Blogging Can Be Dangerous to Your Freedom

[Octafish]

By Christopher Scholl
WhoWhatWhy.com on Apr 5, 2014

An Alabama blogger posted a simple question on his website this week: “Why did it take five months for me to be released from jail?”

Roger Shuler’s extraordinary imprisonment last autumn came after he blogged about allegations of an affair between a powerful Republican and a lobbyist, and in conservative Alabama, it seems that can land you some enemies.

SNIP...

But the scent of southern politics surrounded the case. The judge who placed Shuler in jail happened to have been appointed by the state’s Chief Justice, Roy Moore. As WhoWhatWhy reported, Moore is a controversial Republican, and a key player in Karl Rove’s GOP effort to draft conservatives to the bench.

There have been consistent protests about Shuler’s incarceration. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press cited Shuler as the only journalist in the western hemisphere to be jailed like this. The American Civil Liberties Union protested, too. Even The New York Times finally caught on to the case, covering Shuler’s story months later, in January.

SNIP...

So what led to his release? Judge Claud Neilson wrote that Shuler’s wife, Carol, “removed most of the subject matter of the injunction from the ‘Legal Schnauzer’ blog, from Shuler’s YouTube account, and from Shuler’s Twitter account.” He warned, however, that Shuler is under a permanent injunction and cannot post the comments again.

CONTINUED w/links....

http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/04/05/get-jail/

Shuler's the guy who worked to draw attention to the Rove-GOP railroading of Gov. Don Siegelman.

[frazzled]

1. “You’ve got a situation where sometimes there’s no good guys”

He never should have been imprisoned (a civil suit for monetary damages would have been the correct course of action; ignoring him might have been the best route), but the guy is pretty nutty, exasperating, and annoying. Being nutty, exasperating, and annoying, however, are not crimes:

“You’ve got a situation where sometimes there’s no good guys,” said Ken White, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles who writes about and practices First Amendment law.

Mr. Shuler is no stranger to defamation suits, as one might surmise from reading his blog. He started it in 2007 to document a property dispute with his neighbor that blew up into a legal war and ended with the neighbor’s lawyer becoming a part-owner of Mr. Shuler’s house, which is in Birmingham. Later, the blog branched out to expose what he alleged were the corrupt machinations of powerful figures, mostly Republicans, and with a particular animus toward former Gov. Bob Riley.

His allegations are frequently salacious, including a recent assertion that a federal judge had appeared in a gay pornographic magazine and a theory that several suicides were actually a string of politically motivated murders. Starting in January 2013, Mr. Shuler, citing unidentified sources, began writing that Robert Riley Jr., the son of the former governor, had impregnated a lobbyist named Liberty Duke and secretly paid for an abortion. Both denied it, and Ms. Duke swore in an affidavit that they had never even been alone in the same room.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/us/bloggers-incarceration-raises-first-amendment-questions.html

Let it be said, however, that this kind of wrongful imprisonment is not rampant, even in this crazy country of ours. As the Times article (written when he was still in jail) says:

But even those who longed for his muzzling, and there are many, did not see it coming like this: with Mr. Shuler sitting in jail indefinitely, and now on the list of imprisoned journalists worldwide kept by the Committee to Protect Journalists. There, in the company of jailed reporters in China, Iran and Egypt, is Mr. Shuler, the only person on the list in the Western Hemisphere.

[Octafish]

2. Shuler got canned from his gig at University of Alabama for blogging about Siegelman.

Shuler, because most of Corporate McPravda was busy covering something other the prosecutions of the war criminals and banksters, had to write about it in 2008:

Alabama Blogger is Fired Over Siegelman Coverage

By Roger Shuler
Op Ed News, July 15, 2008

Roger Shuler, who writes the blog Legal Schnauzer, has been fired from his job as an editor in the Publications Office at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).

Shuler, who had worked at UAB for 19 years, apparently was terminated because he wrote critically about the Bush Justice Department, especially its handling of the Don Siegelman prosecution in Alabama and the Paul Minor case in Mississippi.
Lindsay Beyerstein, a reporter for the Raw Story Web site, broke the story with a major investigative piece.

Shuler had recently posted a series of original investigative pieces about Alice Martin, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama and a Bush appointee. Martin is the federal prosecutor who first went after Siegelman, in a case that was so weak a federal judge in Birmingham quickly kicked it out of court. Siegelman was eventually convicted in a case brought in Montgomery by Leura Canary, U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Alabama.

Shuler's posts showed that while Martin evidently is eager to prosecute Siegelman and other Democrats, she drags her feet and even intentionally hides evidence when presented with possible wrongdoing by Republicans. In fact, Shuler's primary allegation against Republican judges in Alabama involved honest-services mail fraud (18 U.S. Code 1346), the offense that made up roughly two-thirds of the charges against Siegelman and about half of the charges in the Paul Minor case.

