Palin Discussion [split]

[Pablo Sanchez]

Today's Gray Lady goes after Sarah Palin's conduct in Alaska.

Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes
By JO BECKER, PETER S. GOODMAN and MICHAEL POWELL

This article is by Jo Becker, Peter S. Goodman and Michael Powell.

WASILLA, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.

When Ms. Palin had to cut her first state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects.

And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.

“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”

Ms. Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of “good old boy” politics and a champion of ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never have run anything.

But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.

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.

Still, Ms. Palin has many supporters. As a two-term mayor she paved roads and built an ice rink, and as governor she has pushed through higher taxes on the oil companies that dominate one-third of the state’s economy. She stirs deep emotions. In Wasilla, many residents display unflagging affection, cheering “our Sarah” and hissing at her critics.

“She is bright and has unfailing political instincts,” said Steve Haycox, a history professor at the University of Alaska. “She taps very directly into anxieties about the economic future.”

“But,” he added, “her governing style raises a lot of hard questions.”

Ms. Palin declined to grant an interview for this article. The McCain-Palin campaign responded to some questions on her behalf and that of her husband, while referring others to the governor’s spokespeople, who did not respond.

Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell said Ms. Palin had conducted an accessible and effective administration in the public’s interest. “Everything she does is for the ordinary working people of Alaska,” he said.

In Wasilla, a builder said he complained to Mayor Palin when the city attorney put a stop-work order on his housing project. She responded, he said, by engineering the attorney’s firing.

Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.

Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor, sought the e-mail messages of state scientists who had examined the effect of global warming on polar bears. (Ms. Palin said the scientists had found no ill effects, and she has sued the federal government to block the listing of the bears as endangered.) An administration official told Mr. Steiner that his request would cost $468,784 to process.

When Mr. Steiner finally obtained the e-mail messages — through a federal records request — he discovered that state scientists had in fact agreed that the bears were in danger, records show.

“Their secrecy is off the charts,” Mr. Steiner said.

State legislators are investigating accusations that Ms. Palin and her husband pressured officials to fire a state trooper who had gone through a messy divorce with her sister, charges that she denies. But interviews make clear that the Palins draw few distinctions between the personal and the political.

Last summer State Representative John Harris, the Republican speaker of the House, picked up his phone and heard Mr. Palin’s voice. The governor’s husband sounded edgy. He said he was unhappy that Mr. Harris had hired John Bitney as his chief of staff, the speaker recalled. Mr. Bitney was a high school classmate of the Palins and had worked for Ms. Palin. But she fired Mr. Bitney after learning that he had fallen in love with another longtime friend.

“I understood from the call that Todd wasn’t happy with me hiring John and he’d like to see him not there,” Mr. Harris said.

“The Palin family gets upset at personal issues,” he added. “And at our level, they want to strike back.”

Through a campaign spokesman, Mr. Palin said he “did not recall” referring to Mr. Bitney in the conversation.

Hometown Mayor

Laura Chase, the campaign manager during Ms. Palin’s first run for mayor in 1996, recalled the night the two women chatted about her ambitions.

“I said, ‘You know, Sarah, within 10 years you could be governor,’ ” Ms. Chase recalled. “She replied, ‘I want to be president.’ ”

Ms. Palin grew up in Wasilla, an old fur trader’s outpost and now a fast-growing exurb of Anchorage. The town sits in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, edged by jagged mountains and birch forests. In the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration took farmers from the Dust Bowl area and resettled them here; their Democratic allegiances defined the valley for half a century.

In the past three decades, socially conservative Oklahomans and Texans have flocked north to the oil fields of Alaska. They filled evangelical churches around Wasilla and revived the Republican Party. Many of these working-class residents formed the electoral backbone for Ms. Palin, who ran for mayor on a platform of gun rights, opposition to abortion and the ouster of the “complacent” old guard.

After winning the mayoral election in 1996, Ms. Palin presided over a city rapidly outgrowing itself. Septic tanks had begun to pollute lakes, and residential lots were carved willy-nilly out of the woods. She passed road and sewer bonds, cut property taxes but raised the sales tax.

And, her supporters say, she cleaned out the municipal closet, firing veteran officials to make way for her own team. “She had an agenda for change and for doing things differently,” said Judy Patrick, a City Council member at the time.

But careers were turned upside down. The mayor quickly fired the town’s museum director, John Cooper. Later, she sent an aide to the museum to talk to the three remaining employees. “He told us they only wanted two,” recalled Esther West, one of the three, “and we had to pick who was going to be laid off.” The three quit as one.

