Goodbye Mary Beth!

Today, another queen of the Rove Republican Racket leaves office, U.S. Attorney of the Western District of Pennsylvania, Mary Beth Buchanan.

She enjoyed political witch hunting and will always be remembered for jailing Tommy Chong of "Cheech and Chong" fame for selling bongs...excuse us, water pipes. By jailing him for nine months, her reputation went "Up in Smoke."

Main Justice reminds us of how political she was:

[Regarding the] unsuccessful prosecution of former Allegheny County medical examiner Cyril Wecht. Her office dismissed all charges against the Democratic defendant after a federal judge threw out evidence that he ruled was improperly obtained. Wecht’s supporters accused Buchanan of targeting him because of his politics. Former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh asked Attorney General Eric Holder to discipline Buchanan for “vindictively” suggesting at a news conference that Wecht was guilty....

Good-bye and good riddance!

What was Indiana's U.S. Attorney Morrison After?

On Saturday, we posted a story about the erupting controversy surrounding U.S. Attorney Timothy M. Morrison of the Southern District of Indiana. In January, this left-over from the Rove Republican Racket issued a subpoena to an independent news site, indymedia.us, and demanded a list and identifying information of all the individuals who had visited the website on June 25, 2008.

On top of that, Morrison demanded that the website remain silent on the matter --a gag order. The subpoena, which was illegally issued, was eventually withdrawn.

What is still not known is what Morrison and his staff were looking for in their fishing expedition that violated U.S. Department of Justice rules. CBS News writes:

Still unclear is what criminal investigation U.S. Attorney Morrison was pursuing. Last Friday, a spokeswoman initially promised a response, but Morrison sent e-mail on Monday evening saying: "We have no comment." The Justice Department in Washington, D.C. also declined to respond.

We decided to do a search of that specific date and we have found two possible issues related to that date on the indynews.us website: a New York rights organization blasting the Anti-Defamation League or an item we think would be in Morrison's backyard, the protesting and blocking of the construction of Interstate 69 near Evansville, Indiana.

A link sent us to another independent  news website that discusses this event which occured (you can guess it) on Wednesday, June 25, 2008:

Protesters arrived at Gohmann Asphalt’s construction yard in Haubstadt, IN at 10 AM Wednesday morning. While one individual stopped a truck leaving the site, others deflated the tires, immobilizing the vehicle. Four individuals locked themselves to the undercarriage beneath the truck, and yet another climbed on top and locked his neck to a bar that was fixed to the trailer. Within minutes a long line of trucks stretched down the road, some trying to enter the facility and several trying to exit. As the lines grew longer, supporters arrived and began chanting, holding banners, and supporting those locked on with water and food.

We believe that Morrison either was targeting those protesters involved, looking for the persons who posted the photo dated June 25, 2008 (right), or targeting the asphalt company.

Gohmann Asphalt and Construction has a shady and spotted past.

In 2007, they paid $8.2. million to settle claims of fraud with the federal government, the State of Indiana,and the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

Interestingly, John R. Gohmann, CEO and Vice-Chairman of the asphalt firm, gave over $10,000 in campaign contributions to Rove Republicans during the 2008 calendar year according to the website campaignmoney.com. Is there a link?

Morrison, who violated DOJ rules for unknown reasons, should be held accountable and forced to answer the question publicly about what he was after this past January.

Improper Search and Silence in Indiana

The Rove Republican Racket has left a trail of misconduct and now comes published reports that the U.S. Attorney of the Southern District of Indiana attempted to obtain detailed information about the readers of an independent news website in Indiana this past January and directed the company that operates the site to keep silent.

These actions clearly violate DOJ policy, privacy issues, and first amendment rights.

From an article published yesterday on the Fox News Site:

Kristina Clair, systems administrator for Indymedia.us, said she was shocked when she received a subpoena from U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison in Indianapolis in January demanding the IP address of every person who visited the site on June 25, 2008. She said she was also instructed "not to disclose the existence of this request unless authorized by the Assistant U.S. Attorney." Clair said she was astonished by the demand. "It's a purely aggregate site, it only pulls data from other Indymedia feeds," she told FoxNews.com. "There's no information fed to the site directly." When she contacted the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a legal advocacy group for digital freedom, she was told the subpoena was riddled with problems.

"Not only was this request a plain violation of federal privacy law -- which would require the government to at least get a court order based on a factual showing to get that kind of data; not only did it violate Department of Justice regulations that require subpoenas to media organizations to be vetted by the attorney general; not only did it threaten the First Amendment right to read anonymously of all of Indymedia's users, it also violated Ms. Clair's First Amendment rights by ordering her not to disclose the subpoena's existence," EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston told FoxNews.com.

According to Fox News, the subpoena was later withdrawn.

