Scott McClellan said that he was deceived by Rove, and that Rove not only misled the public but lied to an administration ally. With these assertions, we no longer have to trace the dots, linking up all of the questionable actions of Rove, from the “office bugging” incident in Texas to his dirty tricks on behalf of Alabama Judicial candidates, all the way back to his days with the College Republicans. In a culture of deception, how are we to believe in Karl Rove’s denials, let alone the bleatings of the DOJ? How would we able to ascribe truth to any statement from the administration, and why should Congress?

Having said that, and from my status of semi-retirement from the matter, there is one thing that makes me queasy about the whole thing.

Although I do believe that what happened in Alabama was a political prosecution and that Siegelman was railroaded into court and into prison, I think he is currently being used by the Democrats and by agenda-driven journalists as a tool to get the current Republican administration. If he was a Republican, or if his supporters could not have somehow linked Rove and Bush to the situation, I get the sense that very few of the people who are banging the drums for him would be supporting him or writing articles about his plight. Siegelman is fighting for his life and liberty and his willing and eager acceptance of help from all quarters is more than understandable, but his cause is not as much about an accurate accounting of Truth and Justice than it is about using humans as political missiles to attack opposing parties. Whereas Siegelman was once a tool for the Republicans to reclaim a Red State, he is now a tool for the Democrats to attack the current administration. The Democratic Party and the left-wing journalists did not show up in force until they could get Rove and ultimately Bush involved in the situation. (To my knowledge, neither of the remaining Democratic presidential candidates has so much as mentioned Siegelman, but the victor probably will if it becomes apparent that the case could be used to hurt McCain.)

A case in point is the forgotten man, federal prisoner Richard Scrushy. Note that in most articles about Donald Siegelman, Scrushy is barely mentioned, if at all. This is because most of the journalists believe that Scrushy is a criminal who should have been convicted of fraud, in Birmingham. To bring him up would expose the lie of their own biased reporting. The irony is that the media created the mythology around the open-and-shut Birmingham case, and even though the jury came to the correct verdict, the only verdict they could have responsibly returned, it didn’t fit in with the media story-line. And it is hard for them to now make the logical case that Scrushy has been just as shafted by the Justice Department as Siegelman. (It has always been my opinion that Scrushy was the missing link that allowed the DOJ to parlay public opinion into a conviction, and that in terms of a malevolent Justice Department, this under-reported fact outstrips any involvement Rove might have had in the case.)

Yes, I am glad the Siegelman situation is pressing forward toward an eventual all-out confrontation and thorough investigation of what transpired; and yes, I know that Scrushy’s deeds, actions and demeanor didn’t always do much to help his situation in either Birmingham or Montgomery, but the whole thing makes me queasy nonetheless.

Two innocent men are the pawns of journalists, politicians and the whims of public opinion. Maybe that’s what has become of justice in the 21st Century.

[Now that I have most likely alienated just about every faction who has ever read me, I'll hopefully shut up and fade away. But I suppose that's the beauty of the semi-retirement thing.]