To the Editor:

Don Siegelman and Richard Scrushy were convicted of fraud in federal court ostensibly in connection with a $500,000 payment from Scrushy for Siegelman’s 1999 campaign debts in exchange for a seat on a state-operated review board that regulates hospitals.

Now 44 former state attorneys general have asked Congress to investigate whether the prosecution of Siegelman was influenced by partisan politics within the Union’s Department of Justice.

That request is consistent with support of status quo politics or for those who have accepted the unconstitutional reconstruction of the proper relationship between the federal government and the formerly sovereign states.

As a candidate for attorney general in the Democratic primary election who carried 33 of Alabama’s 67 counties, I terrified the Marxist leaders of my own party because I championed states’ rights and other practical cures to the ills that plague Alabama.

As attorney general I would have demanded the federal government drop its prosecution of Siegelman and Scrushy because we have our own laws and don’t need its meddling.

Practically all state officers or agencies have exchanged responsible local control for the federal (central government) dollar and its attached strings and love it.

Have Communists buried us without firing a shot?

Larry Darby

Montgomery