Siegelman's case has received heavy press coverage, including a piece by 60 Minutes, as a possible example of political prosecution by the Bush Justice Department. The Siegelman case, along with questionable prosecutions in Mississippi (Paul Minor), Pennsylvania (Cyril Wecht), and Wisconsin (Georgia Thompson), is the subject of an ongoing Congressional investigation.

SNIP...

People on the opposing side in Shuler's personal legal case have direct ties to the Bush White House. Dax Swatek has worked for Bill Canary, the Republican operative who was quoted by whistleblower Jill Simpson as saying "his girls" (Alice Martin and Leura Canary, Bill's wife) would "take care of" Don Siegelman. Bill Canary, in turn, has close ties to Karl Rove, and the two teamed in the 1990s to lead a Republican takeover of Alabama state courts.

CONTINUED...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Alabama-Blogger-is-Fired-O-by-Roger-Shuler-080715-415.html

He sounded pissed. I know I'm pissed.

[sabrina 1]

7. He is famous for his exposures of the Karl Rove Plot against Siegelman, an egregious travesty of

justice which few had the courage to speak out about. To me, and to many, many others, he IS a 'good guy'. Although in today's American those who refuse to give up on justice, who challenge those in power who either participate in corruption or who refuse to stand up against the actual Bad Guys, ARE considered to be 'crazy'.

And the NYT is WRONG, there have been other bloggers and journalists jailed for what they wrote.

But then, the NYT doesn't have a great record of being the 'good guys' themselves.

[frazzled]

12. The NYT didn't say anything: a First Amendment attorney

said it. What is it you disagree with me about? I said there is no way this guy should have been imprisoned. That said, he's also often been abrasive and conspiratorial. That's immaterial as to (a) whether he was right about Siegelman and (b) whether a judge should have slapped him in jail.

[Baitball Blogger]

3. Let's face it. We all need whistle-blower protection.

[Octafish]

4. Agree. Two journalists were arrested for taking pictures from the sidewalk in Ohio.

'Welcome to the National Security State': Reporters Detained

Reporter, photographer detained for photographing from public street; lawsuit filed

Andrea Germanos, staff writer
Published on Friday, April 4, 2014 by Common Dreams

The Toledo Blade filed a lawsuit Friday after two of its employees were unlawfully detained while they were exercising their "full legal and constitutional rights to observe and photograph" from public streets outside a General Dynamics-operated plant.

SNIP...

Blade reporter Tyrel Linkhorn and Blade photographer Jetta Fraser, who had their media credentials, were shooting stock photos of local area businesses March 28 after completing an assignment in Lima, Ohio.

One of their stops was the Joint Systems Manufacturing Center — a government-owned, General Dynamics-operated tank plant.

The pair passed no sign indicating limited or prohibited access. The lawsuit states:

While lawfully present in a public area at or near this facility, Plaintiffs Jetta Fraser and Tyrel Linkhorn, acting in the employ and on behalf of Plaintiff The Toledo Blade Co., were engaged in the entirely lawful and constitutionally protected conduct of taking photographs of matters that were and are entirely open and visible to the public. Plaintiffs were in fact engaged, and were known to the defendants to be engaged, in this constitutionally protected activity for the purpose of gathering information for possible publication and dissemination to the public through newspapers and others media.

After taking several photographs, Fraser returned to the car to leave with Linkhorn, but the pair was stopped and questioned by armed, military police.

SNIP...

Fraser and Linkhorn explained the purpose of their visit and photographs, and showed their documentation of employment with the newspaper. The officer demanded Fraser supply her drivers license, but she questioned why as she was not the one driving. She was then ordered out of the car, cuffed, threatened with being groped, and was spoken to "in terms denoting the masculine gender," according to the suit.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/04/04-7

[Baitball Blogger]

5. Going a bit off tangent...

It irritates me when newspaper reporters without serious investigative chops say they don't like anonymous bloggers. I can understand their criticism when it involves drive-by comments in their newspaper's reader forums because some of the more racists comments have a way of turning away rational discussion. But, to understand how much the rest of us are risking when we try to write about the things we have seen, they should try doing their jobs without the benefit of knowing that they have lawyers on the ready to protect their First Amendment Rights.

[Octafish]

16. Absolutely Agree.

And you don't need no stinking college diploma or even an employee ID badge from ABCNNBCBSFauxNoiseNutworksAnybody to be a journalist. All you gotta do is tell the Truth.

Of course, to go further, follow Finley Peter Dunne's Mr. Dooley and "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

[onecaliberal]

6. WTF

Let me get this straight. Money, buying congress and elections is free speech but a man writing on a blog is worthy of being thrown in jail. Breathtaking....