Walking Away Unscathed in California

In Santa Clara County, California, home of the Silicon Valley, prosecutorial misconduct has cost the county a whopping $5 million in settlements since 2005, according to a guest opinion column in the San Jose Mercury News this past Wednesday.

The cost has been enormous and the Mercury News column noted some examples:

Last month, the county authorized paying $750,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by Donna Auguste, whose Colorado home was illegally searched by police six years ago. Earlier this year, the county forked over $1 million to settle a lawsuit alleging, in part, prosecutorial misconduct brought by Jeffrey Rodriguez, who was wrongfully convicted and released after five years in prison. Two years ago, the county settled a similar suit brought by Rick Walker, who served 12 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. Santa Clara County paid $1.3 million in taxpayer dollars on top of $1.45 million paid by the county's insurance carrier.

But what is more disturbing is the following:

Remarkably, not a single prosecutor [in Santa Clara County] faced discipline in these prosecutions, with the exception of Santa Clara County prosecutor Ben Field. Field, who orchestrated the illegal search in the Auguste case and whose multiple prosecutorial misdeeds have been exposed by the Mercury News, has been ordered to surrender his law license for four years.

The authors go on to note that the problem is not limited to just Santa Clara County, but throughout the Golden State:

Perhaps most significant is the immeasurable cost and risk to society of having the real perpetrators still out there. Prosecutors rarely suffer personal consequences for engaging in misconduct. They have absolute immunity for their official conduct as advocates, and when acting as investigators, they can be held liable for their misconduct only if it violates the law. A recent study by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice examined California appellate court rulings and found that during the ten year period ending in 2007, prosecutors committed misconduct in 444 cases, yet only two were disciplined. Thirty of them committed misconduct more than once. Two of them did it three times. Virtually all of these prosecutors walked away unscathed.

Across the nation, the Rove Republican Racket engaged in prosecutorial misconduct through the 93 U.S. Attorney offices to target political enemies or prominent Democrats. The cost has been enormous and the toll on these innocent political victims cannot be measured. What is angering to us is these prosecutors have "absolute immunity," know it, and most likely will get away with it.

Three Questions for Tom Dawson

Members of the Rove Republican Racket have screwed up in possibly one of the worst cases of prosecutorial misconduct. And now they don't know what to do as the hole gets bigger and bigger.

Two weeks ago, we wrote about two individuals in Mississippi who had written a book and were seeing green.

One of them is former Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Dawson who, according to the Main Justice website, was discussing writing the book in the summer of 2008 when he was still a federal prosecutor with the other co-author, a right-wing Republican blogger, Alan Lange.

The political irony is that the book is about prominent Democrats and trial lawyers who were prosecuted by Dawson.

Many believe this was a serious breach of ethics and blatant prosecutorial misconduct especially since Dawson was actively involved in pending investigations related to the original cases and appeared to have a bias in favor of Republicans.

Last week, we posted two posts. One was about Dawson's two contracts: the book contract and a secret employment contract Dawson obtained from the U.S. Attorney just days after he had retired. The other was an expose about how Dawson had been a protege of Kenneth Starr during the Whitewater Investigation of President Bill Clinton.

Then, to our surprise, Alan Lange, the Republican right-wing blogger who has written the book with  Dawson, contacted us by email. 

Lange wrote:

 "I'd like to visit with you about your latest post. You have some completely erroneous information on your post that I'd like to help you clean up."

What a generous blogger!

When we asked, what was exactly erroneous with our two posts, Lange replied:

You stated in your posts that Tom (a) had a contract to work on a book while still a DOJ employee and (b) actually did do work on the book while still a DOJ employee. Both are absolutely false. I'd ask that you to correct that immediately in all posts on your site and cease printing maliciously inaccurate information.

Lange went on to quote three different parts of our posts and claimed our allegations were untrue or our time frame was way off. The three quotes were interestingly all about Tom Dawson.

We replied with three follow-up questions:

Our intent is never to maliciously or intentionally post information that is wrong. To make sure we are understanding one another before we make any editorial changes, we have three follow-up questions based on your email:

[1.] So what you are saying is that you and Dawson didn't discuss the possibility of writing a book last year at the Ole Miss football game, correct?

[2.] When did you and Dawson begin discussing the possibility of writing a book and what date did you both agree to proceed with the project?

[3.] In addition, are you saying unequivocally that Dawson never planned, outlined, or wrote any part of the book while serving as an AUSA or paid consultant for the USA?

What was Lange's reply?

"I don't answer questions from people I don't know."

Wait a minute? Didn't Lange contact us? So, we replied:

You certainly answered our emails before. Now that we wanted to [understand] the whole truth, you don't answer questions. We do not know you either.

So what is the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help us God?

