Exhibit A in questioning Kagan's commitment tocivil rights is herrubber-stamp of DOJ misconduct in the Siegelman case with the November filing opposing on technical legal grounds Supreme Court review. She lost on technical grounds. So she can't even get credit for that, much less the big picture:
In 1999, Scrushy contributed at Siegelman's request to the non-profit Alabama Education Foundation. Siegelman then reappointed Scrushy to a state board. At sentencing in 2007, authorities sent the two away in chains for seven-year terms. But an unprecedented bipartisan coalition of 91 former state attorneys general last year told the Supreme Court that such donations are routine and not a crime. Kagan disagreed on behalf of DOJ.
As often reported at OpEd News, the frame-up and cover-up has extend to the current administration. Oversight authorities have never undertaken serious investigations calling relevant witnesses.You'll suspect why from this summary:
Authorities headquartered their all-out attack on Siegelman, Alabama's leading Democrat, at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base in Montgomery. The prosecution had the effect of helping a European-led manufacturing consortium in its ongoing effort to win $35 billion in Air Force contracts. These are for a next-generation of tanker planes, which would be assembled in a factory in Mobile under the leadership of a U.S. subsidiary of Airbus. Meanwhile, fraud in Scrushy's company unrelated to his criminal conviction enabled lawyers suing HealthSouth and its insurers to feast on a $2.8 billion state court civil fraud judgment against him and HealthSouth during his imprisonment.
As described more fully by investigative reports on such matters collected on the JIP site, the two-party system cannot be relied upon to provide the facts in a typical hearing about such vast sums. The money benefits key figures from both parties, including the major law firms that help provide top-level political personnel to any administration.
Pro-prosecution rulings by Mark Fuller, chief federal judge in Alabama's middle district, helped ensure guilty verdicts. Fuller has been enriched on the side by $300 million in federal contracts awarded since 2006 to Air Force contractor Doss Aviation, Inc., a closely held company that the judge controls as its largest shareholder. Doss trains Air Force pilots and refuels Air Force planes globally.
JIP's new website makes publicly available for the first time all 180-pages of documentation filed in federal court in 2003 by Missouri attorney Paul B. Weeks, III, who distributed 50 copies of the evidence to courts, DOJ and Congress while seeking Fuller's impeachment for another Doss-related scandal.
He shows how the judge tried to obtain $330,000 in unmerited payments from Alabama's pension system for a staffer. But authorities promptly removed the Weeks filing from court files. The docket simply notes that a filing was made and that it was being keptseparately at an undisclosed location. Wherever that is, it's not available on the electronic PACER system the public uses to research federal court documents.
Weeks says no one has ever contacted him in seven years to follow up even though impeachment has no statute of limitations and as an experienced litigator he believes he could win any such action in short order. Details on this and other ongoing scandals are available on our press release this week announcing opposition to Kagan.
Here's the bottom line: Both parties protect DOJ and judges on this kind of challenge.
Yet right now is the one moment in a democracy when the public has its chance to review the credentials at DOJ and elsewhere of a nominee. She, like the others, will soon be almost unaccountable for the rest of her life if confirmed.
Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the five Republicans who in essence picked George W. Bush as president in its infamous, result-oriented and, yes, "activist" recount decision in 2000, famously told a CBS correspondent asking about his decision, "Get over it!" Similarly, Scalia said, "Get a life!" to a critic of his vote to keep secret the vice presidential records of his hunting partner, Dick Cheney, about White House meetings with energy company CEOs.
What can we foresee from Kagan? She promised during her 2009 confirmation hearings for her current job she would quit if she ever had to take a position she didn't believe in. Her filing in the Siegelman case suggests that she's instead using her legal skills to advance her career by helping DOJ keep a lid on its internal scandals.
It's easy to find examples of elemental struggles in our federal trial courts with judges directly involved -- at least in the minds of litigants and those who can be energized by their passion.
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