[sabrina 1]

9. He made an enemy of Karl Rove and his tainted judges in Alabama when he wrote relentlessly about

the corruption that put Don Siegelman in jail. THAT is more than likely why he was thrown in jail. They were looking for a reason to do so.

It just occurred to me that the best way to overcome the ban on him from publishing the material about the Republican, is for people to keep talking about it.

I am not familiar with all the details of that incident, but a huge influx of posts on Twitter etc could make their ban totally ineffective.

[Octafish]

17. Legal Schnauzer publisher Roger Shuler released after more than 5 months in Alabama jail

From a week or so ago back:

This is the guy who stood up for Gov. Don Siegelman and against Karl Rove and the Alabama BFEE:



Roger Shuler, a veteran journalist and publisher of the Legal Schnauzer blog, was released yesterday afternoon from the Shelby County Jail, where he had spent more than five months from the fallout of a defamation lawsuit.

Shuler was released about 4:15 p.m. at the jail in Columbiana, Alabama, where he had been the only incarcerated journalist in the Western Hemisphere.

The arrest and incarceration has drawn national and international news coverage. Among the media outlets providing coverage are The New York Times, Al Jazeera, Huffington Post, Salon, Think Progress, WhoWhatWhy, FireDogLake, and more. Journalist/Attorney Andrew Kreig has provided ongoing in-depth coverage at his Washington-D.C.-based Justice-Integrity Project. Radio host Peter B. Collins has provided regular updates from his base in San Francisco.

Alan Colmes, of Fox News Radio, conducted a jailhouse interview with Shuler just last week, via telephone.

"I am grateful to have my freedom restored," Shuler says. "I also am grateful for the support of many readers, friends, and justice-focused citizens. This has been a traumatic experience for me and my wife, Carol, who has done a wonderful job of keeping our audience updated in my absence. Jail, of course, is not meant to be a pleasant experience, and I can provide first-hand testimony that it definitely is an unpleasant place to be, more so than probably many of us can imagine. It takes a tremendous physical, mental, and emotional toll."

SOURCE: http://legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/

Good to read Mr. Shuler! Hope he sues the pants off the traitors.

PS: And I hope it's a show trial in the sense it opens up the corrupt world of the Karl Rove and the Alabama crime syndicate, onecaliberal.

[Augiedog]

10. Nothing to see here, just move along

Just practicing a bit of soviet style justice with a tinge of Sharia law for flavor. They will have the NSA spy on him, the CIA can put him in one of their special prisons with room service torture and if all else the FBI can interrogate him during which he will shoot himself 5 times in the back of the head while admitting guilt to Amelia Erhardt disappearance. Go team USA!!!

[Octafish]

18. It's as if an empire of evil had hijacked the government of the United States.

Traitors who lied America into war get to paint and go along on their merry way.

Whistleblowers who called out the war crimes rot in prison as traitors.

Regarding the Alabama GOP and the Bush-Cheney-Rove Axis of Evil, war is a money maker:

War is big business. It's an insider's game. It's why we have so much secret government.

The last remaining enormous wads of cash in the Treasury are to be had for purchasing today's modern military industrial intel complex.



There's more than a trillion to be grabbed -- just for the Lockheed-Martin F-35.

Now keeping tabs on us -- people interested in using some of the nation's treasure for more peaceful purposes -- are for-hire spies. How do I know this? Julian Assange and Anonymous:

WikiLeaks' Stratfor Dump Lifts Lid on Intelligence-Industrial Complex

WikiLeaks' latest release, of hacked emails from Stratfor, shines light on the murky world of private intelligence-gathering

by Pratap Chatterjee
Published on Tuesday, February 28, 2012 by The Guardian/UK

What price bad intelligence? Some 5m internal emails from Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based company that brands itself as a "global intelligence" provider, were recently obtained by Anonymous, the hacker collective, and are being released in batches by WikiLeaks, the whistleblowing website, starting Monday.

The most striking revelation from the latest disclosure is not simply the military-industrial complex that conspires to spy on citizens, activists and trouble-causers, but the extremely low quality of the information available to the highest bidder. Clients of the company include Dow Chemical, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, as well as US government agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Marines.

SNIP...

Assange notes that Stratfor is also seeking to profit directly from this information by partnering in an apparent hedge-fund venture with Shea Morenz, a former Goldman Sachs managing director. He points to an August 2011 document, marked "DO NOT SHARE OR DISCUSS", from Stratfor CEO George Friedman, which says:

"What StratCap will do is use our Stratfor's intelligence and analysis to trade in a range of geopolitical instruments, particularly government bonds, currencies and the like."

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/28-10?print

If it weren't for Anonymous and WikiLeaks, we probably wouldn't know about any of that.

