Don Siegelman's friend: ‘Legal Schnauzer’ blogger arrested for contempt of court, resisting arrest

[Octafish]

38. 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
The Locust Fork News-Journal, 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?

SNIP...

(Mark) Kennedy, the son-in-law of George Wallace himself, was the first state Supreme Court Justice targeted by Karl Rove, who came to work for a University of Alabama Law School professor named Harold See at the behest of the Business Council of Alabama. It was and is still run by Bill Canary who had worked as a political operative for George H.W. Bush. We haven’t seen much of Canary since he was named prominently in all the stories about the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.

Kennedy actually beat Rove and his candidate in that first race, barely, but he was so shaken by the dirty campaign tactics that he decided not to seek another term and face Rove again in 1998. He retired, but finally agreed in 2010 to get back into politics as head of the Alabama Democratic Party.

I caught up with him at an AFL-CIO convention in Prattville last fall and got him to tell me the story of what Karl Rove did to him. You can see the interview in the video above.

Before being elected to the state Supreme Court, Kennedy served as a juvenile judge and family-court judge, where he saw the negative plight of abused children who ended up in the justice system. In light of his experiences, he helped start the Children’s Trust Fund of Alabama and later the Corporate Foundation for Children and served as president of the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect. Kennedy’s campaign commercials showed his volunteer work, and included pictures of him holding hands with children he had helped.

Rove took those innocent pictures and, in the early days of the Internet, got Republican operatives at the University of Alabama Law School and the secretive, conservative Federalist Society to e-mail around an attack ad claiming Kennedy was a gay pedophile. It was not unlike the “whispering campaign” he used in Texas to get Bush elected over Ann Richards, who he accused of being a lesbian in similar fashion.

CONTINUED...

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

Great links and video interviews above, too.