Governor Palin May Try to Stop Subpoenas in Trooper Firing Case
By Timothy J. Burger and Tony Hopfinger
Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) -- The Alaska Attorney General's office told lawmakers probing Governor Sarah Palin's firing of the state's top police official that their authority and motivations are suspect, and state lawyers may "move to quash subpoenas" that legislators may issue tomorrow.
"The eyes of the nation have now turned upon us," senior Assistant Attorney General Michael Barnhill wrote in place of Attorney General Talis Colberg, a Palin appointee who recused himself in the case. Barnhill complained in a seven-page letter about public comments made by Hollis French, a Democratic senator, that Palin or her aides may have broken the law by allegedly obtaining personnel files of the fired state public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan...
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Governor Palin May Try to Stop Subpoenas in Trooper Firing Case
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Sarah Palin 'lipstick pig' attack advert removed from YouTube after complaint
Sarah Palin 'lipstick pig' attack advert removed from YouTube after complaint
By Matthew Moore
An official John McCain advert accusing Barack Obama of sexism has been removed from YouTube after complaints that it misuses quotes from a leading US news anchor.
John McCain's attack video against Barack Obama - screengrab
The video is still prominent on the official John McCain website
The advert was made in response to a remark made by the Democratic candidate in which he appeared to compare Sarah Palin, Mr McCain's running mate, to a lipstick-wearing pig.
It features a brief quote from CBS news presenter Katie Couric attacking the “continued and accepted role of sexism in American life”.
The placing of the extract appears to imply that Couric was referring to Mr Obama’s jibe, when the clip was actually taken from a discussion recorded several weeks ago about the coverage of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
The video has now been taken down by YouTube, which is owned by Google, after complaints from CBS...
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Sarah Palin 'lipstick pig' attack advert removed from YouTube after complaint
By Matthew Moore
An official John McCain advert accusing Barack Obama of sexism has been removed from YouTube after complaints that it misuses quotes from a leading US news anchor.
John McCain's attack video against Barack Obama - screengrab
The video is still prominent on the official John McCain website
The advert was made in response to a remark made by the Democratic candidate in which he appeared to compare Sarah Palin, Mr McCain's running mate, to a lipstick-wearing pig.
It features a brief quote from CBS news presenter Katie Couric attacking the “continued and accepted role of sexism in American life”.
The placing of the extract appears to imply that Couric was referring to Mr Obama’s jibe, when the clip was actually taken from a discussion recorded several weeks ago about the coverage of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
The video has now been taken down by YouTube, which is owned by Google, after complaints from CBS...
Read the rest of the story:
Sarah Palin 'lipstick pig' attack advert removed from YouTube after complaint
Palin the latest torch bearer for anti-science
Palin the latest torch bearer for anti-science
Sep 11, 2008
JOHN GIBBONS
WHO LITERALLY believes that Jonah made his home in a whale's abdomen? Nobody really, apart from the US president - and the woman who was recently added to the 2008 Republican ticket.
Sarah Palin is the latest politician to carry the torch of science misinformation tainted by religious dogma lit during the Reagan administration and nurtured by George Bush.
Back in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan endorsed creationism, and the cottage industry of crackpot pseudo-science it has spawned, it signalled perhaps the most profound schism between politics and science in the modern era. "Flood geology", for instance, is an entire wing of anti-science invented to claim that the fossil record stretching back hundreds of millions of years was in fact all deposited during Noah's mythical flood just a few thousand years ago. Vigorous efforts are being made to have this rubbish taught as fact to schoolchildren...
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Palin the latest torch bearer for anti-science
Sep 11, 2008
JOHN GIBBONS
WHO LITERALLY believes that Jonah made his home in a whale's abdomen? Nobody really, apart from the US president - and the woman who was recently added to the 2008 Republican ticket.
Sarah Palin is the latest politician to carry the torch of science misinformation tainted by religious dogma lit during the Reagan administration and nurtured by George Bush.
Back in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan endorsed creationism, and the cottage industry of crackpot pseudo-science it has spawned, it signalled perhaps the most profound schism between politics and science in the modern era. "Flood geology", for instance, is an entire wing of anti-science invented to claim that the fossil record stretching back hundreds of millions of years was in fact all deposited during Noah's mythical flood just a few thousand years ago. Vigorous efforts are being made to have this rubbish taught as fact to schoolchildren...
Read the rest of the story:
Palin the latest torch bearer for anti-science
Palin's Ethics Scrapes May Undercut Pledge to End Old Politics
Palin's Ethics Scrapes May Undercut Pledge to End Old Politics
By Timothy J. Burger and Tony Hopfinger
Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) -- John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate sent a signal that he would end business as usual and cronyism in government. Her record shows the Alaska governor engaged in some of the same practices she and McCain now condemn.
