One man in America has good reason to celebrate the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression: Karl Rove.  The House Judiciary Committee has issued a subpoena to the Fox political analyst.  George W’s “Brain” has been linked to the firing of several US Attorneys and the wrongful conviction of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. 

Both stories follow a similar script.  Karl Rove calls the tune and the Department of Justice (represented by either Alberto Gonzalez or an Alamaba US Attorney) dances a jig.  According to reports, the Alabama US Attorney’s Office hounded Siegelman for years before finally getting a grand jury to indict him on bribery charges.

Since the 2005 conviction, fifty four (54) former state attorney generals (many of them Republican) have called for a review of the Siegelman case.  After serving two years of a seven-year federal sentence, the ex-governor has been released pending appeal.  (A 60 Minutes story and a feature in TIME didn’t hurt.)

A scathing Rolling Stone article by Matt Taibbi argues that a desperate John McCain has hired Karl Rove and several Rovian disciples in a last ditch attempt to save a lagging campaign.  McCain was badly mauled by Rove acolytes in the 2000 election and the Republican candidate knows from experience how effective smear tactics can be.  He’d rather ride the Straight Talk Express to the White House, but that doesn’t appear to be in the cards.

The Siegelman legal fiasco, summarized nicely by the Tuscaloosa News, follows a familiar script.  A single witness told a jury that he saw the Governor exchange a committee membership for a donation to the state lottery fund.  Even though defense counsel demonstrated that the person in question had been on the committee for years and that the contribution didn’t benefit Siegelman personally, the jury voted to convict.

Once again, we see the extraordinary power of  eyewitness testimony.

This story demonstrates how politicized (and corrupt) the federal Justice Department has become.  

The parallels between the Siegelman case and the tragic plight of Alvin Clay are striking.  If the FBI was looking for people to investigate, they had their pick of thousands of compromised Wall Street traders and mortgage tycoons.  Instead, they are going after small-time operators like Mr. Clay, a black Little Rock attorney who allowed an unscrupulous business associate to use his contractors license. 

Clay says he had no idea Ray Nealy was arranging bogus real estate deals.  A single witness, exchanging perjured testimony for lenient treatment, told the story the US Attorney’s Office wanted to hear. 

Once again, the production of a single eye witness worked wonders with an all-white jury.

Most jurors in Alabama couldn’t believe that a US Attorney would pursue a bogus case against a politician simply because Karl Rove told him to do it.

Most jurors in Arkansas couldn’t believe that the US government had chosen, for no particular reason, to believe an incredible witness. 

Matt Taibbi’s highly partisan assault on Karl Rove underscores the power of brazen assertion.  Say something is so, repeatedly and with gusto, and most people will believe it.  Taibbi’s prose can get pretty rough, but he writes like an angel.  Consider this gem: “One is tempted to call this brilliant tactics, except that it isn’t brilliant, any more than pointing a gun at a Korean store owner is a “brilliant” way to make $135.”

Taibbi reminds us that Tim Griffin, one of the Rovian footsoldiers who replaced a fired Arkansas US Attorney, resigned after being accused of operating a racist vote caging scheme in Florida.  Griffin landed on his feet when he was assigned to dig up dirt on Barack Obama. 

Griffin, incidentally, was the US Attorney who demoted Assistant US Attorney Bob Govar for threatening to use his political clout to retaliate against a newspaper editor.  The editor had accused Govar of asking the FBI to turn a blind eye to a police chief who was eventually convicted of manufacturing, stealing, using and selling illegal drugs.  The police chief was Govar’s old friend.

So, instead of investigating a drug dealing police chief who illegally sold the services of county jail inmates to the highest bidder, the FBI, at Govar’s direction, decided to investigate Alvin Clay.  When their case fell apart, they plowed ahead anyway in the certain knowledge that an eyewitness, even the least credible man in the great state of Arkansas, would convince a jury.  

Compare Alvin Clay and Karl Rove and ask yourself who deserves to do time.  Subpoenaed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, Rove thumbs his nose with impunity.  And now, it appears, Rove is on the payroll of another presidential candidate and, with an economic crisis and all, nobody is paying attention.

The media isn’t paying attention to Alvin Clay either, but for an entirely different reason.