Our Political Prisoners

Q&A: Clemon answered a question by saying that Holder last week
told him the DOJ was looking into Siegelman case. [Believable?]

9:59 Charles "Champ" Walker, Jr., business executive and son of
imprisoned former George State Sen. Majority Leader Charles Walker,
Sr., owner of the Walker Group and Augusta Focus newspaper. Describes a
"war against Democrats," hundreds of cases around the country of local
prosecutions of Democrats, people like Paul Minor. Prosecutor Richard
Thompson investigated on behalf of a Republican politician (who has
since made him a judge) four top Democrats in Georgia, including Walker
Sr. Numerous attempts to charge Walker Sr. with made-up crimes failed.
Judge with conflicts of interest refused to allow defense to raise
prosecutorial misconduct, and removed black jurors, changed jury from
65% urban black to 65% rural white with jurors from outside district.
Walker had led the fight to take Confederate flag out of state flag.
See: http://politicalprosecutions.org

10:22 Bruce Fein, author of "Constitutional Peril," and former
Reagan Administration Associate General Counsel of the Justice
Department and General Counsel of Federal Communications Commission:
Fein denounces corruption of our system in recent years. No principles.
Partisan loyalty. Assumption of guilt. Destruction of lives with
baseless public accusation. Complete immunity for prosecutors. Culture
must change. Education must change. And Congress must step up and
create statutes.

10:31 Bill Yeomans, Legal Director, Alliance for Justice, worked 26
years at DOJ and 3 years at Senate Judiciary Committee for Kennedy. He
notes accurately that we seem to be concluding each discussion by
deferring to a pending report by the Office of Professional
Responsibility (OPR). This is the office through with the Department of
Justice (DOJ) investigates itself. Alberto Gonzales began the practice
of sending really big projects to OPR, knowing it did not have the
resources. The OPR investigation of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC)
memos on torture is five years old. The OPR shared responsibility with
Inspector General (IG) for report on US Attorney firings, and that
report got done. OPR is overtaxed and also NOT independent. OPR answers
to attorney general who can approve an investigation or its results, or
not. So we should stop accepting that sending a problem to OPR takes
care of it. We should question how and whether OPR should exist. --
Then Horton said that on April 21 Holder met with chief judges from
around the country who all raised impassioned complaints about failures
of OPR.

10:36 Cliff Arnebeck, Chair, Legal Affairs Committee, Common Cause
Ohio, National Co-Chair, Alliance for Democracy and 2004 Ohio election
voting litigation expert: Ohio was ground zero in 2000 for judicial
independence on state supreme court. $7 million of illegal corporate
money ran ads attacking Justice Alice Robie Resnick. Whole court now
Republican. Arnebeck and others litigated successfully. FBI
investigated, but in 2004 DOJ dropped prosecution just before election
-- did not want to prosecute Republicans, a nationwide pattern.
Arnebeck also recounted election fraud investigations closed down.
These investigations should be reopened.

10:44 Former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver E. Diaz, Jr.,
acquitted, had -- according to Horton -- been prosecuted for purely
political reasons. There are many hundreds of these cases around the
country, Diaz says, and people falsely convicted. Project Save Justice
took report by U of Missouri on prosecutions of Democrats. Gail
Sistrunk, Executive Director, Project Save Justice (Producers of the
video, "Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove") has interviewed these
people who have never heard of each other all tell the exact same
story, and the video is stunning, Diaz says rightly.

Sistrunk described the video and hands them out. See: http://www.politicalprosecutions.org

She describes prosecuting grown children and elderly parents,
investigating clients to destroy businesses, and other abuses used
rampantly. She calls OPR the Bates Motel: cases go in and never come
out. And the statistics show improbably high rates of prosecution for
moderate Republicans as well as Democrats. This is not a Republican
crime wave but a Federalist Society crime wave.

Diaz points out Paul Minor's daughter here, Kathryn. He also credits
Harper's and Raw Story (Scott Horton and Larisa Alexandrovna) for their
reporting on these stories.

10:58 Diaz describes Paul Minor's father Bill Minor
a newspaper man who spoke up for civil rights in Mississippi in the
1950s. As a child, Paul Minor saw crosses burned on his lawn. He went
and killed Asians in Vietnam. He came back and took an interest in
politics. (All of this is told as if it's good, including the fighting
in Vietnam.) Paul Minor gave money to candidates. He was the single
largest contributor to Democrats in Mississippi and one of the biggest
nationally. Diaz served in the Mississippi legislature as a Republican
and knew Minor as a friend and ally. Minor supported Diaz in campaigns
for judgeships including for the Mississippi Supreme Court. The US
Chamber of Commerce spent millions against Diaz. So, Minor contributed
and raised contributions from others for Diaz. A US attorney indicted
Minor and Diaz for bribery. But Diaz had refused to vote on a single
case brought by Minor. That, he says, is why he's free to stand here
today. Yet, there is almost always a conflict in every case and he
could very well have voted on some of those cases. Diaz was dragged
through a 3-month prosecution. His wife Jennifer who is here was
indicted too. For what, it was not clear. They faced over 30 years in
prison. DOJ told wife she could plead guilty to an unrelated tax charge
and stay home with her children if she turned evidence against her
husband. He told her she had to do it and should give them every scrap
of info. But there was no evidence of any wrongdoing. So she was not
called as a witness.

Diaz refers to Paul Minor's case as the Ted Stevens case on
steroids. Prosecutor Welch is now appropriately the target of a
criminal investigation at the instigation of a federal judge. He
withheld evidence from the defendants, known as Brady violations. Diaz
was acquitted. Others got hung juries. Minor was re-indicted. Diaz
points out that everyone accepts that prosecutors were fired for not
bringing political prosecutions, but not enough attention is paid to
the fact that some prosecutors were not fired, because they DID bring
political prosecutions. Paul Minor has been in prison these past 3
years. He was denied the right to visit his wife as she fought cancer
and died a couple of months ago. He is a political prisoner. DOJ
refused to allow him to attend his wife's funeral. We need
investigations and we need them now. Very well said.

11:12 Puerto Rico State Senator & Minority Whip Eduardo Bhatia
(D), representing former Gov. Anibal Acivedo, acquitted. Another
similar story of abuses, bogus charges, leaks manipulating the press to
damage a public figure, a trial with no evidence, immediate acquittal,
and $3 million in legal fees still unpaid by innocent defendant.

If any of this disturbs you, please click the links in this blog,
learn more, and make your opinions known to Attorney General Eric
Holder 202-514-2001, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers
202-225-5126, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy
202-224-4242.

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