Ms. Palin cited budget difficulties for the museum cuts. Mr. Cooper thought differently, saying the museum had become a microcosm of class and cultural conflicts in town. “It represented that the town was becoming more progressive, and they didn’t want that,” he said.

Days later, Mr. Cooper recalled, a vocal conservative, Steve Stoll, sidled up to him. Mr. Stoll had supported Ms. Palin and had a long-running feud with Mr. Cooper. “He said: ‘Gotcha, Cooper,’ ” Mr. Cooper said.

Mr. Stoll did not recall that conversation, although he said he supported Ms. Palin’s campaign and was pleased when she fired Mr. Cooper.

In 1997, Ms. Palin fired the longtime city attorney, Richard Deuser, after he issued the stop-work order on a home being built by Don Showers, another of her campaign supporters.

Your attorney, Mr. Showers told Ms. Palin, is costing me lots of money.

“She told me she’d like to see him fired,” Mr. Showers recalled. “But she couldn’t do it herself because the City Council hires the city attorney.” Ms. Palin told him to write the council members to complain.

Meanwhile, Ms. Palin pushed the issue from the inside. “She started the ball rolling,” said Ms. Patrick, who also favored the firing. Mr. Deuser was soon replaced by Ken Jacobus, then the State Republican Party’s general counsel.

“Professionals were either forced out or fired,” Mr. Deuser said.

Ms. Palin ordered city employees not to talk to the press. And she used city money to buy a white Suburban for the mayor’s use — employees sarcastically called it the mayor-mobile.

The new mayor also tended carefully to her evangelical base. She appointed a pastor to the town planning board. And she began to eye the library. For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.

“People would bring books back censored,” recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palin’s predecessor. “Pages would get marked up or torn out.”

Witnesses and contemporary news accounts say Ms. Palin asked the librarian about removing books from the shelves. The McCain-Palin presidential campaign says Ms. Palin never advocated censorship.

But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book “Daddy’s Roommate” on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Ms. Chase and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it.

“Sarah said she didn’t need to read that stuff,” Ms. Chase said. “It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn’t even read it.”

“I’m still proud of Sarah,” she added, “but she scares the bejeebers out of me.”

Reform Crucible

Restless ambition defined Ms. Palin in the early years of this decade. She raised money for Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican from the state; finished second in the 2002 Republican primary for lieutenant governor; and sought to fill the seat of Senator Frank H. Murkowski when he ran for governor.

Mr. Murkowski appointed his daughter to the seat, but as a consolation prize, he gave Ms. Palin the $125,000-a-year chairmanship of a state commission overseeing oil and gas drilling.

Ms. Palin discovered that the state Republican leader, Randy Ruedrich, a commission member, was conducting party business on state time and favoring regulated companies. When Mr. Murkowski failed to act on her complaints, she quit and went public.

The Republican establishment shunned her. But her break with the gentlemen’s club of oil producers and political power catapulted her into the public eye.

“She was honest and forthright,” said Jay Kerttula, a former Democratic state senator from Palmer.

Ms. Palin entered the 2006 primary for governor as a formidable candidate.

In the middle of the primary, a conservative columnist in the state, Paul Jenkins, unearthed e-mail messages showing that Ms. Palin had conducted campaign business from the mayor’s office. Ms. Palin handled the crisis with a street fighter’s guile.

“I told her it looks like she did the same thing that Randy Ruedrich did,” Mr. Jenkins recalled. “And she said, ‘Yeah, what I did was wrong.’ ”

Mr. Jenkins hung up and decided to forgo writing about it. His phone rang soon after.

Mr. Jenkins said a reporter from Fairbanks, reading from a Palin news release, demanded to know why he was “smearing” her. “Now I look at her and think: ‘Man, you’re slick,’ ” he said.

Ms. Palin won the primary, and in the general election she faced Tony Knowles, the former two-term Democratic governor, and Andrew Halcro, an independent.

Not deeply versed in policy, Ms. Palin skipped some candidate forums; at others, she flipped through hand-written, color-coded index cards strategically placed behind her nameplate.

Before one forum, Mr. Halcro said he saw aides shovel reports at Ms. Palin as she crammed. Her showman’s instincts rarely failed. She put the pile of reports on the lectern. Asked what she would do about health care policy, she patted the stack and said she would find an answer in the pile of solutions.

