ThinkProgress Logo

Politics

New documents show improper conduct, possible jury tampering in Siegelman prosecution.

By Ali Frick on Nov 14, 2008 at 3:52 pm

rove-smug.jpgNew documents obtained by TIME magazine show that a U.S. Attorney who recused herself from the prosecution of former Gov. Don Siegelman (D-AL) continued to be actively involved in the case, e-mailing advice to subordinates who were still involved in the prosecution. The documents, provided by DOJ whistleblower Tamarah Grimes, also show “extensive and unusual contact between the prosecution and the jury”:

A key prosecution e-mail describes how jurors repeatedly contacted the government’s legal team during the trial to express, among other things, one juror’s romantic interest in a member of the prosecution team. “The jurors kept sending out messages” via U.S. marshals, the e-mail says, identifying a particular juror as “very interested” in a person who had sat at the prosecution table in court. The same juror was later described reaching out to members of the prosecution team for personal advice about her career and educational plans. [...]

Further undisclosed evidence of prosecution team members speaking with jurors following the verdict emerges in Grimes’ written statement to the DoJ. In it, she says a member of the team prosecuting Siegelman had spoken with a juror suspected of improper conduct — apparently at the time the judge was due to question the juror about that conduct. Grimes quotes the lead prosecutor in the case as saying someone had “talked to her. She is just scared and afraid she is going to get in trouble.”

The U.S. Attorney, Leura G. Canary, had recused herself from the case because her husband was a “top GOP operative and close associate of Bush adviser Karl Rove,” who has been accused of orchestrating a political prosecution of Siegelman.

Related Posts

Climate Progress

A concentrated solar BACT for new coal?

By Joe Romm on Nov 14, 2008 at 3:46 pm

nrel_kramerj_overview_final.jpgI recently listed a bunch of Best Available Control Technologies for limiting CO2 emissions from new coal plants, following the landmark ruling by the EPA Environmental Appeals Board.

But a leading expert on solar thermal baseload power points out that I left out one potential control technology. Under the auspices of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), two utilities have just announced they will test the use of solar thermal to add steam into the steam cycle of natural gas plants. And EPRI plans to “add solar thermal technology to coal-powered plants as well.” Why?

In addition to reducing costs and greenhouse gas emissions, EPRI believes that solar thermal technology could also boost coal and natural gas power enough in existing plants to eliminate the need for new infrastructure.

Clearly this is not quite at the commercial stage that BACT requires, as, say, cofiring coal with biomass is. So a high priority for the Obama EPA and Energy Department should be demonstrating solar plus coal.

In fact, we should have coal with solar baseload and biomass cofiring. And we should then pursue demonstrating solar plus coal/biomass gasification with carbon capture and storage. This wouldn’t be the cheapest power, but it would be carbon-negative electricity. And if we are ever going to get back to 350 ppm, as some leading scientists say we must, then we need to aggressively pursue all potential forms of energy that actually reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Politics

O’Reilly: Gay marriage will lead to ‘legalizing narcotics, unrestricted abortion, revocation of the Patriot Act.’

By Satyam Khanna on Nov 14, 2008 at 3:02 pm

Yesterday on The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly did a segment on the consternation in California over the Prop. 8 same-sex marriage ban. O’Reilly said Barack Obama’s election has “emboldened secular progressives” on issues like gay marriage. The “cultural war issues,” he said, will only get worse:

O’REILLY: So you can see the debate over gay marriage is now a full fledge national battle. As talking points said last night the election of Barack Obama has emboldened secular progressives who feel it is their time. Gay marriage just the beginning. Other cultural war issues will also be in display very shortly. These include limiting gun possession, legalizing narcotics, unrestricted abortion and the revocation of the Patriot Act.

Watch it:

Related Posts

Yglesias

House GOP Leadership Gets More Conservative

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 14, 2008 at 2:32 pm

You expect the House Republican leadership to be conservative. But Mike Brady’s chart based on DW-NOMINATE scores shows that the 110th Congress GOP leadership was somewhat to the right of the median House Republican, and that the proposed new leadership for the 111th Congress is even further right:

newchart.gif

One assumes that, in general, the median 111th Congress Republican is going to be to the right of the median 110th Congress Republican because as the GOP caucus shrinks it’s more-or-more dominated by members with very conservative districts. But either way, these guys are going to be led by a team that’s way to the right of the typical member of congress.

