The Kentucky News-Enterprise has a piece this week on jailed Wisconsin veteran, Keith Roberts.

Sister takes up brother’s fight for freedom

By JOSHUA COFFMAN

RADCLIFF —Sally Harrod is crunching numbers that stretch beyond her job as an accountant. She oversees a legal fund for her brother in two legal cases regarding benefits he sought as a Navy veteran.

Keith Roberts, 60, is in a Minnesota federal prison, convicted of fraudulently receiving electronic funds from the department of Veterans Affairs. ...

Harrod, her family members and other veterans’ advocates ... fear the VA sought retribution against Roberts for seeking decades of back pay for post-traumatic stress disorder and criticizing the agency’s slow response to approve or deny his medical claims. ...

And, once it is all settled, she hopes her family can help veterans in similar situations.

“It’s unbelievable to all of them,” she said. “If they can do it to my brother, they can do it to anyone at any time.”

An innocent and reportedly depressed Navy Airman Keith Roberts (1968-71) suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and serving a four-year sentence for wire fraud since March 2007, has for reasons unclear been moved and caged in solitary confinement in a federal prison in Minnesota for almost a month, according to the veteran's wife.

Roberts was targeted by the US Dept of Veterans Affairs (VA) in 2003-05, and became the central figure in an Alice-in-Wonderland tale, after U.S. Attorney Stephen Biskupic of Wisconsin and top VA officials schemed to convict Roberts’ of fraudulently receiving VA benefits (by wire transfer as the VA requires).

Despite hostility from high quarters of the VA, Roberts may be again granted the benefits for which he is federal prison for receiving.

U.S. Atty Biskupic is the same U.S. Atty who infamously prosecuted an innocent Wisconsin woman in a political prosecution, and several innocent Wisconsin citizens for voter fraud in apparent service to the electoral needs of the national GOP.

The House of Representatives issued contempt citations for White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers Friday, eliciting howls from House Republicans intent of protecting Bush corruption.

After months of stonewalling the House Judiciary Committee, the White House refused to testify under oath and produce documents about myriad DoJ and White House scandals, essentially flipping off Congress and the American people, bringing about the contempt citations.

Writes Scott Horton at Harper’s Magazine:

(T)he White House took the position that the scope of examination would be narrowly tailored so as to exclude precisely the subject matter of the inquiry: Did White House staffers interfere with prosecutors for partisan political reasons?

Harper's magazine remains the best watchdog of the U.S. Dept of Justice corruption.

From Scott Horton's column today blasting U.S. Atty Biskupic:

Compensating the Victims

The Bush Justice Department has engaged in a number of blatantly political prosecutions. One was already ascertained in an internal probe. My understanding is that a pending Inspector General investigation has reached the same conclusion in another case in which it confirmed Karl Rove’s intervention and involvement, and that it is looking at several more. And one of them was ascertained by a Court of Appeals decision, by a unanimous, all-Republican panel of the Seventh Circuit, which in fact labeled a prosecution, which produced a conviction and was before them on appeal, with a stinging one-word rebuke. They called it “preposterous.”

The Appeals judges ordered the immediate release of the prisoner after hearing the case, not even waiting for the issuance of an opinion. This was the case of Georgia Thompson, a Wisconsin civil servant, who was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney in Milwaukee with the evident purpose of helping the Republican candidate for governor get a leg up during the election. Moreover, the U.S. Attorney had previously been on Karl Rove’s list of prosecutors to fire, and after this and some other highly suspect cases, his name disappeared off the list. The facts speak for themselves, a lawyer might say.

In case you've been hiding in a cave this morning (or like me slept in because your storm-phobic dog kept you up overnight) Roberto Gonzales has officially resigned. Apparently to "spend more time with his family". Why do all the Republican guys suddenly care so much about their families when they get in trouble? I guess that's what makes them family values sorts of people.

In any case, whatever his reason for resigning, let's hope that this will result in the nomination of someone that will attract some bipartisan support. Rumor has it that it'll be Michael Chertoff, which doesn't quite seem to me to be the right ticket. Let's hope that the Justice Department can start working again on enforcing the rule of law rather than being a political arm of the White House. About the only good thing I can say about all of this is that it has actually made it possible to say something I never thought I'd hear coming out of my mouth - I miss  John Ashcroft.

Fresh from their fierce defense of US Attorney Steven Biskupic against claims that politics affected his prosecutions, Wisconsin wingnuts are complaining that their new Republican attorney general isn't putting politics ahead of the law.

J.B. Van Hollen, who took office in January, has come under fire for failing to prosecute -- or at least dirty up --the Democratic governor, Jim Doyle. The wingnuts are also unhappy about opinions he's issued on abortion and affirmative action issues.

Van Hollen was praised by the conservative Madison newspaper, the Wisconsin State Journal, for his even-handedness. In an editorial, it said:

He also has shown he's not the far-right ideologue or partisan opportunist that some had feared.

And that's his problem with the right. Jessica McBride, an Ann Coulter wannabe whose husband lost the GOP primary for AG to Van Hollen, wrote:

Wisconsin State Journal praises Van Hollen for not being a "right-wing ideologue"

With all due respect, the only problem with that analysis is that he PROMISED to be a right-wing ideologue.

I think it's a gubernatorial strategy.

Van Hollen was grilled Wednesday on Charlie Sykes' conservative talk show on WTMJ-AM in Milwaukee. Sykes likes hunting RINOs (Republicans In Name Only), and seems to have Van Hollen in his sights.

James Wigderson of Wigderson’s Library & Pub, a generally thoughtful rightwing website out of Waukesha, takes issue with the perceived inconsistency from two of my pieces on Paris Hilton and Lewis Libby.

On Paris Hilton (06/09), Wigderson accurately notes my reaction to her incarceration, quoting, “Taking away someone’s liberty should be a last resort of a society to inflict upon its citizens. But in America, it’s done with appalling frequency: By prosecutors looking to inflate their win-loss record, by judges for whom taking away someone’s liberty can make them look tough, and by spectator citizens for whom watching Hilton is a sick sideshow.”

And on Scooter Libby (07/02),
If there were any doubt that this administration believes that laws and rules are for other people, and that this government is theirs' to rule as they please, such doubts must be cast aside.

- 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

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.