It's no joke. It's no unimportant story. It's no boring history. Run by insiders, the secret government is key to making the system run on behalf of the few -- the 1-percent of 1-percent. Central to that is intelligence -- economically, politically and military useful information.

Which brings up the nation's purported free press, the only business mentioned by name in the entire United States Constitution, and how the organizations therein have miserably failed to feature prominently the sundry and myriad ways the insiders on Wall Street and their toadies in Washington do the work for Them.

The problem is systemic. The corruption is systemic.

Because it involves oversight of secret organizations -- the Pentagon, Homeland Security, CIA, etc -- Congress and the Administration often have no clue, let alone oversight, to what is happening because the corruption is marked "Top Secret."

Secret government also means We the People can't do our job as citizens, which is to hold them accountable and find the ones responsible in order to vote the crooks out and, it is hoped, the honest ones in.

With no citizen oversight, anything goes. And it doesn't stop.

Remember this fine fellow, US Navy fighter ace Randy "Duke" Cunningham?

Later a member of the United States Congress, he used his position to feather his nest, Big Time.



In his political career, Cunningham was a member of the Appropriations and Intelligence committees, and chaired the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Human Intelligence Analysis and Counterintelligence during the 109th Congress. He was considered a leading Republican expert on national security issues.

Currently, he's in USP Tuscon or another fine facility where he gets three squares, medical and dental.
He's due for release in a year or so. He'll be able to pick up his pension.

"The Duke Cunningham Act, also known as the Federal Pension Forfeiture Act, was introduced by U.S. Senator John F. Kerry in 2006. The bill would have denied pension benefits to any members of Congress convicted of bribery, conspiracy or perjury. The bill died in committee. (Source: The Press Enterprise)

Duke wasn't alone. He really was just one snake in a long line of snakes. Remember Dusty Foggo, Number 3 at CIA and close associate of CIA Director and former Congressman Porter Goss? Swells sitting atop the peak of political and military secrecy and power.

Unfortunately, when it comes to modern governance, no oversight means means the insiders are getting away with murder, and warmongering and treason and all the power that they bring. Appointed pretzeldent George W Bush on Valentine's Day 2007 put it in words: "Money trumps peace."

Secret government warmongering and war profiteering are systemic. Secret government is rotten to the core. What's more, in a democracy that once really was land of the free and home of the brave, secret government poses the greatest threat to true national security.

[Octafish]

22. Know your BFEE: Siegelman Judge is a big-time War Profiteer

U.S. Judge Mark E. Fuller, the guy who helped railroad Gov. Don Siegelman.



Fuller just happens to be the owner of a company that's made a huge fortune off the Pentagon and War Inc via no-bid crony War on Terror largesse.

The Pork Barrel World of Judge Mark Fuller

By Scott Horton
Harper's August 6, 2007, 5:14 pm

For the last week, we’ve been examining the role played by Judge Mark Everett Fuller in the trial, conviction, and sentencing of former Alabama Governor Don E. Siegelman. Today, we examine a post-trial motion, filed in April 2007, asking Fuller to recuse himself based on his extensive private business interests, which turn very heavily on contracts with the United States Government, including the Department of Justice.

The recusal motion rested upon details about Fuller’s personal business interests. On February 22, 2007, defense attorneys obtained information that Judge Fuller held a controlling 43.75% interest in government contractor Doss Aviation, Inc. After investigating these claims for over a month, the attorneys filed a motion for Fuller’s recusal on April 18, 2007. The motion stated that Fuller’s total stake in Doss Aviation was worth between $1-5 million, and that Fuller’s income from his stock for 2004 was between $100,001 and $1 million dollars.

In other words, Judge Fuller likely made more from his business income, derived from U.S. Government contracts, than as a judge. Fuller is shown on one filing as President of the principal business, Doss Aviation, and his address is shown as One Church Street, Montgomery, Alabama, the address of the Frank M. Johnson Federal Courthouse, in which his chambers are located.

SNIP...

Doss Aviation and its subsidiaries also held contracts with the FBI. This is problematic when one considers that FBI agents were present at Siegelman’s trial, and that Fuller took the extraordinary step of inviting them to sit at counsel’s table throughout trial. Moreover, while the case was pending, Doss Aviation received a $178 million contract from the federal government.

CONTINUED...

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/08/hbc-90000762

There's a special place for Judge Fuller, and it's not on the bench.

[Enthusiast]

11. K&R! WTF has happened to this country?

And what kind of a country do these fuckers want to live in?

On every front these right wing assholes are destroying the nation.