Palin's office approved a state job for a friend and campaign aide with whom she shared a land investment, financial records and interviews over the past two weeks show. She hired a former lobbyist for a pipeline company to help oversee a multibillion-dollar deal with that same company.
She named a police chief accused of harassment to head the state police. And she sent campaign e-mails on her city hall account while serving as mayor of Wasilla -- conduct for which she later turned in an oil commissioner on ethics charges...
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Palin's Ethics Scrapes May Undercut Pledge to End Old Politics
By Timothy J. Burger and Tony Hopfinger
Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) -- John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate sent a signal that he would end business as usual and cronyism in government. Her record shows the Alaska governor engaged in some of the same practices she and McCain now condemn.
Palin's office approved a state job for a friend and campaign aide with whom she shared a land investment, financial records and interviews over the past two weeks show. She hired a former lobbyist for a pipeline company to help oversee a multibillion-dollar deal with that same company.
She named a police chief accused of harassment to head the state police. And she sent campaign e-mails on her city hall account while serving as mayor of Wasilla -- conduct for which she later turned in an oil commissioner on ethics charges...
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Palin's Ethics Scrapes May Undercut Pledge to End Old Politics
Palin's attorney: Investigator 'biased'
Palin's attorney: Investigator 'biased'
Sept 11, 2008
By GENE JOHNSON
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A lawyer for Gov. Sarah Palin is taking another stab at derailing the Legislature's ethics investigation into the firing of her former public safety commissioner, accusing the retired prosecutor who is conducting it of acting unethically himself.
In two letters released Wednesday, Thomas Van Flein called the investigation "unlawful and unconstitutional" and said the man hired to run it, former prosecutor Stephen Branchflower, has a conflict of interest because he's a friend of the fired commissioner. Citing "your seemingly biased conduct of the investigation in recent weeks," he urged Branchflower to stop interviewing witnesses — the second time this month that he's asked Branchflower to stand down.
Branchflower is looking into whether Palin, now John McCain's running mate, canned Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan because Monegan wouldn't fire a state trooper who was involved in a messy divorce from Palin's sister, a probe that has come to be known as "Troopergate."
The investigation has included setting up a secret tip line to "accept and investigate anonymous rumors and complaints outside the scope" of the inquiry, Van Flein alleged. He also said Branchflower has deposed witnesses without proper notice other attorneys...
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Palin's attorney: Investigator 'biased'
Sept 11, 2008
By GENE JOHNSON
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A lawyer for Gov. Sarah Palin is taking another stab at derailing the Legislature's ethics investigation into the firing of her former public safety commissioner, accusing the retired prosecutor who is conducting it of acting unethically himself.
In two letters released Wednesday, Thomas Van Flein called the investigation "unlawful and unconstitutional" and said the man hired to run it, former prosecutor Stephen Branchflower, has a conflict of interest because he's a friend of the fired commissioner. Citing "your seemingly biased conduct of the investigation in recent weeks," he urged Branchflower to stop interviewing witnesses — the second time this month that he's asked Branchflower to stand down.
Branchflower is looking into whether Palin, now John McCain's running mate, canned Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan because Monegan wouldn't fire a state trooper who was involved in a messy divorce from Palin's sister, a probe that has come to be known as "Troopergate."
The investigation has included setting up a secret tip line to "accept and investigate anonymous rumors and complaints outside the scope" of the inquiry, Van Flein alleged. He also said Branchflower has deposed witnesses without proper notice other attorneys...
Read the rest of the story here:
Palin's attorney: Investigator 'biased'
Sarah Palin draws Mayor Menino’s fire
Sarah Palin draws Mayor Menino’s fire
Dave Wedge
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Boston Herald Chief Enterprise Reporter
Mayor Thomas M. Menino yesterday took aim at GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s highly touted National Rifle Association membership, saying it flies in the face of efforts to target urban violence.
Menino said the NRA has blocked attempts by big-city mayors to beef up gun laws. “As a member of the NRA, her position is, ‘The laws are great,’ ” the mayor said. “There’s something wrong with that. We have kids being killed in the streets every day.”
A spokesman for the McCain-Palin campaign responded: “Having raised the point, it’s true that while Barack Obama has said he’d back efforts to ban even law-abiding citizens from possessing guns, John McCain believes the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms.”
Menino, joining other Bay State Democrats at a Boston fund-raiser for Barack Obama’s running mate Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Delaware), predicted the Alaska governor’s star power will fade.
