Holder DROPS charges against GOP election-rigger

...but not those against Don Siegelman.

[Or, rather, loses the case]

By Mark Crispin Miller

James Tobin ran the phone-jamming scheme in NH in 2002--the election that John Sununu thereby "won." That also was the year that Saxby Chambliss "won" in Georgia, Wayne Allard "won" in Colorado, and Norm Coleman "won" in Minnesota (Paul Wellstone having perished in a small plane crash just days before Election Day). That also was the year, moreover, when Don Siegelman, who'd just won re-election as Alabama's governor, was stealthily un-re-elected in the wee hours on Election Night.

So it was a very good election for the GOP, which, through such victories, snatched back the Senate from the Democrats, who briefly ruled it after Sen. James Jeffords had switched parties in the spring.

A real Attorney General would look into all of that, and start by mounting a real probe of that phone-jamming operation in New Hampshire (which Jack Abramoff had paid for with two checks from his client, the Choctaw Indians).

But this Attorney General, and this president, will not go near that scandal, or lift a finger for Don Siegelman--or for Paul Minor, Wes Teel, Oliver Diaz or any of the several hundred other Democrats nailed groundlessly by Karl Rove's DoJ (which is, apparently, Karl Rove's Department still).

Feds end prosecution of GOP organizer

BANGOR, Maine --The federal government has ended its prosecution of a former Republican political organizer accused of making false statements to FBI agents investigating a plot to jam Democratic phone lines in New Hampshire on Election Day 2002.

The case against James Tobin of Bangor came to a quiet conclusion with a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston mandate dismissing an appeal by prosecutors.

Tobin was cleared in federal court in New Hampshire of taking part in the plot to arrange more than 800 hang-up calls that jammed get-out-the-vote phone lines.

Then the government brought charges in Maine of lying to investigators, and a judge dismissed those. The appeals court ruling, first reported by the Bangor Daily News, was issued last week.