[Zorra]

20. Late stage Terminal Unregulated Free Market Capitalism. nt

[JDPriestly]

13. The question is whether Shuler had any evidence to back up what he wrote and if so, what

was the evidence? Did he reasonably believe that what he wrote was true and if so why did he write it? Did he write about it as if he knew it as an established fact?

I like his exposes on Siegelman, but when claiming to know of a sexual relationship between two people when you have no evidence, when the two may have been just friends or to have had a business-only relationship is pretty nasty especially when the people are in politics.

So the question is what was his evidence for his claim about the affai?

[Octafish]

27. Excellent point: To Win, the Truth needs to be on his side.

Here's some of what he wrote and his sources:

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Alabama Republican Rob Riley Experiences Fallout From A Messy Affair With Lobbyist Liberty Duke

Rob Riley, the son of former Alabama Governor Bob Riley, had an extramarital affair with a lobbyist that led to a number of personal and political complications, sources tell Legal Schnauzer.

Liberty Smith Duke, a lobbyist based in Clanton, Alabama, had an affair with Riley about six years ago. Riley, a married father of four, heads the Riley Jackson Law Firm in the Birmingham suburb of Homewood. But he is perhaps best known as a major Republican political figure in our state for almost two decades, playing key roles in his father's campaigns for the U.S. House of Representatives and the Alabama Governor's Office.

The reports about an extramarital affair, and the ugly repercussions from it, raise new questions about the ethics of a political family that has claimed to be opposed to abortion rights, gambling, and other cultural issues on moral grounds.

It also raises new questions about a political son who is seen as a possible future governor, even though he already has a checkered ethical past. Rob Riley's slippery grasp on matters of right and wrong dates at least to 1996. That's when he engaged in campaign-finance irregularities, on his father's behalf, and eventually received a $10,000 fine from the Federal Elections Commission.

The latest revelations could prove to be far more damaging than the FEC case to any future political hopes Rob Riley might have. In a pair of telephone interviews with Legal Schnauzer, Riley admitted knowing Liberty Duke, but denied having an affair with her. During our conversations, Riley angrily hung up on me three times.

Liberty Duke did not respond to a voice message, seeking comment.

Our sources do not have an exact time frame on the Riley/Duke affair, but it appears to have happened between 2005 and 2007. That means it likely was going on during the criminal prosecution of former Democratic Governor Don Siegelman, a case that Rob Riley reportedly helped launch.

Who is Liberty Duke? For 2012, the Alabama Ethics Commission lists her as a registered lobbyist for the following entities: Benjamin Gordon Main Sr., ERIS Inc., MedImmune, and Pinnacle Networx Inc.

Alabama Secretary of State records show her as the registered agent for ERIS Inc., a consulting company that was formed in 2002, with an office address of 1155 Co. Rd. 368, Verbena, AL.

Lobbying records from 2008 show her clients as Advanced Technology Systems Inc., Benjamin Gordon Main, Sr., ERIS Inc, Omnilink, Sepracor Inc., and Town of Dauphin Island.

Why should messiness in Rob Riley's personal life matter to everyday Alabamians? Let's consider some of the stories in which he has played a prominent role:

* The Congressional Campaign-Finance Scandal of 1996--The Republican Party launched a $3-million advertising blitz aimed at bolstering its candidates in the closing weeks of the 1996 election. The plan was financed by contributions from wealthy donors to a company called Triad Management Services. An investigation unmasked the plan as a money-laundering scheme, and Rob Riley was fined for making and accepting excessive contributions.

* The Plot to Launch a Political Prosecution Against Don Siegelman--Former Alabama GOP operative Jill Simpson testified under oath before Congress in 2007 that Rob Riley told her an offer had been extended to former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman to drop a criminal investigation in exchange for his decision not to contest Bob Riley's razor-close electoral victory in the 2002 governor's race. Simpson also testified that Rob Riley was on a conference call in which key Alabama Republicans discussed a plan to launch a bogus prosecution against Siegelman. Rob Riley later would file an affidavit, claiming "I have no memory of being on a phone call." Meanwhile, Simpson produced phone records showing that a call took place at the time she had indicated.

* Medicare Fraud and Performance Group LLC--Rob Riley best is known as a lawyer and politician's son, but he also is a business owner, heading a physical-therapy company called Performance Group LLC. A whistleblower named Ingrid Awtrey Law claimed in a 2008 federal lawsuit that Riley's company engaged in widespread Medicare fraud, including forgeries of physician signatures.

* Indian Gaming Money and the Battle Against Non-Indian Gaming--Like his father, Rob Riley long has claimed to be opposed to gambling, on moral grounds. But newspaper reports last fall showed that Rob Riley helped funnel Indian gaming money to an organization that fights non-Indian gambling facilities in Alabama. Both Riley and A. Eric Johnston, the director of Citizens for a Better Alabama, claimed they did not know the $100,000 came from Indian gaming sources. But veteran Montgomery journalist Bob Martin caught Johnston in at least one clear lie about the money, calling into question the validity of most everything he and Riley have said on the subject.