Politics

AUDIO: Leahy Says Lieberman Should Lose His Chairmanship

By Amanda Terkel on Nov 14, 2008 at 2:07 pm

liebmccain.jpg Since the election, Senate Democrats have been reluctant to punish Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) for the ad hominem attacks he levied at Barack Obama while supporting Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in the election. While a few senators have said that they’d like to see Lieberman apologize, most have said that they’d like him to continue caucusing with Democrats.

Today, Daily Kos diarist terjeanderson caught an interview on Vermont Public Radio with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT), during which the senator broke from the pack and said that Lieberman deserved to lose his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee:

I’m one who does not feel that somebody should be rewarded with a major chairmanship after doing what he did. … I felt that some of the attacks that he was involved in against Sen. Obama, whom I did support — I was one of the first in the Congress to support him — I thought they went way beyond the pale. I thought that they were not fair. I thought they were not legitimate. I thought that they perpetuated some of these horrible myths that were being run about Sen. Obama.

I would feel that, had I done something similar, I would not be chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the next Congress.

Listen here:

A new Research 2000/DailyKos poll shows that Lieberman is increasingly unpopular among his constituents. Sixty-one percent disapprove of his Senate performance. Among his Democratic constituents, Lieberman’s approval rating stands at just 22 percent.

Check out ThinkProgress’s new report, “Joe Lieberman: The Progressive Who Lost His Way.”

Update

Roll Call reports: “A group of four Democratic Senators have been exploring ways in which Lieberman could keep his Homeland Security chairmanship, including stripping him of some other positions such as his subcommittee chairmanships on the Environment and Public Works Committee or Armed Services panel. But so far, sources said, the four lawmakers have not been able to develop a consensus.”


Update

,In a statement sent to TPM, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) echoed Leahy’s call, saying that rewarding Lieberman with a chairmanship “would be a slap in the face of millions of Americans who worked tirelessly for Barack Obama and who want to see real change in our country”:

“Appointing someone to a major post who led the opposition to everything we are fighting for is not ‘change we can believe in,‘” Sanders continued. “I very much hope that Senator Lieberman stays in the Democratic caucus and is successful in regaining the confidence of those whom he has disappointed. This is not a time, however, in which he should be rewarded with a major committee chairmanship.”

Health

The Attacks Begin: PhRMA To Target Obama Health Plan

By Igor Volsky on Nov 14, 2008 at 1:45 pm

phrma.jpg

Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the nation’s largest pharmaceutical lobbying group, is gearing up for a “multimillion-dollar public relations campaign to tout the importance of free-market health care and undercut an expected push by the Obama administration for price controls of prescription drugs,” the Washington Times reports.

During the campaign, executives and employees of the companies — wary of McCain’s legislative support for bringing low-cost generic drugs to market, letting consumers import cheaper medicines from Canada and opposing Medicare Part D — donated “three times as much” (approximately $1.6 million) to Obama as to McCain. Now, they’re seeking a return on their investment:

“We’re going to do an ad campaign that is designed to make people aware of the importance of preserving your free-market health care system,” Mr. Johnson [senior vice president with PhRMA]said. He added that PhRMA recognizes that “some reforms are needed in order to keep that system vibrant.”

But the reforms Obama proposes — allowing for the reimportation of safe drugs when prices are lower than in the U.S., enabling Medicare to directly negotiate drug prices, increasing the use of generic drugs in government programs and prohibiting large drug companies from keeping generic competition out of the market — will likely eat into Big Pharma’s profits. According to one study, giving Medicare the authority to negotiate drug prices, “would cause the pharmaceutical industry to lose $10 billion to $30 billion in annual revenues.”

Thus, the industry will no doubt argue that reduced profits will force companies to cut back on new medical research and slow down the discovery of new medical breakthroughs. They claim that we pay sky-high prices for their drugs because of ever-rising research and development costs. Yet according to a recent GAO report, big pharmaceutical companies are failing to deliver new and better drugs to the American people. While companies are spending more on Research and Development—147 percent more by the end of 2004 compared to 1993—by the end of 2004, the number of new drug applications were down 22 percent over 1999 levels, the most recent high watermark for new drug applications. In fact, their entire ‘higher prices for better drugs’ argument is highly problematic:

- The top U.S. drug makers spend 2.5 times as much on marketing and administration as they do on research.

- At least 1/3 of the drugs marketed by industry leaders were discovered by universities or small biotech companies and are sold to the public at inflated prices.

