Photo via alex.robinson.

Scott Horton catches a doozy of a political prosecution coordination scheme in Alabama. I am sitting here aghast this morning as I’m reading through the detail. See for yourself:

In “Vote Machine,” my feature in the current issue of Harper’s, I discuss the steps by which the Justice Department lost sight of its principal mission of law enforcement and was converted over a six year period into a gleaming machine for the purpose of manipulating elections. Some of this has been discussed previously—for instance, the decision to gut the Civil Rights Division so that an operation which once existed to protect minority voters was now actually turned against them, bolstering and helping to drive through redistricting plans that helped net a series of additional seats in the House of Representatives in the 2004 elections; actively suppressing minority voter turnout through an aggressively mounted, and ultimately fraudulent “voter fraud” scheme. To this is added the process of stuffing the ranks of the department with political hacks hired into career positions; a series of high-profile selective prosecutions of political opponents, and the careful suppression of criminal investigations which could be damaging to the G.O.P.

But the single most spectacular political perversion of the mechanics of the Department of Justice started in Alabama and is still running strong this very week. In the Heart of Dixie, one of the reddest of the Red states, the G.O.P. decided that the Justice Department furnished all the tools it needed to achieve its long-cherished plan of taking over the state legislature. The Alabama G.O.P.’s march for a political lock on Alabama politics began in the early nineties with a playbook authored by Karl Rove. As Joshua Green detailed in a masterful piece in The Atlantic, Rove saw a clear path for political victory in Alabama, and it ran straight through the chamber of commerce and judicial elections. The Clintons still held sway in Washington, but Rove was laying the groundwork for a permanent Republican majority in Alabama. The second stage involved taking the governorship, which was achieved in 2002 and repeated in 2006, on both occasions with vital support from Washington. At the core of this effort was the Justice Department’s highly dubious prosecution of Don E. Siegelman, pursued with the involvement of Karl Rove and aggressively championed by William Canary’s “girls,” namely, his wife Leura Canary, and client Alice Martin, the state’s two U.S. attorneys.

Now the third phase of this campaign is moving into high gear. The third phase is being pursued with the backing of the three essential pillars of the Alabama Republican establishment….

Scott has previously talked about Martin, including about a potential perjury inquiry, but this sort of political coordination is beyond anything that should ever be allowed in a USAtty’s office. Indeed, it goes to the very core of WHAT NOT TO DO as a USAtty, and in prior administrations would have gotten you sacked. I just…I don’t know what to say, other than this cannot be allowed to continue, and it needs an enormous amount of disinfecting public sunlight.

Since the DOJ is not functioning properly in providing that for the public, Congress had better step in…and fast.  No one can possibly think this is limited to Alabama, can they?

Because this isn’t the first time such accusations have come up — not by a long shot, and not without substantial hints of WH involvement in the political string pulling — but this time it’s happening on Mukasey’s watch. Congress has let far too many things slide — the Abramoff/Reed/K Street payola bilking of tribal casoino interests springs to mind — and it’s well past time they hit the ground running on this.

Mukasey and Alice Martin and company need to answer for their seemingly politicized actions and decided lack of procedural respect and DOJ checks on bad behavior. Now. Before we head into the general elections in the fall…

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