Now that’s what I call a Maverick.

Or Zed.

I really hate having to know anything about the Palins.

It is simply outrageous.

The investigation began before she was picked…there is nothing about it that can be considered political…other than political fallout. There is no excuse to interfere in an ongoing investigation, and certainly no valid reason for people to fail to respond to subpoenas.

Joe Biden is gonna have a ball with this at the debate.

The “fix” must be in…after all, Palin is being coached by Kissinger…what else do you need to know..

Maybe he can get Palin to speak in tongues!

With KKKarl Rove and the whole gang in charge this action was a given
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..01608.html

This country reminds me daily that I must be dreaming…

this women is more effective then Cheney at avoiding responsibility for breaking our law

remember, she was responsible for her community acquiring it’s first deficit ever and she avoided facing the piper for that as well

she will be McCain’s Cheney and better at it

Tough guy Todd will be throwing his weight around too.

Maybe he can get Palin to speak in tongues!

That might be the *only* way she’s gonna speak about this issue….

wait a minute – is it possible to still lie while one is speaking in tongues? (there’s *gotta* be a rule against that)

If she lies while speaking in tongues, will her pastor be called immediately for an emergency house-call to cast out her witchy demons?

Palin seems to have no problem lying in any of her dialects. She’s a good Republic.

Actually it will be very difficult for him to do that.The McCain startegy has seen to that. The word “subpoena” will put off the low information voter who will think it’s all clever people being clever. liberal elite and all that

This whole thing is a waste of time and energy.

Bother! “Strategy”

I read yesterday or the day before at Mudflats that a report is coming out on October 10 from the investigator assigned by the legislature. Although Todd and 13 others who received subpoenas are not testifying, some gave depositions at an earlier date, and he will include all the information that he has gathered so far into his report. Should be a fun read. (just can’t seem to recall his name right now. Go to: mudflats.wordpress.com)

Steve Branchflower

The McCain Campaign probably have the harsh responses drafted already.

If they affirmatively block the attempt to find the truth, we get to assume the worst–and accuse them of it, if the Dems had any stones.

The people of Alaska should demand the McCain campaign get out the state and let the Alaska’s legislature do it’s mandated job. I wonder just how many independent Alaskans are incensed by this interference by the national rethuglian party in their state’s business?

So much for state’s rights, eh?

The people of Alaska are probably loving the attention. It’s their 15 minutes of fame.

Hope this link is on topic enough. From Salon, What’s the difference between Palin and Muslim fundamentalists?Lipstick:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/f…..newsletter
My sister whose partner is a Muslim asked me to pass it along to those who would be interested.

The Repubs are always blathering about states’ rights but this shows they feel they can interfere anywhere they want to. A pox on them.

Whether the investigation continues or gets kiboshed, what it has brought to light is the behavior of Palin and the behavior of McCain to buck the rule of law when it came down to the subpoenas…thus perpetuating Bushco. You think Bushco was bad…wait until they get in power. There will be a complete blackout of information.

Thanks! My brain in crammed with so much information, including new terms from the financial blowout, that my poor 60ish recall-memory crashes from time to time!

While most of us concur on the coverups that have gone on in Washington and now Alaska many perceive them to be witchhunts. The potential for making political gains is limited. The biggest gains are most likely to be made dealing with hot button issues. If Obama gets elected then we can worry about justice.

I might agree with you. To which Whole Thing are you referring? no snark.

I call em Christianists.

According the the Alaskans at Mudflats, they are very incensed, and rightfully so.

Sarah Palin picketed a clinic:

Soon after the book controversy, Bess found himself again at odds with Palin and her fellow evangelicals. In 1996, evangelical churches mounted a vigorous campaign to take over the local hospital’s community board and ban abortion from the valley. When they succeeded, Bess and Dr. Susan Lemagie, a Palmer OB-GYN, fought back, filing suit on behalf of a local woman who had been forced to travel to Seattle for an abortion. The case was finally decided by the Alaska Supreme Court, which ruled that the hospital must provide valley women with the abortion option.

At one point during the hospital battle, passions ran so hot that local antiabortion activists organized a boisterous picket line outside Dr. Lemagie’s office, in an unassuming professional building across from Palmer’s Little League field. According to Bess and another community activist, among the protesters trying to disrupt the physician’s practice that day was Sarah Palin.

aw Raven, honey. Have a cool glass of lemonade (as one ingredient, anyway) and a nice lie-down. Then go play with yer cute pups.

Me? I refuse to go through this with another admisundermation. I just won’t. That’s all. Gimme a minute. I’m thinkin’.

