Jo Becker, Peter S. Goodman, and Michael Powell in today’s NYT:
Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired
officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between
government and personal grievance, according to a review of public
records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators
and local officials.
Note to other reporters: this is called journalism. It involves gathering facts by talking to people who participated in or observed actual events, and reviewing documents. It does not involve:
* Speculating about how “voters” will respond.
* Wasting column inches on competing spin jobs.
Key nuggets:
1. Palin hired friends at inflated wages.
2. Palin had a staffer call a blogger and order her to “Stop blogging right now!”
3. Palin’s staff uses private email for official business in hopes of avoiding public-records laws.
4. As Mayor, Palin fired the city attorney because a developer who was a political supporter of hers complained about a stop-work order.
5. When a professor asked for the emails showing what state scientists had actually said about whether polar bears are endangered (they are, and the scientists said so, but Palin wants them not treated that way because it would interfere with oil drilling and lied about what the scientists had said) he was told that having the public-records search done would cost him half a million dollars.
6. As a member of the city council, she asked the town librarian to remove a book that she hadn’t even read, and refused to read.
7. Having made a reputation as a “reformer” by exposing the political use of the state email system by a rival, Palin used the state email system for political purposes herself.
8. Todd Palin, who, unlike the Governor, was openly a member of the anti-American Alaskan Independence Party (the Alaska branch of the Chrisitian Dominionist Constitution Party, which explicitly supports the “right” of any state to secede from the Union) has been an active participant in state business.
Remember, the issue here isn’t Palin. It’s not her fault she was nominated to a position she is intellectually and morally unfit to fill. The issue here is the character, judgment, and commitment to the national interest of the man who chose her.