Tadd!!!

After obfuscation and stonewalling, Todd Palin finally submitted to questioning from the Legislature's investigator in the Troopergate probe. And it really doesn't look good for the First Dude.

Page 4, Line 3: "I had hundreds of conversations and communications about Trooper Wooten over the last several years with my family, friends, with colleagues, just about everyone I could including government officials."

In a July 18, 2008 press release, Governor Palin stated; “To allege that I, or any member of my family....directed disciplinary action be taken against any employee of the Department of Public Safety, is, quite simply, outrageous.

But yet according to Todd Palin's deposition he complained about Trooper Mike Wooten to Mike Tibbles, Randy Ruaro, Ivey Frye, Frank Bailey, Mike Nizich, John Bitney, John Glass and Audie Holloway.

In addition, during an interview with former Legislative Liason John Bitney last July, he said, "People don't know just how much weight Todd's words have. When Todd Palin makes a suggestion, it's not really a suggestion."

Having this many conversations, over two years after the last interaction with Wooten shows a pattern of Palin's obsession with getting even with Wooten.

The guy seems obsessed with getting Wooten fired. He discussed it with a dozen people, and pestered his wife about it so much she asked him to stop bringing it up.

But you know, he didn't work to fire the guy who refused to get rid of his white whale.

Muckraker has more. And the Alaska Supreme Court has denied the effort to stop the investigation, so there's going to be something out of this in the next 48 hours.

About Face

I guess after the courts ruled against quashing the subpoenas in the Troopergate probe, nobody wanted to wind up in jail.

Alaska Attorney General Talis Colberg announced today that seven state employees will now honor subpoenas to testify in the legislative investigation of the Troopergate affair.

Colberg said the decision comes in light of a judge's ruling last week rejecting an attempt to quash the subpoenas.

All seven employees have decided, in light of Superior Court Judge Peter Michalski's decision, to cooperate with the legislative investigation, according to a statement today from Colberg's office.

And that's not all - Todd Palin's going to talk as well. But not until after the Branchflower investigation gets released next week, of course, and only to the parallel Personnel Board investigation that his wife controls.

Maybe they've just all signed off on the same story and got them straight. Or they were scared. Or just maybe, they can't stand the McCain campaign and have decided to go out on their own.

Going Over Like A Led Palin

I think John McCain suspended his campaign (sort of) to deflect attention away from the jaw-gaping performance by his running mate with Katie Couric. We already know that he ran in for a damage control interview with Couric last night in the middle of Letterman. That was the right move. I mean this is stunning:

COURIC: Why isn’t it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries? … Instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: Ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up the economy– Oh, it’s got to be about job creation too. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions.

And this:

COURIC: You've cited Alaska's proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?

PALIN: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land-- boundary that we have with-- Canada [...]

COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?

PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. We-- we do-- it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where-- where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is-- from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to-- to our state.

As Couric said yesterday, in the understatement of the year, “She’s not always responsive when she’s asked questions.” Yes, in the way a hen is not responsive.

(ZOMG, you just called Sarah Palin a hen!)

I'm with Greenwald, she's either deeply ignorant and incurious or she's so buttoned up by the McCain campaign that she can only speak gibberish. I'm inclined toward the latter, actually. McCain's team is desperate to keep her stage-managed to such a ridiculous degree that Campbell Brown is calling it sexist.



Nobody can sound credible in that environment when you're always looking over your shoulder.

Of course, the McCain campaign has good reason to restrict access to Palin. Because her views, if offered to the public, would be extremely damaging. She has extreme Christianist viewpoints including book-banning. Her pastor is a nutcase who believes in witchcraft and who made this comment about Jews right in front of her:

The second area whereby God wants us, wants to penetrate in our society is in the economic area. The Bible says that the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous. It's high time that we have top Christian businessmen, businesswomen, bankers, you know, who are men and women of integrity running the economics of our nations. That's what we are waiting for. That's part and parcel of transformation. If you look at the -- you know -- if you look at the Israelites, that's how they work. And that's how they are, even today.

Yeah, I think you would want to hide the candidate of holy war. Plus there's the unseemly influence of Todd Palin, her unelected de facto chief of staff. And the vindictiveness of their obstruction in the Troopergate case, which now might include witness tampering.

“Until McCain campaign staffers flew to Alaska to stop this investigation, the Governor and her staff agreed to comply with what we all know is a bi-partisan investigation. After Aug. 29 the campaign started working to block this investigation, and witnesses began joining that effort by ignoring their subpoenas and risking jail time. Something obviously changed the minds of these witnesses after Aug. 29th,” said Rep., Les Gara (D-Anchorage), a State Representative and Former Alaska Assistant Attorney General.

Alaska’s witness tampering statutes prohibit any person from “inducing” a witness to fail to comply with a subpoena. Almost daily, McCain staffers have called press conferences and made efforts to stonewall the legislative investigation. Prior to Aug. 29 no witness had stated they’d refuse to comply with the investigation, and the Governor in fact promised she and her staff would comply.

Karl Rove was asked if Sarah Palin would make a good President. He said "I don't know." And the McCain campaign wants to keep it that way.

...see also this Rolling Stone article on the myths versus the facts in Sarah Palin's image.

Fourthbranch II: The Fourthbranchening

Why am I not surprised?

