Bring in the Feds

In the unendingly bizarre world of politics and criminal justice in Alabama, a civil war seems to have erupted within the ranks of the all-powerful Alabama G.O.P. With the head of the state’s G.O.P., Governor Bob Riley, hovering in the background, the two Bush appointee U.S. attorneys, Alice Martin and Leura Canary, are now taking on the state’s Republican Attorney General, Troy King—who recently dared to stand up to Riley on a gambling-enforcement dispute. Now a prominent local journalist, Bob Martin, calls for Eric Holder’s Justice Department to intervene to straighten out the morass created by the Bush-era U.S. attorneys in Montgomery. When they’re finished looking at the mobilization of two U.S. attorneys to deal with an intra-Republican feud, we have some other matters that require their urgent attention: the Siegelman prosecution itself, for instance.