Ohio will NOT allow mcpalinc to win. Pollsters are gonna be used for firewood this year when the oil furnace runs dry. And we will NOT drill in our pristine wilderness, while I can still draw a breath.

These goons are OVER, DONE. I want them frog-marched out of the people’s house. NOW!

say Rave, could you pass me a little of that, please? No, just the other bottle.

I call them the american taliban

Hey isn’t the ice up there in Alaska melting?

That could be confused with John Walker Lindh, although I see that wiki has your meaning as well.

and for nahant at #20

Mebbe not so rosy viewed from Anchorageville?

Independence may flow all directions from the source, perhaps.

http://www.latimes.com/news/na…..8301.story

The word “subpoena” will put off the low information voter

I disagree. But, how about “if you claim to be in favor a more open and honest government, why are you and your husband hiding from an ethics investigation in your home state?”

And a really odd thing is that the Alaskan AG went on vacation to KANSAS! Geeze, that is so strange…to meet with Karl Rove perhaps? Are there lots of McCain people in Kansas right now? Or did he pick a state name out of a hat and just disappeared for a while. Such goings-on, tsk, tsk.

Yes but only because global warming is part of God’s plan. Sarah spoke of that but you may have missed it because she was speaking in tongues again.

It’s conceivable that Palin’s best tack for punting this past the election would have been to cooperate. Instead, as a result of her stonewalling, the report got fast tracked forward to ~Oct. 10. That was the first ding.

Second ding: By an early report now being in the works, she may have forfeited her ability to “not comment on an ongoing investigation”. wrt to damage from the report, if there is even the appearance that the workers comp adjuster got bribed to lie to the investigator, along with the Monegan branch of the investigation, the effect could be shattering in the eyes of voters. If that happens, coupled with Palin not being able to claim “I cannot comment on an ongoing investigation” on account that the report was made with no further testimony pending, she will be under an avalanche of pressure to explain herself to the public. Continued silence in the wake such revelations could be utterly devastating.

Based on what we know about this story so far, it most definitely is worth the attention.

.

yeah. I’m making a not-too-wild guess that they’ll need to use reruns and not count on any new footage on that “Ice Truckers” History channel series from now on.

I’m sick of these crooks running my country.

maybe he has family there?

The press will not give it any play. Compare the amount of time given to Obama’s pastor and what Failin’s religious roots has gotten.

Dandy!

Vote AGAINST anything with an “R” by its name on the ballot.

Tell everyone you know to do the same.

Just DO it!

Then do your part to safeguard the voting process in your state.

Tell everyone you know to do the same.

Just DO it!

Crony First

He is probably off hunting wolves and cutting off their legs

So… are there any photographs of Sarah Palin pregnant with her most recent child? Are there any impartial witnesses that can testify that they saw her pregnant? Did she sit next to no one on the flight home to Alaska who remembers her? I’m just curious…

Sarah Palin has a cockeyed, self-serving, assinine idea of how religion works. Her “god” is narrow, venal, conniving, dishonest,shallow, personal creation of her own making, for her own personal advancement according to her own overblown, ludicrously conceived ego.

but that’s just me, no-doubt a nitwit compassionate heathen by some standards.

speak for yourself dawgies.

Or we could track her daughter’s current pregnancy. Any picks of that? Is she on the campaign trail? When’s the wedding? When’s the baby due?

Nothing to see here. Move along. She’s a Republic so lying is simply not a possibility.

Watching a clip from ABC with Peter Jennings, George Will, Cokie Roberts and Donna Brazile discussing McCain’s confusion about issues I suddenly realized that these pundits don’t only see that the emperor has no clothes, they see that there is no emperor. Essentially they were bemoaning the fact that McCain couldn’t keep his talking points straight. They didn’t seem to find it terrifying that he doesn’t know what the fuck he is talking about, only that he doesn’t seem to be reading his lines all that well. As if this election was simply a big, fat television advertisment featuring a paid face, reading a script. They are spending their time offering critiques of how well or how poorly McCain’s handlers are managing day by day to cloak this semi-senile, warmongering champion of deregulation in a facade of false populism and foreign policy expertise. Aren’t they outraged that the Republicans know and don’t give a shit that their ticket is recipe for a second helping of catastrophe heaped on top of the disaster of the Bush administration? That all they care doing is keeping us from seeing behind the curtain long enough to get them elected? Who is going to slap some sense into these people? Why aren’t we out in the streets in droves? I hate to be like the GOP and throw the term ‘traitor’ around, but if this isn’t treasonous, what the hell is?

