Alan Colmes
One of the nation's leading liberal voices is shining a spotlight on Alabama Republican Rob Riley and his efforts to shut down our reporting about Riley's extramarital affair with lobbyist Liberty Duke.Alan Colmes reports at his Liberland blog that Riley's tactics smack of desperation and show shines of backfiring. In a post dated October 10 ("Desperation: Alabama GOPer's Harassment of Legal Blogger Backfiring?"), Colmes notes that Riley is seeking to hold me in contempt of court, even though a judge's preliminary injunction runs counter to black-letter Alabama law. Liberland compares Riley's legal shenanigans to an episode of the Keystone Kops:
Last week, an Alabama sheriff made what appeared to be a bogus traffic stop in an attempt to serve whistleblowing legal blogger Roger Shuler with legal papers. Rob Riley, a big player in Alabama GOP politics, had apparently filed an injunction against Shuler connected to Shuler’s having exposed Riley’s extramarital affair with Liberty Duke.
In a true Keystone Kourts move, Riley now seeks to have Shuler held in contempt of court.
How could all of this backfire on Riley? Attention from Colmes is a sign that a backfire already is in the works--and Colmes notes that Riley is almost begging for more unflattering attention:
Moves like that can ricochet back on the perpetrator pretty badly — especially as Shuler’s travails are being picked up by moire and more Internet sites. Riley is inadvertently begging for mainstream media coverage with his ill-conceived legal moves. As a certain other web site is fond of saying, “Developing Hard" . . .
Colmes perhaps is best known for his 13-year run as co-host of Hannity & Colmes, a nightly political debate show on Fox News Channel. He currently is the host of The Alan Colmes Show, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show distributed by Fox News Radio. Colmes is the author of two books, Red, White & Liberal: How Left Is Right and Right Is Wrong (2003) and Thank the Liberals For Saving America (2012).
Thanks to Colmes' longstanding ties to Fox News, Rob Riley's antics are becoming well known to a largely conservative audience, the folks that Riley apparently hopes to help represent in Congress by running for the U.S. House seat that Spencer Bachus (R-AL) is vacating. A post at Fox News Radio ("Intimidation of Law Blogger Tied to Alabama GOP Primary") picks up on that theme:Following a week of intimidation and attempted unlawful service of papers on a law blogger whose national profile is rapidly on the rise, more pieces of the story are falling into place.
People who follow Alabama politics might well have put two and two together to figure out what was behind an apparent intimidation campaign targeting Roger Shuler, whose outspoken blog Legal Schnauzer has pulled no punches on matters of corruption in Alabama’s legal and judicial community.
Last Thursday, Shuler confirmed that one Rob Riley had filed a civil case against him, which explains a litany of visits and one very questionable “traffic stop” by local law enforcement.
After noting the apparent connections to Spencer Bacuhs' recent announcement that he will not seek re-election, the Fox News Radio piece compares Riley actions to missteps that other conservatives have made on the national stage:
This should come as no surprise to anyone. Rob Riley’s legal tactics are not unlike those of Tea Party Republicans who have realized that they have overplayed their hand with the government shutdown and a possible debt default and cannot dig themselves out of the hole they made.
In both cases, their actions are too little, too late.