Numerous published reports indicate Rob Riley has only a casual acquaintance with the truth in his public life. Now, we learn that his personal life also has been riddled with dishonesty.

Riley's wife, the former Leslie McLeod, of Lineville, Alabama, has knowingly or unknowingly suffered. So have Liberty Duke and Rob Riley's Republican colleagues.

That's because the affair led to some complications that are ugly, indeed.

(To be continued)

For obvious reasons, disappeared from The Legal Schnauzer's web site, but still avaible, until Rove reads this, on the Wayback archive:

http://web.archive.org/web/20130929034318/http://legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/2013/01/alabama-republican-rob-riley.html

more here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20140228154531/http://legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/2013/07/rob-riley-had-affair-with-lobbyist.html

[JDPriestly]

31. Allegations, accusations, but what is the evidence? Gossip?

I am not interested in defending Rob Riley or Liberty Duke. I just want to know what the evidence is for these claims. It's easy to assume things and to believe gossip. How does Legal Schnauzer know these accusations are true?

[Octafish]

32. Shuler wrote: ''sources.'' So, there's more than one.

What gets me more than his sources, though, is the treatment he's gotten. Roger Shuler did not deserve to be beaten up and tossed in jail for five months for writing about a public figure.

Larry Flynt wrote a satire about Jerry Falwell losing his virginity to his mother in an outhouse. The courts ruled that was protected speech: political speech.

[pragmatic_dem]

14. Alabama -> Talibana nt

[Octafish]

29. ''This silence by groups like the Society for Professional Journalism is deafening.''

"This silence by groups like the Society for Professional Journalism is deafening. Say what you will about Shuler's pugnacity, the man has been fearless in his efforts to report and expose stories from some places most of us would rather forget exist."

-- 8ackgr0und N015e at DailyKos

SOURCE: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/16/1285186/-Why-is-this-trending-on-reddit-but-absent-here#

[pragmatic_dem]

35. professional organizations are not always on our side...

AMA let our health care system fester to the point of complete dysfunction.

Other organizations like tech heavy ACM, IEEE etc happily watch as millions of US jobs and trillions in US intellectual property get traded to unskilled low wage workers in Asia. All the while US members in middle class are getting their throat's slit.

There's more examples of course, but the sad fact is most professional organizations are worried about kissing politician's asses so grant money comes in. And with Holder proving that he'll spy on hundreds of journalists, for any reason, we really are fucked as a representative democracy, who wants to take a risk covering our corrupt police state?

Thanks for the link!

[WillyT]

15. K & R !!!

[Octafish]

36. It's like the Alabama GOP is running the country...National Bloggers Club? Ali Akbar?

Pacalo points out on the thread below that Shaun McCutcheon, who SCROTUS John Roberts and Co. bravely ruled to defend the right of freedom of speech to each dollar of his and every multimillionaire and corporation no matter their country club or tax exempt faith, is from Alabama. Small world.

You don't suppose knows anybody like Karl Rove and "American Crossroads" or Tony the Fixer Scalia and "Federalist Society"?

Nah. Alabama's big. There must be lots and lots and lots of multi millionaires who just happened to be interested out of the red sky in suing the FEC there. They probably grow on cotton trees, there's so many.

Here's a bit from TIME on Dan Backer, the guy who crossed paths with Mr. McCutcheon in 2011 at the Young Conservative Coalition's Reaganpalooza konfab. Crooks and Liars got the skinny on him and a couple of his friends in big money disinformation:

The National Bloggers Club And Their Super PAC Friends

By Matt Osborne September 12, 2012 4:00 pm - 70 Comments

EXCERPT...

Akbar did not prevent Ladd from getting work. In fact, Ehlinger received a plum new gig from Washington lobbyist Dan Backer of DB Capitol Strategies. He serves as Treasurer for many well-known PACs, including the Conservative Action Fund, which has already given Akbar's "Vice & Victory Fund" over $44,000 in 2012. Backer is also Treasurer for Stop This Insanity Inc PAC, which recently signed Ehlinger to a complex $10,000 contract. Ehlinger hasn't spoken out on the subject of Ali Akbar ever since. (CORRECTION: see below)

Backer (right) is the attorney who created "hybrid Super PACs" through his Carey v. FEC lawsuit in 2011. As part of his contract, Ehlinger agreed to be classified as an employee and then kick back $1,500 to Stop This Insanity Inc PAC, creating an opportunity to challenge federal limits on employee PAC contributions. Backer also wants to lift limits on contributions to federal candidates. True freedom, Backer argues, is American billionaires donating more hard political money every year than an average American family makes.