“She’s different, she’s new to the scene, but that will wear off,” the mayor said. “And then it will get down to the issues.”
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Sarah Palin draws Mayor Menino’s fire
Dave Wedge
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Boston Herald Chief Enterprise Reporter
Mayor Thomas M. Menino yesterday took aim at GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s highly touted National Rifle Association membership, saying it flies in the face of efforts to target urban violence.
Menino said the NRA has blocked attempts by big-city mayors to beef up gun laws. “As a member of the NRA, her position is, ‘The laws are great,’ ” the mayor said. “There’s something wrong with that. We have kids being killed in the streets every day.”
A spokesman for the McCain-Palin campaign responded: “Having raised the point, it’s true that while Barack Obama has said he’d back efforts to ban even law-abiding citizens from possessing guns, John McCain believes the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms.”
Menino, joining other Bay State Democrats at a Boston fund-raiser for Barack Obama’s running mate Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Delaware), predicted the Alaska governor’s star power will fade.
“She’s different, she’s new to the scene, but that will wear off,” the mayor said. “And then it will get down to the issues.”
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Sarah Palin draws Mayor Menino’s fire
Parsing the Palin phenomenon
Parsing the Palin phenomenon
Joni Balter
Seattle Times staff columnist
Alaska. Gov. Sarah Palin appears on the cover of "Newsweek" this week, toting a shotgun, in an opus called "Palintology. " She stirs huge...
Alaska. Gov. Sarah Palin appears on the cover of "Newsweek" this week, toting a shotgun, in an opus called "Palintology." She stirs huge crowds of conservatives everywhere she and Sen. John McCain go. She, not he, is the talk of the 2008 presidential campaign. And polls show voters are charged up for once about the Republican ticket.
No wonder Barack Obama's supporters are feeling a little verklempt, as in, out of sorts, clenched — OK, rattled.
Everybody expected a post-convention bounce for McCain, similar to one enjoyed by Obama after his knockout convention speech. But a legitimate worry is about female voters, a group Obama needs to win, and which has swung pretty dramatically in recent days from strongly pro-Obama to a narrower lead — if you believe the polls, and in some ways I don't. (The swing is even bigger among white women voters.)
Much of the volatility among female voters stems from the fact that women feel tugged in a lot of different directions. Palin offers the chance to smash the glass ceiling, if smashing the glass ceiling is the most important thing.
Palin is the kind of brash, good-looking, in-your-face candidate who connects with working-class women. She's more like everymoms than Obama. Yes, sure, he was raised by a single mother and grandparents, but in the end, he went to Harvard.
Somehow, an election supposedly about issues has devolved into a campaign about personal narrative, and that is how McCain wants it.
I suspect the Palin effect will fade in the days and weeks ahead. She is one deer-in-the-headlights answer away from scaring the very same people currently embracing her...
Read the rest of the story:
Parsing the Palin phenomenon
Joni Balter
Seattle Times staff columnist
Alaska. Gov. Sarah Palin appears on the cover of "Newsweek" this week, toting a shotgun, in an opus called "Palintology. " She stirs huge...
Alaska. Gov. Sarah Palin appears on the cover of "Newsweek" this week, toting a shotgun, in an opus called "Palintology." She stirs huge crowds of conservatives everywhere she and Sen. John McCain go. She, not he, is the talk of the 2008 presidential campaign. And polls show voters are charged up for once about the Republican ticket.
No wonder Barack Obama's supporters are feeling a little verklempt, as in, out of sorts, clenched — OK, rattled.
Everybody expected a post-convention bounce for McCain, similar to one enjoyed by Obama after his knockout convention speech. But a legitimate worry is about female voters, a group Obama needs to win, and which has swung pretty dramatically in recent days from strongly pro-Obama to a narrower lead — if you believe the polls, and in some ways I don't. (The swing is even bigger among white women voters.)
Much of the volatility among female voters stems from the fact that women feel tugged in a lot of different directions. Palin offers the chance to smash the glass ceiling, if smashing the glass ceiling is the most important thing.
Palin is the kind of brash, good-looking, in-your-face candidate who connects with working-class women. She's more like everymoms than Obama. Yes, sure, he was raised by a single mother and grandparents, but in the end, he went to Harvard.
Somehow, an election supposedly about issues has devolved into a campaign about personal narrative, and that is how McCain wants it.
I suspect the Palin effect will fade in the days and weeks ahead. She is one deer-in-the-headlights answer away from scaring the very same people currently embracing her...
Read the rest of the story:
Parsing the Palin phenomenon
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