The World Around You

John Edwards comes to Birmingham, Alabama today.

Edwards, a senator from North Carolina, will speak to donors tonight at the Summit Club downtown in an invitation-only event that one supporter said could raise up to $500,000. An additional public appearance was expected, but details were not announced Monday night.

More than 600 Alabama residents donated $737,000 to Edwards when he was running for the presidency, according to campaign finance records kept by the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s almost three times the amount given to Kerry. This time around, donors are being asked to support the Kerry-Edwards ticket, which is likely to use that money in battleground states with evenly divided polls and a bounty of electoral votes.

In other words, not in Alabama. The state is predicted to swing solidly toward the Bush-Cheney column in November, but state Democrats say a visit from one of their nominees is still critical.

I hope the Kerry-Edwards ticket can get something out of Alabama, because it sure won’t be electoral votes.

Is there anyone who can judge this case? We are already on the fourth judge in this matter. This is starting to get really ridiculous. They need to consider bringing in a judge from another jurisdiction who would be much less likely to be as “inbred” as Alabama lawyers and judges seem to be.

U.S. Attorney Alice Martin filed the motion Monday asking Clemon to step down and seeking appointment of a judge from outside Alabama. If Clemon refuses, the motion asks that prosecutors be allowed to determine who contributed to a private legal defense fund set up for the judge in 1996.

Prosecutors want to know if Clemon, while under federal investigation, received financial or legal support from lawyers who now are associated with the criminal case against Siegelman and two other men.

Prosecutors said they are concerned that Clemon has a history of distrust of federal agents dating to a federal investigation that resulted in his sister’s going to prison. Clemon also was a target of that investigation. Federal prosecutors in California closed their inquiry of Clemon in 1996 without filing charges.

One of the investigators in his case worked on the current investigation of Siegelman and Tuscaloosa’s Dr. Phillip Bobo, prosecutors said. Clemon complained in 1996 that the agent, who personally served the judge with a subpoena, mistreated leaders of his church when seizing financial records.

“For this reason alone, `an average layperson’ would easily doubt Chief Judge Clemon’s impartiality to hear evidence gathered or presented by that very agent,” prosecutors argue in the motion. “Indeed, given Chief Judge Clemon’s history, it would be unreasonable to assert that an average layperson would not have such doubts.”

This was discussed immediately after this judge took the case and then seemed to go away. That gives the appearance that the prosecutors don’t feel things are going their way so they are bringing it up again. However, with all of the difficulties in finding a judge for this case, going outside the state seems like a good idea to me.

**Crossposted at Polstate.com