October Surprise: Sarah Palin Doesn’t Henpeck Her Husband

“Governor Palin’s firing of Commissioner Monegan was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads,” according to Steve Branchflower’s report on his Troopergate probe.

Warning: don’t take a sip of your drink before reading this next part.

The Branchflower report also finds that Sarah Palin “abused her power” by not keeping a short enough leash on her husband, Todd Palin. “She had the authority and power to require Mr. Palin to cease contacting subordinates, but she failed to act,” Branchflower contends on page 66 of the 263 page behemoth. He also asserts that her inaction constituted “official action.”

Apparently Mr. Branchflower, who was paid $100,000 for his inquiry, thinks conversations in the Palin household should go more like this:

Sarah: Honey, I need you to stop trying to get Mike Wooten fired even though he tased our nephew, drove his official vehicle under the influence of alcohol, and threatened to put a bullet in my dad’s skull.

Todd: Screw that, I’m trying to protect my family and everyone else around here from a child abusing douchebag. Who cares if I make a few phone calls to express my opinion?

Sarah: I’m the freakin’ governor of the great state of Alaska and I demand that you show respect for my authority and power, so you shut your piehole and you keep it shut if you know what’s good for you.

Todd: Huh?

Sarah: You’ll be hearing from my lawyers.

If you think that’s fiction, read the Branchflower report (PDF) and check out the AP smear that charges Sarah Palin “unlawfully abused her power.” How exactly does one “unlawfully” abuse power while exercising authority in “a proper and lawful” way?

For detailed analysis of all the report’s flaws, see Beldar’s guest post on Hugh Hewitt’s Townhall blog and the official response from Sarah Palin’s legal team (PDF).

October 11, 2008 · Filed Under Election 2008, Sarah Palin

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Free to Be Sarah P.

Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment, Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican, is out of favor with some conservatives when it comes to Sarah Palin.

But Bill Kristol remembers the Sarah Palin that invigorated the Party not so long ago:

Some in the McCain camp are nervous about Gov. Palin, but they shouldn’t be. They’ve totally mishandled her for the last week or two. Free Sarah Palin! Free Sarah Palin, that’s what I say! They have surrounded her — look, McCain picked her because she is a good governor, a good politician, a good communicator. Let her be a politician! Let her communicate. Put her on TV, put her on radio. Let her relax. Let her go into the debate and try to win the debate!

Mona Charen, Jonah Goldberg, Kathryn Jean Lopez, and Mark Steyn agree that the McCain campaign needs to free Sarah Palin to be herself, particularly at the debate on Thursday.  I don’t believe she’s done a bad job with her interviews, but there’s certainly something overly packaged about many of her responses, and we’ve had enough with the stump speech lines.

Sarah Palin isn’t just the latest interchangeable kid to be swapped into Menudo because the average age of band members was creeping up.  She’s a bright and gifted politician who dazzles voters with the rarest of political assets: her authenticity.

Bring back Sarah, unleashed, unbound, and authentic.

September 29, 2008 · Filed Under Election 2008, Sarah Palin

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McCain/Palin Smears, Now in Two Delicious Flavors

How do you prefer your smears? Overt or covert? Team Obama is playing it both ways now, and in all likelihood has been for some time.

So which is worse, the Obama campaign smearing Sarah Palin via a clan of astroturfing sockpuppets or Obama’s latest radio smear campaign against John McCain? And will it matter to voters?

Just askin’.

September 24, 2008 · Filed Under Barack Obama, Corruption, Election 2008, John McCain, Sarah Palin

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Vicious Palin Smears Traced Back to Obama Campaign?

My nomination for blog post of the year goes to The Jawa Report for their meticulous research on the source of the Sarah Palin smears.  This story is huge.

Their findings suggest that at least some of the smears were orchestrated by Winner & Associates, one of the world’s largest PR firms.  The research also indicates a likely link to David Axelrod, Obama’s chief media strategist.  They weave quite a convincing narrative and it’s imperative that the news organizations and the rest of the blogosphere pick this up and take it as far as it can go.

A mere summary doesn’t do their work justice – read it yourself.

September 22, 2008 · Filed Under Barack Obama, Corruption, Election 2008, Sarah Palin

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Jumping to Conclusions on the Identity of the Palin Email Hacker

On Wednesday, Michelle Malkin published the contents of a 4chan.org thread in which someone with the handle “rubico” and the email address “rubico10@yahoo.com described how he broke into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account. Within hours, Michelle’s readers had linked that email address to David Kernell, the 20-year-old son of democrat Mike Kernell, a Tennessee House Representative.

By this afternoon, the right side of the blogosphere was bubbling over with indictments of Kernell. Blog goers declared him guilty, and decreed jailhouse rape the only acceptable punishment. Reports that the feds in Memphis were investigating spawned even more excitement among bloggers.

But did David Kernell hack Sarah Palin’s email?

Perhaps. And maybe that statuesque blond chick you met online isn’t really a 67-year-old grandfather.

The answer is that we have no idea who we’re dealing with on the Internet. The “rubico” who posted on 4chan could be David Kernell or it could be his jilted ex-girlfriend or an unsupervised 12-year-old who randomly chose Kernell’s online identity to hide behind. We just don’t know.

One has to wonder why David Kernell would post his email address on the 4chan board where posting anonymously is expected, and even encouraged. Am I the only one surprised by that?

The speed and decisiveness with which the Internet mob concluded that David Kernell is the culprit in the hacking of Sarah Palin’s email makes me extremely uncomfortable. It’s entirely possible that he’s guilty, but at this point, the evidence is far from conclusive. One way or another, I hope he can aid in the investigation.

Now let’s wait and see what the feds have to say.

September 18, 2008 · Filed Under Sarah Palin

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Sarah Palin’s Email Shows She’s Squeaky Clean

By now you’ve heard that some lowlife stole Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email password, broke into her account, and posted screenshots for the world to see. The bloodthirsty lefty piranhas began circling, waiting for Sarah Barracuda to go belly up, but it turns out they won’t be feasting on Palin this time.

As it turns out, Sarah Palin has nothing to hide.

There’s not a shred of evidence that her personal email account contained anything damning – not so much as a dirty joke or unusual grocery list. I won’t send traffic to the pages that have screenshots of Sarah Palin’s account, but if you’re interested, they’re easy enough to find via Google.

Someone claiming to be the one who broke into Palin’s account posted a lengthy explanation on the /b/ board at 4chan.org, the board where the screenshots originally surfaced. The message has since been deleted, but Michelle Malkin has the text, which includes the following:

I read though the emails… ALL OF THEM… before I posted, and what I concluded was anticlimactic, there was nothing there, nothing incriminating, nothing that would derail her campaign as I had hoped, all I saw was personal stuff, some clerical stuff from when she was governor…. And pictures of her family

Of course, that didn’t stop Gawker from publishing the screenshots of Palin’s account. The Huffington Post followed Gawker’s lead, as did Daily Kos where this incident was the subject of at least 11 diaries. The Associated Press got in on the reprehensible behavior by refusing to comply with the Secret Service’s request for assistance with their probe into the leaked emails.

Predictably, the dregs of the left at HuffPo are proclaiming this a Rovian plot to get rid of troopergate evidence. Yawn.  Others are calling the leaked emails damaging proof that she used a personal email account to conduct government business.  Double yawn.

I wonder, will hungry piranhas cannibalize each other when denied a meal?

September 18, 2008 · Filed Under Sarah Palin

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