Frog March Madness

The chickens are coming home to roost for FOX News Analyst Karl Rove:

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Donald Siegelman, former governor of Alabama, was ordered released from prison on Thursday by a federal appeals court, pending his appeal of a bribery conviction that Democrats say resulted from a politically driven prosecution.

In its order, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, said Mr. Siegelman had raised "substantial questions" in his appeal of the case and could be released on bond from the federal prison in Oakdale, La., where he has served nine months of a seven-year sentence. The order did not say what those questions were, but his lawyers have argued for months that the bribery charge on which he was mainly convicted revolved around a transaction that differed little, if at all, from a standard political contribution.

In case anyone has forgotten Rove's involvement in this case:

A week ago, CBS' "60 Minutes" aired a segment in which a Republican political activist, Alabama attorney Jill Simpson, charged that Karl Rove was deeply involved in the effort to bring down Siegelman -- repeating many of the allegations she'd made under oath to the House Judiciary Committee last September.

According to Simpson, Rove relied on friends he'd made when he worked as a political consultant in Alabama in the 1990s, including William Canary, whose wife, Leura, is U.S. attorney in Montgomery. Her office drove the Siegelman prosecution; she didn't personally recuse herself until the investigation was well under way. Her husband, for his part, has run political campaigns for Siegelman's chief rival, current GOP Gov. Bob Riley. (Rove, of course, has denied the charges of interference, but he refused to testify before Congress under oath.)

If anyone needs another reminder of why the identity of the next Democratic President matters very little, this story should serve.