Sorry, jayt–

I’ve heard that the parameters (guidelines) for the VP “debate” have been altered. Instead of a head-to-head debate, I understand (read it on another blogsite) that Palin will be allowed to parrot McCain’s stance on various issues, and effectively, there will be NO debate, NO opportunity for Biden to show to the country just how out-of-her-depth this individual is. A crash-course by HK, and a polish by the campaign handlers to train her to ’stay on topic’ . . . and I fear that we will gain as much information about this potential VP as we did by watching her RNC speech.:(

Sarah Palin may have nothing to hide, but she has plenty to lose in a vice-presidential nomination. Republicans know that historically when they are investigated for wrong doing, nothing good ever comes from it. I’m sure Palin thinks god made the economy bad to keep her scandals off the front page news.

When is the wedding?

Hey Raven. Might I have just a sip more of that stuff. I feel better already. Almost ready to run nekkid thru Anchorageville. (don’t even try; not a pretty sight by any know standards)

“Home searched in Palin e-mail probe”

OK.. so troopergate gets suppressed but heavily armed thugs kick down the door on the whistle blowers… figures.

At this point, as the pandemic of American stupidity and media stupidity fails to hold anyone accountable either in the White House or campaigning for it on the Republican side, and Palin’s questioning consist of Uncle Charlie, Moron Hannity, and one debate limited to 90 second answers and essentially no time for discusssion of the opponent’s answer, Americans are getting the accountablity they deserve.

Republicans have long realized they can do whatever the hell they want, because Democrats lack the incentives to call them on anything.

Apathetic American drolls on.

Goodbye for the day, good dawgies. the crazy lady down the lane has left the building. carry on.

haha

David Shuster telling us about the Palin roasted pig sandwich in anchorage AK is selling out. It is served with a “side of lipstick”. They put little pig ears and lips on the roll. rofl.

“The press will not give it any play.”

you mean,

“She will not give the press any play.”

btw, the troopergate scandal is on the radar. Monegan interviwed by Maddow by phone, (and CNN?). Frontpaged on freaking yahoo. Even the 56 y/o Air Force veteran in the focus group from the St. Petersburg Times article called out Palin on troopergate.

It’s in play.

I don’t know. That’s why I asked.

woah. The St. Petersburg Times article got edited to remove the Troopergate reference.

Today it reads: “”That was almost insulting,” Democrat Rhonda Laris of Temple Terrace, another strong Clinton backer skeptical of Obama, said of the Palin pick. “Do they think we’re really stupid? … I’m definitely leaning toward the Democratic side now. Sarah Palin scares … me.”

Obama is not making inroads because of anything he has done or said. It’s more that McCain has repelled these swing voters in the biggest battleground region of the biggest battleground state. In several cases, voters who had sounded hungry for a reason to vote for McCain now sound resigned to settling for Obama.”

link

when it was first published it read:

“”That was almost insulting,” Democrat Rhonda Laris of Temple Terrace, another strong Clinton backer skeptical of Obama, said of the Palin pick. “Do they think we’re really stupid? … I’m definitely leaning toward the Democratic side now. Sarah Palin scares the crap out of me.”

Independent voter Bill Chever, 56, another Air Force veteran from St. Petersburg, said he has voted Republican four times and Democrat three times in the last seven presidential races. He likes and trusts Obama but not Obama’s party. Democrats have done nothing of consequence while controlling Congress, Chever said, but he’s particularly bothered that the Palins are not cooperating in the “Troopergate” investigation into whether she fired the state police chief for not firing her former brother-in-law from the Alaska state police.

“Here we go with Dick Cheney and his group that’s not going to talk to anybody,” Chever said. “She is Dick Cheney with a dress on.”

Air Force veteran Bill Chevers’ comments got snipped out!

.

Jane is upstairs.

isn’t a free, uncensored press wonderful?

This is getting possibly Orwellian. Retroactive censorship. He who controls the present controls the past, he who controls the past, controls the future.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotgun_wedding

Tin foil hat, not my normal choice of haut couture, tells me that sooner or later Sarah Palin is going to be thrown under the bus. And it ain’t gonna be the Dems doing it. The republics will use her as long as it suits their fancy, then before she knows what hit her, wham.

Also have to wonder if these independent minded Alaskans aren’t getting a belly full of people messing in their states business. Something also tells my tin foil capped head that Sarah might not fare so well in the aftermath, even in her own state.

Bot to be contrary but a burglar is not a whistle blower, regardless of what they do with the illegally gotten material. A whistle blower is someone who has legal posession in the first place.
I, for one, have had enough of ends justifies the means leadership.
It is a slippery slope.

