Land himself noted that the government put Siegelman in a no-win situation. The government controls the recusal evidence the defendant needs to prove unfairness. Yet the Justice Department and judges refuse to permit pre-trial and post-trial discovery of the disputed facts.
News reports indicated that the former governor, a tall and lean fitness buff, seemed about twenty pounds underweight during his court appearance in prison garb.
Troubling also to his supporters were the indignities placed upon the defendant, such as handcuffs and shackles preventing the him from taking notes in court, and solitary confinement in Montgomery's county jail.
Adding further to Siegelman's ordeal is that the defendant's daughter and chief public advocate, Dana Siegelman, has been recovering from the serious injuries sustained this fall from an unknown hit-and-run driver who smashed her while she was bicycling home from work. She is currently using a wheelchair.
Summing Up
The gist is that authorities from jailers to judges to the White House have spent millions of taxpayer dollars on their jihad to ruin the life and family of a former governor who is well-known internationally as a political prisoner.
The implications are great for those with lesser credentials, clout, or access to the media. Two million American men and women are now behind bars -- by far the highest rate in the world.
Thus, the true importance of this saga goes far beyond the suffering of the Siegelman family or even the broader concerns of ex-governor's constituents as they saw their state transformed in little over a decade into essentially one-party rule that stifled debate on disfavored policies, including Siegelman's advocacy for education funding.
Let's remember that other prisoners and civil litigants operate under the same court system. This could mean you, even if you have nothing to do with Alabama, politics, or policy issues.
Further rubber-stamping abuses are elected leaders like Obama, who is entrusted with such other awesome powers as war-making.
Let's review that track record. To fulfill an aggressively interventionist foreign policy agenda, Obama and his team repeatedly cite human rights abuses elsewhere around the world to initiate deadly economic sanctions, drones, and other warlike actions the American public might not otherwise support. These include covert CIA paramilitary and propaganda initiatives.
Why has President Obama gone along with this? It's a long story, which we shall explore in a separate column.
In a preview, the late White House correspondent Helen Thomas drew on nearly 70 years of experience in covering the White House beginning in 1943 to share with me her general impression of today's leaders.
We sat side-by-side at dinner Dec. 7, 2012 at the National Press Club in the country's capital while she spoke of the vicious negativity of Republicans.
"As for Obama," she said, "I think he's weak. He has no courage."
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