Madison, Wisconsin—As the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs (VA) and U.S. Dept. of Justice remain under legal and political siege, a Vietnam-era veteran filed a brief Monday slamming the two governmental agencies in his bizarre benefits-turned-criminal case.

Keith Roberts’ supplemental brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (CAVC) (Roberts v. Secretary of the VA (05-2425)), in tone echoing that of the veterans’ class action suit brought Tuesday, describes the “extraordinary rendition of a veteran from a VA administrative dispute directly into Federal District Court on criminal charges ….”

Since March of this year, Roberts has been serving a 48-month sentence (and his family financially shattered) for alleged wire fraud purportedly committed in his benefits application process with the VA, in an criminal-charges case now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (appellate brief filed June 29) which Roberts vows to take to the US Supreme Court, if necessary.

U.S. Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL) has had enough of the politicized prosecutions of the Bush/Rove Department of Justice.

Davis, a three-term congressman and member of the House Committee on the Judiciary, has taken up the cause of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman (D), roundly criticizing the DoJ prosecutions of him (one prosecution was dismissed) and calling for a Congressional investigation.

The bizarre conviction of Siegelman this year is drawing nationwide condemnation as a political prosecution engineered by Karl Rove, similar to the prosecution of the innocent Wisconsin state worker Georgia Thompson, now exonerated.

- via MAL Contends

The Vietnam-era airman who witnessed the death of a colleague killed in a gruesome C-54 aircraft accident in 1969 at a Naval Air Facility in Naples, Italy, and was convicted of fabricating his role at the death scene in seeking VA disability benefits is appealing his conviction.

Keith RobertsKeith Roberts' appeal brief is due June 29 before the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The government brief is due July 30.

Roberts' reply brief is due August 13. Oral arguments are scheduled at the Court's convenience. The case number is: U.S. v. Roberts, E.D. of Wisconsin federal court, docket 05-CR-118. U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, 07-1546.

Despite a mountain of evidence corroborating Roberts’ narrative of events, US Atty Stephen Biskupic’s office was able to convince a jury that Roberts committed wire fraud, using the same federal magistrate to whom wrongly convicted state worker Georgia Thompson's case was assigned.

via MAL Contends

The media and indeed much of America got quite a laugh out of reports that Paris Hilton was sent back to jail in tears and emotional distress.

Hilton “was taken from a courtroom screaming and crying Friday seconds after a judge ordered her returned to jail to serve out her entire 45-day sentence for a parole violation in a reckless driving case.

"It's not right!" shouted the weeping Hilton. "Mom!" she called out to her mother in the audience.

Why is this funny? And no it's not right.

Taking away someone’s liberty should be a last resort of a society to inflict upon its citizens.

McClatchy Newspapers ran a piece by Greg Gordon Monday noting that the DoJ had conducted the voter fraud witch hunts in numerous states. Some highlights:

 “Former lawyers in the Civil Rights Division, however, said the voter fraud campaign is a partisan effort to disqualify legitimate voters, as occurred in Florida before the 2000 presidential election.” 

"Aggressive purging of the voter rolls tends to have a disproportionate impact on voters who move frequently, live in cities and have names that are more likely to be incorrectly entered into databases," said Joseph Rich, a former chief of the Justice Department's Voting Rights Section who's now an attorney with the liberal-leaning Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights.

 Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was sentenced to 30 months, and ordered to pay $250,000 in fines.

U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton (nominated to the position by President George W. Bush in 2001) handed down the sentence minutes ago.

Libby, Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff, was convicted of perjury and obstructing justice in March, blocking a DoJ investigation into the unauthorized leaking of a CIA covert agent’s identity.

The leaking of the agent’s name, Valerie Plame, was later found to be one component of a conspiracy involving top members of the Bush administration defending its publicly stated, discredited rationales for going to war against Iraq.

The leaking is seen by many as retaliation against a leading war critic, Joseph Wilson, Plame’s husband.

- via MAL Contends

An e-mail written by a former Navy officer corroborates the account of a Vietnam-era airman who witnessed the death of a colleague killed in a gruesome C-54 aircraft accident in 1969 at a Naval Air Facility in Naples, Italy.

The crushing death of Airman Gary Holland in the wheel well of the C-54 set in motion a chain of events that 36 years later led the US Veterans Administration (VA) and the US Atty for the Eastern District of Wisconsin in 2006 to indict and convict a veteran, Airman Keith Roberts (1968-71), diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), on charges of wire fraud, arguing that Roberts fabricated his role at the death scene and his relationship with Holland, defrauding the VA.

The explanation for why US Atty Stephen Biskupic's reached out of his district (the Eastern Dist. of Wisconsin) into the city of Madison (a liberal stronghold in the Western Dist. of Wisconsin) in the search for voter fraud is not given in the Capital Times piece that broke Saturday (though the question is suggested):

As part of a push to prosecute voter fraud cases across the country, federal prosecutors in Milwaukee requested the voting rolls for the city of Madison from the November 2004 election, according to documents released to Congressional investigators looking into last year’s firing of eight U.S. Attorneys. 

Why did Biskupic, like he did in the discredited Georgia Thompson prosecution, reach into the Western Dist. when there were not even partisan allegations of voter fraud in Madison like in Milwaukee after 2004?

Today’s Capital Times’ piece by Judith Davidoff and David Callender reveals that Biskupic’s push to investigate alleged voter fraud was not limited to Milwaukee but also targeted the high Democratic-voting areas of the city of Madison and Southeastern Wisconsin. 

Biskupic, after publicly finding no evidence of any widespread pattern of fraud or voter irregularities as part of a bipartisan task force, launched the voter fraud investigations and subsequent prosecutions anyway, precisely in accordance with the national Republican program to suppress Democratic turnout.  

Writes Davidoff and Callender: 

 swalters [at] journalsentinel [dot] com has the latest on US Atty Stephen Biskupic.  

In his Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel blog, Walters notes that new documents written by his DoJ bosses praise Biskupic, begging the question of why Biskupic was placed on the US Atty kill list, and why Biskupic’s office subsequently conducted numerous bogus prosecutions that favored Republican partisans.