The news reports I see report that the FBI served a warrant.
Of course they do seem more motivated to investigate Democrats and their kin, but the kid reportedly claimed credit on some bulletin boards, and that alone should be expected to draw official attention.
The poster of the emails also left the anonymizing site information in the screen shots – not so bright.

I think that something like the golden rule – he who has the gold rules.

Oh, that is just too funny…ahahahaha

yes, and imo, it’s spreading. Plus, voters are becoming angered enough that it’s hard to believe polling results are valid any more. Further, MSM commentators routinely pounce on new results so fast that the questions they consider are often not yet reflected in the polls.

Noses to the grindstone folks. It’s worthwhile. We must do no less.

true, you’re right. But who’s to say what’s the worst offense… electronic burglary or official abuse of power? and why is one buried and the other investigated?

In response to those above who may be confused as to what Alaskans can do or are working on right now, in the Palin(s) matter(s), here’s some of what we’re up to:

1) Keeping the pressure up on the public aspects of the Branchflower investigation. As Mudflats has tied into a neat package, the importance of how the probable messing with a workmen’s comp comlaint by Todd Palin himslef could possibly blow up at any moment.

2) Investigating her ties to right-wing groups with both evangelical end-times connections and militas, trying to get it into the MSM

3) Keeping up the pressure and continuing to investigate the rape kit issue, trying to get it into the MSM. You can vote in my poll, or you can write to Katie Couric.

4) Drawing attention to the ties – especially last June and July - between Ted Stevens and Sarah Palin. This is important during his trial.

5) Other stuff too. Some serious, some hilarious.

IMO, not you or I.
That’s what the courts are for.
And that is where they should end up.

Uh, that would most likely have been Sam Donaldson instead of Peter Jennings (unless ABC has managed to raise the dead).

CNN.com has had a reasonable coverage on the rape kit issue fairly high up most of the day today.

New emptywheel post at FDL

would make for an interesting Law & Order SVU episode… rapist gets away ’cause the victim can’t pay for her kit. Detective Benson storms city hall to confront Sarah…

It just strikes me as a minor campaign non-issue that could be easily disproved – one photo of a pregnant governor, and we’re done. If instead Sarah Palin is hiding a prior pregnancy of her daughter’s, that would speak to Palin’s judgement regarding something as otherwise noncontroversial as a teen pregnancy.

Forgot to add that the Alaska AG is appointed by the Governor, not elected, and if she get to be VP, he moves up in the chain of command.

Sarah Barra in 4 Minutes

It’s important not to adopt the actions of the D.C. Democrats as a standard by which to judge Steve Branchflower, who appears to have a handle on how to manage this situation. Branchflower appears to be savvy, and not easily intimidated.

When stonewalled, he didn’t whine, didn’t bargain, didn’t cave and, most important, didn’t accept delay. Like any good investigator, he recognizes that the investigative picture will always be somewhat incomplete. He has simply taken note of the fact that x, y and z won’t be providing new testimony and moved on. He appears to have taken note of line from the Stones, which might be the investigator’s creed: ”You can’t always get what, but if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need.”

Recall that the investigation was underway before McCain Inc took over; Branchflower no doubt has a great deal of information, probably plenty to make out a basic case of abuse of authority. The smart investigator in this situation simply presents what he can dead solid prove or solidly infer. He notes at each point that opportunity was presented to the target of the investigation to explain or provide context, and that, at each point and at their option, they refused. The investigator can also do the old ’I support the 5th Amendment’ thing, which is, of course, a backdoor way of pointing out that the investigating party is, in essence, ’taking the 5th’ (call it refusal to honor a subpeona, tomato, tomahto).

Of course McCain et al will go nuts, characterize the investigation as a witchhunt, and (as hypocrisy is no barrier at all to this crowd) complain bitterly that the findings don’t contain the defense or context (which, of course, they refused to provide). Branchflower can and, I believe, will anticipate that, and be careful to mention at each point that Palin, staff or spouse wouldn’t provide testimony, documents or emails in their own defense. He will, I bet, make a version of that statement in virtually every paragraph of his findings.

Properly configured, the report will be just as effective as if Palin and pals had testified.

Is this photo of Mom and Dad with the newborn? Gosh…Mom of five how slender and rested you look! And to risk this poor child and yourself with infection after your water broke while you flew home from Texas to Alaska and then drove 50 miles….Uh…ladies….how many of us out here could do the same in labor, water broken and with the stewardesses on the flight remarking how we were totally calm and in control and polite AND DIDN”T LOOK PREGNANT EVEN THOUGH WE WERE IN OUR MID-40′S AND IT WAS OUR 5TH CHILD. Damn. She must be super spectacular Caribou Barbie. The rest of us should hang our heads in shame.