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All the publicity that the Don Siegelman case has brought in the last couple of days has made the rats in the Alabama Republican party scurrying to find the safety of darkness again. Led by chief rat Karl Rove, the modus operandi is to deny, deny, deny. The only problem? You have 52 Attorneys General, Republican and Democrat alike, who say that this case just doesn't pass the smell test.

The case rests on the testimony of Dana Jill Simpson who has come forward to say that Karl Rove asked her to dig up compromising sexual photographs of Siegelman. Classy guy, that Turdblossom. Besides denying that they know Simpson (which as she points out in the clip is a simple matter of explaining away phone records), things took a decidedly more sinister tone, as Larisa Alexandrovna documents:

As 60 Minutes was putting its show together, the White House put pressure on CBS -- the parent company -- to kill the show. Over the last few days, as word got out that the 60 Minutes show would air tonight, Karl Rove's associates began planting defamatory stories about journalists working on this story (see example here) and attacking the whistle-blower who came forward, Dana Jill Simpson. If you recall, Ms. Simpson testified, under oath, to Congress about Karl Rove's involvement in politicizing the DOJ. What you may not know, however, is that her house mysteriously caught fire and she was run off the road in the weeks leading up to her testimony. What you may also not know is that Governor Siegelman's house was broken into twice during his trial as was his attorney's office. Yesterday, the attacks on Simpson and journalists increased with a series of emails from the Alabama GOP. See Here.

I'm not trying to be overly dramatic, but as the layers get pulled away in this case, I'm having a harder and harder time believing that this is America and not some third world dictatorship.