The Hill reports that it inquired with both Joseph Biden and Sarah Palin about whether they would consider themselves to be part of the executive branch in the next administration. The Hill’s Kevin Bogardus reports, “Sen. Biden (Del.) believes the office he is seeking is solely in the executive branch, according to his staff. But aides to Alaska Gov. Palin did not answer the question”:

[A] spokesman for the Republican presidential campaign did not answer the question. Instead, he e-mailed remarks Palin gave at a campaign rally in Golden, Colo., on Monday.

Palin did not say what branch of government she believes the vice president’s office is part of in those remarks. Instead, Palin said she and Republican presidential nominee John McCain had discussed what responsibilities she would take on as his second-in-command.

Palin is asserting the same vagueness on the subject as Cheney because she wants to play by the same rules as Cheney, which of course are no rules at all. She has obstructed and intimidated the Alaska State Legislature to the point where they're probably a week away from dropping the entire Troopergate investigation, despite the fact that evidence already exists to show at the very least unethical behavior, if not a total abuse of power, in the form of Frank Bailey's phone call urging Walt Monegan to do all but fire Michael Wooten. The McCain campaign has taken over the investigation, and they're openly harassing reporters at home to get them to drop their unfavorable coverage. And the "First Dude," Todd Palin, is refusing to testify in the probe, just because... he doesn't like it. As he isn't a state employee, there's no way for him to invoke executive privilege. He just doesn't want to testify. And so he's not.

This is very dangerous stuff. This woman who could be Vice President is as devious and secretive and abusive as her predecessor. Check this out:

But those who know her say Palin, 44, is uncommonly deft at something else: sensing the mood of her constituents, shaping her public messages and harnessing a remarkable personal popularity to accomplish what she wants. "She has an incredible pulse on the public will," said Bruce Botelho, a Democrat who is mayor of Juneau, the state capital.

"She tends to . . . create a situation where legislators are cornered -- going against her would be political suicide," said John Bitney, who grew up with Palin, was her campaign policy director and became her first legislative liaison.

That's how Cheney took over the White House. This is happening all over again.

Fortunately, her negatives have jumped up as weeks of relentless attacks have taken their toll. And this ad about aerial wolf hunting really hits people in the gut and moves voters. But we have to be vigilant. The country can't afford four more years of Fourthbranch.

Oh Todd

Come on down.

Alaska lawmakers voted Friday to subpoena the husband of Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate, in a move that transformed a messy state personnel issue into a national campaign controversy.

The lawmakers acted at the request of Stephen Branchflower, who is in the midst of an investigation into the governor's dismissal of the state's director of public safety.

Branchflower said he also wants to interview the governor, but omitted her from the 13-person list of subpoena targets he presented to the lawmakers overseeing his investigation.

Todd Palin has an unusually large role for an unelected spouse in the affairs of state government. He gets copies of numerous emails from the governor. What other spouse gets that kind of treatment? I don't know how valuable it is to even mention Todd Palin a lot politically, but from my perspective it is very unsettling to have an unelected center of power here.

Meanwhile, this is much better than I expected in terms of the investigation into Troopergate. The legislature is doing its job thus far. Of course, we'll see how it unfolds.

If This Were A Prizefight, It'd Be Called.

This is the endgame right here:

The McCain camp today disputed rumors that presumptive vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin was ever registered with the secessionist Alaska Independence Party by releasing years of voter registration history . . . but it looks like that doesn't apply to her husband.

This afternoon, the director of Division of Elections in Alaska, Gail Fenumiai, told TPMmuckraker that Todd Palin registered in October 1995 to the Alaska Independence Party, a radical group that advocates for Alaskan secession from the United States.

Besides a short period of a few months in 2000 when he changed his registration to undeclared, Todd Palin remained a registered member of AIP until July 2002 when he registered again as an undeclared voter.

She is married, figuratively speaking, to Tim McVeigh. The AIP is linked to militia movements and has as their goal secession from the United States.

At some point the McCain camp will get their butts up to Wasilla and discover this. They can call it a smear all they want, but understand: when Sarah Palin was the mayor of a small town, her husband was a member of a party that advocated secession.

Most of the focus so far has been on babygate:



But it's the radicalism that's going to get her. Here's why the theocrats are agog over the pick:

Speaking before the Pentecostal church, Palin painted the current war in Iraq as a messianic affair in which the United States could act out the will of the Lord.

"Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God," she exhorted the congregants. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."

Religion, however, was not strictly a thread in Palin's foreign policy. It was part of her energy proposals as well. Just prior to discussing Iraq, Alaska's governor asked the audience to pray for another matter -- a $30 billion national gas pipeline project that she wanted built in the state. "I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that," she said.

And there's video.

They're already starting to hide her away.

Wow. Epic FAIL.

UPDATE: None dare call it treason... except New Jersey Congressman Frank Pallone!

In a message to Congress on July 4, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln said about attempts by the Southern States to secede that, "the States have their status in the Union, and they have no other legal status. If they break from this they can only do so against law and by revolution."

Allowing the potential Vice President of the United States, next in line to the presidency of our republic, to be someone that believes states have a legal right to secede from our union would be akin to allowing a member of the Parti Québécois to become Prime Minister of Canada or a Scottish National Party member to become Prime Minster of the United Kingdom.

While it may sound alarmist and overly dramatic, as someone who has sworn an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic," I find it extremely troubling that the country Ms. Palin would presume to lead as next in line to the Presidency, apparently wasn't good enough for her to be a part of. It is this, more than anything else, which speaks to her lack of qualification to be Vice President of the United States.