“She was fresh, and she was tomorrow,” said Michael Carey, a former editorial page editor for The Anchorage Daily News. “She just floated along like Mary Poppins.”

Government

Half a century after Alaska became a state, Ms. Palin was inaugurated as governor in Fairbanks and took up the reformer’s sword.

As she assembled her cabinet and made other state appointments, those with insider credentials were now on the outs. But a new pattern became clear. She surrounded herself with people she has known since grade school and members of her church.

Mr. Parnell, the lieutenant governor, praised Ms. Palin’s appointments. “The people she hires are competent, qualified, top-notch people,” he said.

Ms. Palin chose Talis Colberg, a borough assemblyman from the Matanuska valley, as her attorney general, provoking a bewildered question from the legal community: “Who?” Mr. Colberg, who did not return calls, moved from a one-room building in the valley to one of the most powerful offices in the state, supervising some 500 people.

“I called him and asked, ‘Do you know how to supervise people?’ ” said a family friend, Kathy Wells. “He said, ‘No, but I think I’ll get some help.’ ”

The Wasilla High School yearbook archive now doubles as a veritable directory of state government. Ms. Palin appointed Mr. Bitney, her former junior high school band-mate, as her legislative director and chose another classmate, Joe Austerman, to manage the economic development office for $82,908 a year. Mr. Austerman had established an Alaska franchise for Mailboxes Etc.

To her supporters — and with an 80 percent approval rating, she has plenty — Ms. Palin has lifted Alaska out of a mire of corruption. She gained the passage of a bill that tightens the rules covering lobbyists. And she rewrote the tax code to capture a greater share of oil and gas sale proceeds.

“Does anybody doubt that she’s a tough negotiator?” said State Representative Carl Gatto, Republican of Palmer.

Yet recent controversy has marred Ms. Palin’s reform credentials. In addition to the trooper investigation, lawmakers in April accused her of improperly culling thousands of e-mail addresses from a state database for a mass mailing to rally support for a policy initiative.

While Ms. Palin took office promising a more open government, her administration has battled to keep information secret. Her inner circle discussed the benefit of using private e-mail addresses. An assistant told her it appeared that such e-mail messages sent to a private address on a “personal device” like a BlackBerry “would be confidential and not subject to subpoena.”

Ms. Palin and aides use their private e-mail addresses for state business. A campaign spokesman said the governor copied e-mail messages to her state account “when there was significant state business.”

On Feb. 7, Frank Bailey, a high-level aide, wrote to Ms. Palin’s state e-mail address to discuss appointments. Another aide fired back: “Frank, this is not the governor’s personal account.”

Mr. Bailey responded: “Whoops~!”

Mr. Bailey, a former midlevel manager at Alaska Airlines who worked on Ms. Palin’s campaign, has been placed on paid leave; he has emerged as a central figure in the trooper investigation.

Another confidante of Ms. Palin’s is Ms. Frye, 27. She worked as a receptionist for State Senator Lyda Green before she joined Ms. Palin’s campaign for governor. Now Ms. Frye earns $68,664 as a special assistant to the governor. Her frequent interactions with Ms. Palin’s children have prompted some lawmakers to refer to her as “the babysitter,” a title that Ms. Frye disavows.

Like Mr. Bailey, she is an effusive cheerleader for her boss.

“YOU ARE SO AWESOME!” Ms. Frye typed in an e-mail message to Ms. Palin in March.

Many lawmakers contend that Ms. Palin is overly reliant on a small inner circle that leaves her isolated. Democrats and Republicans alike describe her as often missing in action. Since taking office in 2007, Ms. Palin has spent 312 nights at her Wasilla home, some 600 miles to the north of the governor’s mansion in Juneau, records show.

During the last legislative session, some lawmakers became so frustrated with her absences that they took to wearing “Where’s Sarah?” pins.

Many politicians say they typically learn of her initiatives — and vetoes — from news releases.

Mayors across the state, from the larger cities to tiny municipalities along the southeastern fiords, are even more frustrated. Often, their letters go unanswered and their pleas ignored, records and interviews show.

Last summer, Mayor Mark Begich of Anchorage, a Democrat, pressed Ms. Palin to meet with him because the state had failed to deliver money needed to operate city traffic lights. At one point, records show, state officials told him to just turn off a dozen of them. Ms. Palin agreed to meet with Mr. Begich when he threatened to go public with his anger, according to city officials.

