DID BUSH AND ROVE TARGET ALABAMA GOV. SIEGELMAN JUST BECAUSE HE WAS A DEMOCRAT? LOOKS THAT WAY

If you're in the Pacific Time zone you can still catch the incredible 60 Minutes expose that CBS ran in the rest of the country already. It's amazing. Short version: the Bush Regime targeted the Democratic Governor of Alabama with it's out of control, lawless Justice Department. Basically, they accused him of exactly what Bush and most politicians in a position to do so, do all the time: rewarding supporters. It is impossible to walk away from looking at the Siegelman case and not think that it is Karl Rove who belongs in prison. The Alabama Republican Machine is disputing the whole thing, of course. If it is ever seriously investigated by impartial law enforcement officials, there will probably be more than a few crooked Republicans in big trouble. Meanwhile the Bush Regime is making it as difficult as they can for Siegelman to do anything about his trumped up conviction.

The broadcast was blocked in at least one part of Alabama!


UPDATE: WOW... EVEN RUSSIA ISN'T LIKE THIS ANYMORE

Scott Horton, who knows an awful lot about the persecution of Don Siegelman, reports on the most blatant instance of censorship I've ever seen in the U.S. (if you consider northern Alabama part of the U.S.).

I am now hearing from readers all across Northern Alabama—from Decatur to Huntsville and considerably on down—that a mysterious "service interruption" blocked the broadcast of only the Siegelman segment of 60 Minutes this evening. The broadcaster is Channel 19 WHNT, which serves Northern Alabama and Southern Tennessee. This station was noteworthy for its hostility to Siegelman and support for his Republican adversary. The station ran a trailer stating "We apologize that you missed the first segment of 60 Minutes tonight featuring 'The Prosecution of Don Siegelman.' It was a techincal problem with CBS out of New York." I contacted CBS News in New York and was told that "there is no delicate way to put this: the WHNT claim is not true. There were no transmission difficulties. The problems were peculiar to Channel 19, which had the signal and had functioning transmitters." I was told that the decision to blacken screens across Northern Alabama "could only have been an editorial call." Channel 19 is owned by Oak Hill Capital Partners, who can be contacted through Rhonda Barnat, 212-371-5999 or rb@abmac.com. Oak Hill Partners represents interests of the Bass family, which contribute heavily to the Republican Party.

If you live in Alabama and had the show censored-- or if you were watching the Oscars-- you can view the entire segment at Alternet.

I couldn't understand why there was so much coverage of all kinds of silly TV nonsense and no one was writing about this. I see the NY Times' Mike Nizza got around to the Republican media conglomerate's attempt to censor the news just now at The Lede.

Governments that try to keep a firm grip on information flow in their countries, like the Kremlin, have used “technical problems” as an excuse to shut out unwelcome content on the Web and television. But could it have happened in the United States?

A controversy has been brewing on the Web since a “60 Minutes” segment failed to appear on a CBS affiliated TV station in Alabama last night. The report covered a bitter flashpoint between Democrats and the Bush administration: the case of Don Siegelman, a former Democratic governor of Alabama who was jailed for corruption last June.

Shouldn't these stations lose their broadcast licenses? I mean we own the airwaves, don't we? They're just supposed to operate on them as long as they're serving the public interest (along with their own, of course). Or did Bush change that too?


UPDATE: LOOKS LIKE MR. STRAIGHT TALK HAD A ROLE IS THIS SORDID AFFAIR

McCain, as head of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee investigating Abramoff, had relevent information that he kept secret from the investigators.