- 75 percent of new drugs approved by the FDA are me-too drugs that can be less effective than current drugs or no better than drugs already on the market to treat the same condition.

- With a blockbuster drug, it’s not unusual for a manufacturer to budget $50 million to $100 million for advertising aimed at consumers. (In 2000, Pfizer spent $89.5 million advertising Viagra to consumers.)

Read more

Yglesias

Nixon Goes to Farm Subsidies

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 14, 2008 at 1:32 pm

225px_tom_vilsack_at_camp_arifjan_kuwait_april_16_2006.jpg

I wouldn’t be nearly so quick as Ezra Klein to dismiss the possibility that a farm belt politician like Tom Vilsack could be a good choice to lead a charge for beneficial farm policy reform. Ezra says:

The Nixon-to-China analogy does not hold much water. Nixon could go to China because, unlike a Democrat, he couldn’t be painted as weak, and so the political system couldn’t muster effective opposition to his resumption of diplomatic relations. But for the corn lobby to paint an administration as anti-subsidy, all they have to do is effectively argue that the administration is opposing corn subsidies. Which is either happening or it isn’t.

As I see it, the structure of the US Congress (and especially the Senate) clearly makes it impossible to ever eliminate or even meaningfully reduce the volume of subsidies currently being directed to subsidized parts of the country. To improve policy, what you’d need to do is radically change the nature of the subsidy scheme, so that essentially the same amount of money (or perhaps slightly more) was going to essentially the same areas, but the activities being subsidized had beneficial effects rather than pernicious ones. You could, for example, subsidize the growing of healthy food and and sound environmental stewardship. In Switzerland they offer absurdly large subsidies to cows ($15,000 per cow I’ve been told) but what’s being encouraged a picturesque hillside pastures. It’s hardly ideal policy, but it’s better than subsidized CAFOs.

The trick is that even if you could design a subsidy scheme that was better for the environment and better for public health than the status quo (indeed, I recall Tom Harkin musing about this in a conversation with me and maybe a dozen other bloggers at the 2004 convention), but just as beneficial to Iowa, it would still be bad for some specific interests who would try to convince Iowans in general that what was on offer was a bad deal for everyone. To persuade them otherwise, you’d need a politician who’s trusted in farming areas. You’d need, in other words, a Vilsack.

Now that said, the only indication Obama’s ever given of having a secret plan to unveil a politically risky overhaul of farm policy is a single offhand remark about Michael Pollan in one interview. He’s released detailed proposals for large reforms of a number of policy areas, and this isn’t one of them. And his pro-ethanol record is clear. So I don’t see any particular reason to be optimistic about the short-term prospects for reform. But if reform is ever going to happen, it’s going to come through close collaboration with enlightened farm belt politicians, not by freezing them out of the process.

Politics

Palin left out of RGA leadership.

By Ben Armbruster on Nov 14, 2008 at 1:25 pm

In the wake of the Republican Governors Association (RGA) convention this week in Miami, many GOP governors were reluctant to embrace Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) as the party’s leader or presidential candidate for 2012. Today, the RGA made that sentiment official, by not voting her in to any of the organization’s leadership positions:

palinweb.jpg The Republican Governors Association announced its new leadership lineup today after their annual meeting concluded Thursday in Miami.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford was voted RGA chairman, taking over the top job from Texas Gov. Rick Perry who will now serve as finance chairman. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is vice-chairman, while Florida Gov. Charlie Crist will serve as chair for the annual RGA gala, and Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue will head up the recruitment effort.

Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle, Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty will also sit on the RGA’s executive committee. [...]

Not on the list? Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who also attended the Miami meeting.

Climate Progress

Quantum of Greenwashing

By Joe Romm on Nov 14, 2008 at 1:16 pm

Turns out the villain in the new James Bond movie Quantum of Solace is a greenwasher. As Grist explains, the bad guy is

… “eco-entrepreneur” Dominic Greene … the owner of an eco-hotel in the Chilean desert — an oasis aimed at luring rich and powerful folk with fancy environmental technology. But … the hotel and “Save the Earth” shtick is just a front for Greene’s plan to seize part of South America’s water supply.

Aha! A brilliant plot twist: Mr. Greene is Greenewashing!

I’ll post a review when I see it because I am a ridiculously devoted James Bond fans. Here’s the trailer:

And here’s a bonus quiz. What Bond movie had a clean-tech plot-device?

Read more

Older

Newer

Switch to Mobile
ThinkProgress Signup Overlay Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress

Sign Up