At an Alaska Municipal League gathering in Juneau in January, mayors across the political spectrum swapped stories of the governor’s remoteness. How many of you, someone asked, have tried to meet with her? Every hand went up, recalled Mayor Fred Shields of Haines Borough. And how many met with her? Just a few hands rose. Ms. Palin soon walked in, delivered a few remarks and left for an anti-abortion rally.

The administration’s e-mail correspondence reveals a siege-like atmosphere. Top aides keep score, demean enemies and gloat over successes. Even some who helped engineer her rise have felt her wrath.

Dan Fagan, a prominent conservative radio host and longtime friend of Ms. Palin, urged his listeners to vote for her in 2006. But when he took her to task for raising taxes on oil companies, he said, he found himself branded a “hater.”

It is part of a pattern, Mr. Fagan said, in which Ms. Palin characterizes critics as “bad people who are anti-Alaska.”

As Ms. Palin’s star ascends, the McCain campaign, as often happens in national races, is controlling the words of those who know her well. Her mother-in-law, Faye Palin, has been asked not to speak to reporters, and aides sit in on interviews with old friends.

At a recent lunch gathering, an official with the Wasilla Chamber of Commerce asked its members to refer all calls from reporters to the governor’s office. Dianne Woodruff, a city councilwoman, shook her head.

“I was thinking, I don’t remember giving up my First Amendment rights,” Ms. Woodruff said. “Just because you’re not going gaga over Sarah doesn’t mean you can’t speak your mind.”

All I have to say is "Ouch." A long, meticulously researched article in the nation's most prominent newspaper calling you out for cronyism, excessive secrecy, vindictiveness, lying, use of public funds for personal purposes, and obliquely accusing you of stonewalling the writers of this very article. She does not come off well at all, and this is exactly the kind of coverage that the rest of the media needs to pick up. Bit by bit the facade is chipping off of Palin.

[Metatwaddle]

I saw that article in the paper. The NYT does a lot of things wrong, but that was some pretty good, well-researched muckraking.

What the hell kind of mayor marks up or rips pages out of town library books? I guess the people who accused her of censorship were right after all. And the high-school-classmate thing is right out of Bush's book. She's like a walking copy of him, only with a vagina.

But the part that alarmed me most was the secretiveness of her government. They use personal email accounts for state business (and yes, a governor's appointments are state business) to avoid subpoenas. What are they covering up? Why would people want to subpoena her emails?

[Jaevric]

What the hell kind of mayor marks up or rips pages out of town library books?

I got the impression that she wasn't doing the censorship herself, but rather people who borrowed those books were defacing them. The article states that:

For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.

“People would bring books back censored,” recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palin’s predecessor. “Pages would get marked up or torn out.”

So it doesn't look like Palin was actually censoring books; rather, she was trying to legalize and formalize an activity that the 'social conservatives' (read: reactionary nutjobs) were already performing.

Of course, she may well have been one of those social conservatives that was borrowing books and inflicting that damage, but the article doesn't specifically say she was. Not that the fact she didn't get her own hands dirty improves my opinion of anyone who would pander to that particular crowd.

Regardless, the more I read about Governor Palin the more chilling the idea of her as the President of the United States is. The idea that someone would have to pay nearly $500,000.00 to access research on polar bear populations is insane, as is the use of personal e-mail accounts to avoid the possibility of oversight. Hell, that's practically an admission that they were committing unethical if not outright illegal acts while in office, in my admittedly worthless opinion.

[General Zod]

But the part that alarmed me most was the secretiveness of her government. They use personal email accounts for state business (and yes, a governor's appointments are state business) to avoid subpoenas. What are they covering up? Why would people want to subpoena her emails?

Aside from fun things like firing the public safety commissioner, who knows.

[ray245]

Sorry if this has been brought up...

Do anyone have a rough idea on what can/will happen to Palin after she lost the presidental race?

Will her political influence increase or decrease inside the republican party? Will Palin be held more or less responsible for losing the race, instead of focusing it on McCain himself?

[The Yosemite Bear]

hopefully she will go back to the hinterlands and be forgotten....

[Pablo Sanchez]

Will her political influence increase or decrease inside the republican party? Will Palin be held more or less responsible for losing the race, instead of focusing it on McCain himself?

