By Staff
Bob Martin, The Alabama Scene
Thursday is named for Thor, the red-haired and bearded god of thunder in Germanic paganism. Has Thor become the mark of U. S. Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama, Alice Martin? It certainly appears that way.
Martin leads the way in the demonization of educator-legislators in Alabama with loud claps of thunder on Thursday, her favorite day to strike with the hammer of the U. S. Department of Justice in her hands in an attempt to interfere with the political process in our state.
This past Thursday her law enforcement surrogates appeared at the State House in Montgomery and tried to force their way into the legislative chambers to serve subpoenas while the state’s lawmakers were in session. Notwithstanding what we think about the recipients of her attacks or their politics…they are primarily democrats with a couple of token republicans thrown in… these people are the legislative representatives of our state and they clearly have the right to serve under all the laws of Alabama and the United States. If this were 1861 a second war against federal aggression would have already begun.
State authorities would not allow Martin’s marshals on the floor of the legislative bodies to facilitate her obvious grandstanding, but they took and served the subpoenas. Here are the 17 legislators educators and school board members who Martin is rounding up to appear and testify before a grand jury in Birmingham: Rep. Ken Guin, D-Carbon Hill and chair of the House Rules Committee; Jefferson State Community College President Judy Merritt; Gadsden State Community College President Renee Culverhouse; Rep. Randy Hinshaw, D-Meridianville; Rep. Blaine Galliher, R-Gadsden; Rep. Jack Page, D-Gadsden; Rep. Merika Coleman, D-Midfield. Rep. Ralph Howard, D-Greensboro; Rep. Betty Carol Graham, D-Alexander City.
Martin also wants the legislators who controlled the education appropriations to appear. So she issued subpoenas for…Rep. Richard Lindsey, D-Centre; Senate President Pro Tem Hinton Mitchem, D-Union Grove; Senate Rules Chairman Lowell Barron, D-Fyffe; Sen. Roger Smitherman, D-Birmingham and Sen. Bobby Denton, D-Muscle Shoals. Denton, Smitherman and Mitchem were on the Senate education budget committee when certain appropriations were authorized for the post-secondary program.
The two-year-college offices have also received the subpoenas for State School Board Members Ethel Hall and David Byers and former Rep. Neal Morrison, D-Cullman, now the president of Bevill State Commuity College.
Democratic leaders in the state say Martin is casting a wide net to disrupt the operations of the state legislature and to discredit democratic lawmakers.
Just who is Alice Martin?
Alice Martin ended up in Florence about 1990, having received her law degree at the University of Mississippi and working as a federal prosecutor in Memphis. She married into the well-to-do Martin family who were manufacturers of stoves and other iron products in Florence. The Martin company filed for bankruptcy in the mid 1990’s.
Martin was appointed city judge in the early 1990’s and was later appointed as a circuit judge in the 11th Judicial Circuit, by Gov. Fob James. She replaced Judge Don Patterson, a Democrat, who died. (Her federal court bio lists it as the 21st. Judicial Circuit which is incorrect) She ran for the position at the following election on the Republican ticket, spending over $100,000, but was soundly defeated by the Democratic nominee.
Martin was next appointed U.S. Attorney for the Northern District by President Bush, at the behest of her sponsors, Sens. Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby. She still lives on Shoals Creek near Florence.
Martin’s career as a prosecutor has been checkered. She is currently under investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility of the Department of Justice for lying under oath in an employment discrimination case…perjury if you will. The matter has not been resolved and my sources in Washington tell me it is being “slow-walked” to keep her in office to continue to disrupt the democrats.
Although she has had some success as a U. S. Attorney, she botched the first prosecution of Don Siegelman and Richard Scrushy, and her attempted interference in the second case nearly wrecked it.
Since I am a true independent, that makes me feel better because I do not want to feel the wrath of any prosecutor, state or federal. While I believe there has been a lot of abuse in the two-year-college system and that it should be fixed, it is reprehensible that she remains in office.
Until the Department of Justice decides whether or not, as a sitting U. S. Attorney, she committed perjury; she should be suspended from her duties. And if she did lie under oath, she should be removed from office.
And as Bob Ingram used to say, that’s the way I see it.