Dan Backer's other PAC products include Todd Cefaratti, who became infamous for fleecing PAC donors and using his for-profit JoinTheTeaParty.us website as a lead generator for spam. Cefaratti was found out by activists at Free Republic, who quickly discovered that his real estate sales lead business was named Glengary Inc. Despite grassroots revulsion at this character from a David Mamet play, Cefaratti spoke at CPAC in February. He and his Glengary LLC are also party to Dan Backer's FEC suit with Ehlinger. Stop This Insanity Inc. runs another one of Cefaratti's websites, TheTeaParty.net.

The "made men" of the Inner Party are never held accountable. Their revolution has been monetized: shirts, buttons, email addresses, and page views turn dedicated activists into revenue streams for "producers." Meanwhile, these same "producers" also get paid by billionaires and PAC lawyers who benefit from stoking the grassroots fires on behalf of their corporate agenda. It's a great job if you can get it. No wonder Akbar likes to throw big, exclusive parties at CPAC and the Republican National Convention.

In order to make the BlogBash party an instant institution this year, Akbar and Murphy took money from a host of the usual suspects in astroturf politics, including Americans For Prosperity, FreedomWorks, and the vote-suppressing True The Vote organization. Billionaire and megadonor Foster Friess also helped throw Akbar's party at CPAC, then cracked a terrible joke about aspirin as a form of birth control: "You know, back in my days, they used Bayer Aspirin for contraception. The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn’t that costly.” Friess has vowed to spend a large chunk of his fortune through Karl Rove's American Crossroads this year.

We believe the National Bloggers Club encapsulates a problem common to Tea Party organizing since February 2009. As with Mark Meckler, the multilevel marketing billionaire who organized Tea Party Patriots, we see a disturbing pattern of grift in the National Bloggers Club. Sincere Americans have been organized to prevent corporate regulation and billionaire tax hikes; the organizers fleece them while also accepting money from representatives of these same corporations and billionaires.

CONTINUED...

http://crooksandliars.com/matt-osborne/national-bloggers-club-and-their-supe

More information on Mr. Backer's legal style from Breitbart Unmasked.

[msanthrope]

19. He needs to hire a lawyer and listen to them. nt

[Octafish]

34. If only he could afford a good lawyer!

Shuler lost his job as a writer and editor with the University of Alabama department of publications in 2008 -- around the same time he first started writing about Gov. Don Siegelman. Journalism jobs being a rarity, he's had a tough row to hoe as a free lancer ever since.

[pacalo]

21. Why is Alabama allowed its own third-world justice system without checks & balances

from the federal justice department?

And exactly who is Shaun McCutcheon, the Alabaman whose name is now synonymous with the Supreme Court's legal blessing to billionaires who wish to control election results?

What gives Alabama such standing?

[Octafish]

30. THE Shaun McCutcheon is from Alabama?

That's where Karl Rove and Rob Riley fixed the Alabama Supreme Court.

How Karl Rove Took Over the Alabama Supreme Court and Created a ‘No Win Zone’ for Citizens

How the Corporate Republican Courts Turned From ‘Tort Reform’ to ‘Sovereign Immunity’ for Hospitals and Destroyed Americans’ Sixth Amendment Jury Rights

by Glynn Wilson
New American Journal/Locust Fork Net, October 23, 2012

How did Karl “Turd Blossom” Rove, the adopted son of a gay man with pierced balls and a drunk, drug addict mother, become such a powerful and destructive force in American politics?

In the South we have a long history of asking people where they’re from, about their family. We have a need to know something about their mama. Yet as an American demographic, white Southern males over 50 have been listening to the politicians handled by Karl Rove and his ilk for three decades now. How did this happen?

While Karl Rove’s personal story may be a sad and tragic one, it may also explain why he became such a vicious, mean political animal. But that does not mean we have to listen to him.

Was it not clear enough in 2008 that Rove’s crowning political achievement, fooling the American establishment and the people into electing one of the worst presidents in U.S. history twice, George W. Bush, that his brand of Machiavellian, scorched-earth politics is bad for American democracy and the global economy?

Now, according to all the available evidence, including the reporting in Craig Unger’s book Boss Rove: Inside Karl Rove’s Secret Kingdom of Power, Rove sits on the largest political war chest in human history. He has usurped the National Republican Party’s fund raising authority. He’s using millions of dollars from billionaire donors to try to help Massachusetts Mormon Mitt Romney unseat President Barack Obama from the White House, and he’s now allowed to do it in a totally unaccountable way due to the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial ruling in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission.

How is it possible that no one in the American news media been able to bury this horrendous political animal and stop him from destroying what’s left of this experiment in government of, by and for “the people?”