Since she's the more conservative part of the ticket and remains popular in Alaska she'll probably escape responsibility from the GOP. Most people will probably blame McCain, and I think Palin will remain popular among far-right conservatives and fundamentalist Christians. She'll serve out her term as governor in Alaska (ends in 2010) and either go for another or start chasing a bigger chair, like a Senate seat. If she took a second turn as governor she'd be in position to go for Ted Steven's current seat in 2014, which might have a Democratic incumbent at that time... or perhaps Stevens will win this November but still get unseated by indictments.

[Sephirius]

I was on the Chan of Four earlier this morning (4am EST) and Anon has seemingly hacked into Palin's Yahoo mail account. Several threads were on the go about it, and from the screencaps and emails I saw, it looked pretty legit.

If this is the real deal, the only thing that can accurately express my elation at this would be a huge 1900x1900 :awesome: face.

[ray245]

I was on the Chan of Four earlier this morning (4am EST) and Anon has seemingly hacked into Palin's Yahoo mail account. Several threads were on the go about it, and from the screencaps and emails I saw, it looked pretty legit.

If this is the real deal, the only thing that can accurately express my elation at this would be a huge 1900x1900 :awesome: face.

Isn't that illegal?

[McC]

Isn't that illegal?

Information obtained illegally is still information.

[Pablo Sanchez]

Isn't that illegal?

It is, but as he isn't telling us he did it, or telling us how to do it, or even telling anybody they should do it, it's not against any board rules or in fact any laws for him to have mentioned it.

In any case it highlights one of the reasons that officials should use their .gov emails, as I'm pretty sure they're harder to hack than a yahoo account

[General Zod]

It is, but as he isn't telling us he did it, or telling us how to do it, or even telling anybody they should do it, it's not against any board rules or in fact any laws for him to have mentioned it.

In any case it highlights one of the reasons that officials should use their .gov emails, as I'm pretty sure they're harder to hack than a yahoo account

On the other hand, .gov emails are still vulnerable to phishing attempts. I can easily see someone phishing government passwords if the people using them are largely clueless about email scams. And let's face it, there are a lot of computer users in government positions that only know enough to do their job but not necessarily enough to say, detect a fraudulent email.

[Sephirius]

I was on the Chan of Four earlier this morning (4am EST) and Anon has seemingly hacked into Palin's Yahoo mail account. Several threads were on the go about it, and from the screencaps and emails I saw, it looked pretty legit.

If this is the real deal, the only thing that can accurately express my elation at this would be a huge 1900x1900 :awesome: face.

Isn't that illegal?

Grey area. She's using a private email account for public government business as well as private- but legally she has to provide oversight into her 'public' emails, hence the controversy as noted Here.

If she uses her email for 'government' purposes, as it seems, it may in fact be the case that legally it would be treated as an 'official government' email account being abused for private usage, and hence would be open to public scrutiny anyway.
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[General Zod]

Grey area. She's using a private email account for public government business as well as private- but legally she has to provide oversight into her 'public' emails, hence the controversy as noted Here.

If she uses her email for 'government' purposes, as it seems, it may in fact be the case that legally it would be treated as an 'official government' email account being abused for private usage, and hence would be open to public scrutiny anyway.

There is no grey area. Whether or not they're open to public scrutiny, hacking into someone else's account without lawful sanction is still illegal no matter how you try and spin it.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Grey area. She's using a private email account for public government business as well as private- but legally she has to provide oversight into her 'public' emails, hence the controversy as noted Here.

If she uses her email for 'government' purposes, as it seems, it may in fact be the case that legally it would be treated as an 'official government' email account being abused for private usage, and hence would be open to public scrutiny anyway.

There is no grey area. Whether or not they're open to public scrutiny, hacking into someone else's account without lawful sanction is still illegal no matter how you try and spin it.

I think the question was whether or not its legal for her and her people to use private email accounts for public business. I run into the same thing at work, and the consensus in California is, if you use your private email for public correspondance, those emails are no longer protected as private and are open to public review.

[General Zod]

I think the question was whether or not its legal for her and her people to use private email accounts for public business. I run into the same thing at work, and the consensus in California is, if you use your private email for public correspondance, those emails are no longer protected as private and are open to public review.

I don't see whether or not it matters if they're open to public review. If the information was obtained illegally it's still inadmissible for use by any reasonable standard, unless someone can cite an actual statute that says otherwise.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I think the question was whether or not its legal for her and her people to use private email accounts for public business. I run into the same thing at work, and the consensus in California is, if you use your private email for public correspondance, those emails are no longer protected as private and are open to public review.

I don't see whether or not it matters if they're open to public review. If the information was obtained illegally it's still inadmissible for use by any reasonable standard, unless someone can cite an actual statute that says otherwise.

