Bama TIVOs at the ready for '60 Minutes'
By Tom Baxter
Southern Political Report
February 23, 2008 — For months, rumors have swirled in Alabama that the CBS Sunday magazine program, "60 Minutes," was either sitting on, or about to broadcast a blockbuster report on the controversial federal conviction of former Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman. That long-awaited segment has finally been scheduled for this Sunday night, coincident with Siegelman’s 62 birthday and opposite the Academy Awards. As more than one blogger has commented over the past day or so, a lot of televisions in the state are going to be set to record when the program airs. CBS has already released one juicy new detail. Jill Simpson, the Republican lawyer who alleges she heard a phone conversation implicating White House strategist Karl Rove in a politically motivated plan to prosecute Siegelman, now says Rove also asked her to photograph Siegelman in a compromising position with one of his aides. According to the Associated Press, this allegation didn’t come up last year when Simpson was interviewed by congressional investigators. Siegelman’s defenders say his conviction along with businessman Richard Scrushy on federal bribery charges was politically motivated and directed out of the White House by Rove. Perhaps more helpful to Siegelman’s case is an interview with former Arizona attorney general Grant Woods, a Republican who signed a petition by current and past state attorneys general questioning the way the Justice Department handled the case against Siegelman. “I haven’t seen a case with this many red flags on it that pointed towards a real injustice being done,” he says in the "60 Minutes" segment. “I personally believe that what happened here is that they targeted Don Siegelman because they could not beat him fair and square.” Siegelman’s attorneys, meanwhile, have filed a new motion in the 11 U.S. Circuit Cout of Appeals in Atlanta asking that he be released from federal prison in Louisiana on an appeal bond. |
