More Forking “Journalism”

The Locust Fork is my new SackSessions – my new guilty pleasure.  I was counting on a wacky post regarding the Siegelman/Scrushy sentencing and Glynn delivered.  He thinks that (hold your laughter) the Siegelman/Scrushy sentencing, death of the immigration bill, and Riley’s plea for prayers for rain are all connected.

He starts off his new conspiracy theory with a little error.

Let’s see if I can take you through it quickly before I fall asleep after spending all day in Montgomery covering the show trial of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and Richard Scrushy.

Actually, what he was at today was the sentencing, not the trial (or I guess I should say “show sentencing”).  Ordinarily I wouldn’t point out such things, but the most credentialed journalist in our state must be held to a slightly higher standard.

After alleging that the Siegelman/Scrushy trial was masterminded by Rove to clear the way for Rob and Bob Riley he offers his thoughts, not facts (remember – he only deals in facts), on the immigration bill.

The next story down the page will feature a Republican Senator, Jeff Sessions, leading the fight to kill an immigration bill, supposedly backed by President George W. Bush himself. What they won’t tell you is that the bill was sent up to Capitol Hill by Karl Rove so that Sessions could publicly kill it – to prove he’s no rubber stamp vote for Bush in Washington.

They, being the main stream media in this case, “won’t tell you” that Rove sent the immigration bill to Capital Hill because there is absolutely no proof.  Are we seriously supposed to believe that the President has only been feigning support for a very unpopular bill for months and earning the scorn of countless former supporters just to help out old Beauregard, a senator who was almost guaranteed to be reelected without this bill’s existence?  Would the president say, “Legacy be damned,” and fall on his proverbial sword for Sessions?  Why not pick a more embattled senator to save in such a politically bloody manner?  This may be one of the silliest thoughts I’ve heard/read in a long time.

Finally, Glynn suggests that Riley’s request for prayer for rain was Rovian in nature.  What Glynn failed to mention is that Rove is responsible for the drought himself.  I saw him paying off a Choctaw to do a reverse rain dance.  I can’t believe he didn’t connect that dot!

Then Glynn wonders why more reputable news outlets aren’t calling the governor.

We are just wondering: Considering all the reports in the New York Times, Time magazine, the Los Angeles Times, the Florence Times Daily and the Locust Fork Journal about Riley’s connections to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the plot to take down Siegelman in the courts, why is it that no news reporter at any Alabama news organization bothered to call the governor and get his reaction to the Siegelman, Scrushy verdict?

That is a pretty precipitous drop in that sequence of news outlets.  I’ll let you decide just where the demarcation lies.

Even if it had occurred to them, the governor would not have been around to give his reaction. Because right after he asked the people to pray for rain, he was whisked off to Washington to have some kind of high level meeting with somebody about something. Could it be that Karl Rove is seriously considering getting Senator Fred Thompson in Tennessee to draft Bob Riley to run as his running mate in the presidential race in 2008?

I would never rule out anything, but that seems like a very unlikely ticket even though it would combine two very popular men.  It would be highly irregular to see a ticket with two men from the same part of the country, let alone two adjacent, very southern states.  If one runs with Glynn’s theory (what happened to facts?!) then maybe Rove thinks that the next president can win by intensely focusing on the south and getting a few states outside the Mason-Dixon Line.  It’s plausible, but unlikely.

Glynn concludes by proffering even more facts insipid speculation.

If I had the power of subpeona [sic] on my side, or if I was a really good hacker, I would like to see the phone records for the White House, the Senate, the governor’s office – and the federal courthouse in Montgomery. It would also be interesting to know who actually wrote that verdict for Judge Fuller – while he was in the courtroom scratching his nose.

Once more Glynn, the self-described most credentialed journalist in Alabama, levels a wholly unsubstantiated assertion about Fuller (who I’m no fan of, by the way – details on request).  Such claims might pass through the filters at a “new media organization” but would end up on the cutting room floor or on the editorial page of a more reputable establishment.

Oh by the way, if you let Glynn know that he spelled subpoena wrong then you will be entered to win official Locust Fork propaganda!  Then everyone would know that you are an adherent to zany left wing conspiracy theories.