Tom Dawson has an ethical and moral responsibility to the U.S. Department of Justice and citizens of the Northern District of Mississippi to answer those three questions. Dawson and company should be prepared for the most intrusive investigation of prosecutorial misconduct in recent times.

Weiner Conspiracy

The case against Dr. Roger Weiner (pictured) was formally dismissed by Federal District Judge Neal Biggers on Monday.

It was a dismal failure for embattled and disgraced U.S. Attorney of Northern Mississippi Jim Greenlee, a pillar in the Rove Republican Racket, who at one point dropped the ball on this same case 27 times.

Greenlee has been in the news lately for offering a secret employment contract to Ken Starr's protege and targeting convenience store owners based on their "Islamic sounding names."

In this debacle, Weiner had been charged with interstate prostitution charges where no interstate or federal crime occurred.  He was prosecuted under the infamous Mann Act which historically has been used for political or racially inspired prosecutions. Besides being a cardiologist, Weiner serves as a County Supervisor in Coahoma County, Mississippi.

And now the federal judge in the Weiner case lays out a stunning conspiracy in his dismissal order:

The court is aware from arguments and briefs submitted to the court that Dr. Weiner has acted as a strong advocate for quality healthcare in Clarksdale and the surrounding area. As part of this advocacy, Dr. Weiner has been an outspoken critic of the health care organization which manages the local hospital there – a publicly-held company which Dr. Weiner holds responsible for various deficiencies in the provision of healthcare at the hospital. As a result of his criticism, Dr. Weiner is apparently not in good favor with that company as evidenced by statements such as that made by an agent of the company, a former hospital administrator in Clarksdale, who defense counsel advise allegedly stated prior to Dr. Weiner’s arrest that the corporation was “going to get Dr. Weiner out of there even if it had to do it in handcuffs” (or words to that effect). An e-mail from this same administrator reveals his reaction to the arrest of Dr. Weiner. When advised that Dr. Weiner’s office computer was searched, that the search revealed that Dr. Weiner communicated with persons he thought were women visiting the SugarDaddyForMe website, and that information was taken which, inter alia, led to the indictment herein, the administrator responded in an e-mail, “Alright!!!!!!” The court is also advised that another official in this management company with whom Dr. Weiner has had numerous conflicts is a retired veteran of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The court is further advised that SugarDaddyForMe.com receives thousands of hits a day; yet, according to the information from defense counsel herein, the government has prosecuted not one other individual besides Dr. Weiner for an alleged Mann Act violation accomplished via this website.

We hope Weiner and his legal team file for Hyde Act sanctions and get all defense fees refunded by the federal government. In addition, they should request internal investigations at the FBI and Greenlee's office by approaching the Office of Professional Responsibilty at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Read the full dismissal order here from the North Mississippi Commentor website.

A Crashing End in Michigan

Carl Gabrielse (pictured) was the ideal Rove Republican Racket prosecutor who one day could have been a U.S. Attorney. He was a deputy city prosecutor in Holland, Michigan--the conservative, Republican, and western side of the Great Lakes State.

He sits on the board of the Good Samaritan Ministries which coordinates community services and ministry training among Christian churches. He is married with three children and is a youthful 30-years of age.

On Friday, his life fell apart.

He was fired for allegedly throwing in an extra condition for reducing a drunk driving charge to impaired driving.  A plea deal allegation that shook Holland. Disgraced, Gabrielse was even removed as a guest speaker for the Holland Christian Schools Career Day events later this month.

From yesterday's The Grand Rapids Press:

A deputy city attorney, who is being investigated for reducing a woman's drunken driving offense in exchange for sex inside a jury room, has been fired, City Attorney Andrew Mulder said. Carl Gabrielse, 30, was terminated Friday from the Holland law firm, Cunningham Dalman, a day after it was notified of a probe by Holland police and Ottawa County sheriff's detectives into the alleged misconduct. Gabrielse, who could not be reached for comment, has not been arrested or charged with a crime. A source close to the investigation told The Press that Gabrielse met with the woman defendant at a pre-trial conference and that she had sex with him as part of a plea deal.

And today, his friends and neighbors chimed in:

Those who know deputy Holland City Attorney Carl Gabrielse call allegations against him of sexual and professional misconduct unbelievable. "We were all shocked," said Ottawa County defense attorney Donald Hann. "We cannot believe it, because he seemed to be such an intelligent person." Hann ran into Gabrielse frequently in Holland District Court as part of their duties. "This is a good way to have your career come to a crashing end," Hann said. Gabrielse, 30, was terminated from his job Friday at the Cunningham Dalman, P.C., law firm after allegations surfaced he offered to reduce a 21-year-old Zeeland woman's drunken-driving offense in exchange for sex.

 Read  yesterday's full article here  and today's full article here