CONTINUED...

http://blog.locustfork.net/2012/10/how-karl-rove-took-over-the-alabama-supreme-court-and-created-a-no-win-zone-for-citizens/

How indeed.

Coincidentally, Pruneface Reagan, Poppy Bush and Smirko McCokespoon Baby Doc Bush fixed the United States Supreme Court.

It really is a small world!

Hey! Is that the most interesting baby in the world, pacalo?

[ChisolmTrailDem]

23. That would indicate a conspiracy. But, but, but....conspiracies never happen! nt

[Octafish]

33. That's what the controlled media have said for half a century.

And when people notice that while appearing on television, they are never invited to appear back on television.

Political assassination researcher Lisa Pease told me and several hundred of my closest friends that, in person.

[struggle4progress]

24. Insisting on representing yourself in numerous court cases, when you have no legal training,

and when your idiosyncratic legal theories are based on bizarre ideas as the needlessness of showing up in court or the unimportance of court orders, can be dangerous to your freedom

Shuler is simply a nutcase -- and idolizing him won't help anyone think clearly

[Octafish]

25. It may be that's exactly what you're supposed to think.

That's not the reality, though.

Here's an example of what Mr. Shuler has reported about the Alabama GOP that the mainstream media ignores:

The Strange Tale of a Pedophile in the U.S. Justice Department

Roy Atchison

The U.S. Department of Justice generated plenty of strange stories during the George W. Bush years. But one of the strangest involved John David "Roy" Atchison, an assistant U.S. attorney in Pensacola, Florida, who committed suicide after being caught in a pedophilia sting in Detroit.

Atchison's sad story has many connections to Birmingham and Alabama. And it raises this question: How did a guy with a shaky work record and a history of run-ins with the law get hired by the world's supposedly foremost crime-fighting organization? Did Atchison attain his lofty position because he had connections to powerful figures in the Alabama legal world?

Investigative journalist Margie Burns examines these questions, and much more, in a series of posts about the Atchison case at her blog, margieburns.com.

Burns begins with the actions that turned Atchison into a national figure in fall 2007:

This is not the story of a man who engaged in pedophilia for years or decades before being caught. It is the story of a man whipsawed by the strain of living up to a high-achieving family rooted in Birmingham, Ala., whose high-functioning connections assisted him for years in developing a career for which he turned out not to be suited. On Sept. 16, 2007, Assistant U.S. Attorney John David Roy Atchison, serving as a federal prosecutor in the Northern District of Florida, was arrested on credible charges of basically pedophilia. Atchison committed suicide in federal prison Oct. 5.

A dead pedophile might not sound like a tragedy. But Atchison was thought to be participating in a pedophile ring, and his death removed a useful informant from law enforcement resources. The question of how he was enabled to kill himself rather than being preserved for justice is one of the loose ends left hanging in his case.

CONTINUED...

http://legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/2010/09/strange-tale-of-pedophile-in-us-justice.html

Now, who's crazy? Shuler or the rightwing nutjobs in the Bush-Cheney-Rove GOP?

[struggle4progress]

26. Here's the NY Times in September 2007, three years before the 29 September 2010

blog post you link:

Prosecutor Tries to Kill Himself After Arrest in Pedophile Case
By NICK BUNKLEY
September 21, 2007
DETROIT, Sept. 20 — A federal prosecutor from Florida ... tried to hang himself on Thursday in his jail cell, the police here said. The prosecutor, John David Roy Atchison, 53, had been removed from a suicide watch the previous day after assuring his lawyer and a judge that he would not harm himself. He was not injured in the suicide attempt ...

... Mr. Atchison, 53, was arrested getting off a plane in Detroit on Sept. 16 and charged with the unthinkable. The authorities there said ... he had arranged with an undercover agent to have sex with a 5-year-old girl. Now Mr. Atchison is awaiting trial in a federal prison in Michigan ...
Town Is Shaken After Prosecutor’s Arrest in a Child-Sex Sting
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
Published: September 29, 2007

His next suicide attempt succeeded about a week later. Here's USA Today, reprinting a Detroit Free Press story on 5 October 2007:

... J.D. Roy Atchison, 53, of Gulf Breeze, Fla., hanged himself at the Federal Correctional Institution in Milan, Mich., where he was taken after trying to commit suicide last month at Sanilac (Mich.) County Jail, authorities said ... Officials said Atchison had been housed in solitary confinement, was under close supervision and had shown no signs of despondency ...
Prosecutor jailed on child-sex charges hangs himself
By David Ashenfelter, Detroit Free Press

[Octafish]

28. Only thing is that Legal Schnauzer tied the fellow to his roots with the Alabama GOP.

Very much appreciate you bringing those stories up from the newspapers.

Did you find any that were aired on national television?