I agree. My clarification was to that Ray asked 'Isn't that Illegal?', wo which Sephirius seemed to answer the question 'Isn't it illegal for her to use private email for public purposes?', which wasn't what he was asking in the first place. Nobody in this thread is disputing that hacking a private email account is illegal.

[General Zod]

I agree. My clarification was to that Ray asked 'Isn't that Illegal?', wo which Sephirius seemed to answer the question 'Isn't it illegal for her to use private email for public purposes?', which wasn't what he was asking in the first place. Nobody in this thread is disputing that hacking a private email account is illegal.

If you'd bothered actually reading ray245's question, you'd notice it said nothing about what exactly he thought was illegal. Given the context and general intelligence of the poster in question, I have no reason to assume he was asking what you seem to be implying.

[Sephirius]

I think the question was whether or not its legal for her and her people to use private email accounts for public business. I run into the same thing at work, and the consensus in California is, if you use your private email for public correspondance, those emails are no longer protected as private and are open to public review.

I don't see whether or not it matters if they're open to public review. If the information was obtained illegally it's still inadmissible for use by any reasonable standard, unless someone can cite an actual statute that says otherwise.

The point I was trying to make is that if it is later found that under the law her email account is official government usage, all her private mails are thereby 'government related' as well, and subject to FOI, and hence should be made available anyway.

Yes, the way they were obtained is illegal, but the information would need to be obtained anyway later on.
This just means she won't be able to hide anything.
Who the fuck uses yahoo mail anyway?

[Tribun]

Who the fuck uses yahoo mail anyway?

Republican morons?

[General Zod]

The point I was trying to make is that if it is later found that under the law her email account is official government usage, all her private mails are thereby 'government related' as well, and subject to FOI, and hence should be made available anyway.

Yes, the way they were obtained is illegal, but the information would need to be obtained anyway later on.
This just means she won't be able to hide anything.
Who the fuck uses yahoo mail anyway?

Thank you for demonstrating that you're too dumb to actually understand the legal system. Any evidence obtained illegally cannot be used in court. Ergo if hackers managed to acquire this evidence via illegal methods, it can't be used against Palin even if there were clear indications of wrongdoing. There may be some sort of provisions that will allow the courts to use those emails anyway, but if they've truly been hacked it makes any kind of legitimate prosecution that much more difficult, and undermines the credibility of the investigation.

[FSTargetDrone]

Hypocritical feminists questioned whether Palin has time to run a country with all those kids.

Hypocritical feminists? I wonder if this asshole has examples of that. The only people that have asked that question, that I've seen, have been men - including some on this board, I'm sorry to say.

I've criticized her for taking the job because I think the raising of such a large family should come first in this case, in at least one other thread, if not also this one (I forget and am too lazy to look) and I stand by that criticism. I have serious problems with her taking this job precisely because she has a Down's child AND a newborn-to-be of her daughter's AND a 7 year-old already in the house. Who is going to be taking care of all of these young children? It will be tough enough for bother of the adults to deal with it as it is. It's already been said elsewhere that Down's children need a lot more attention and bonding with the parents, even more so than normal babies. And Governor Crackpot was back at work 3 days after having the child with Down's.

I question her parenting in general. I am not a parent, but I would not discuss my 17 year-old daughter's private business (nor willingly take a job that would expose the family to such scrutiny in the first place) with the media to deflect the rumors that I was actually not really pregnant and the the Down's child was my daughter's.

It's one thing if the Palins are hard up for cash and need this vice presidential salary. But the husband is an oil man and I take it that the governorship of Alaska pays pretty well. Palin didn't even have this possible vice presidential job and its paycheck-to-be 2 months ago.

[Keevan_Colton]

Thank you for demonstrating that you're too dumb to actually understand the legal system. Any evidence obtained illegally cannot be used in court. Ergo if hackers managed to acquire this evidence via illegal methods, it can't be used against Palin even if there were clear indications of wrongdoing. There may be some sort of provisions that will allow the courts to use those emails anyway, but if they've truly been hacked it makes any kind of legitimate prosecution that much more difficult, and undermines the credibility of the investigation.

He's probably just thinking of a legal system that makes sense rather than the US legal system which rewards clever ways of hiding evidence. We've had the whole "fruits of a poisonous tree" argument out a few times on this board. Frankly if the evidence can be shown to be real, who the fuck in a sane system cares how it ended up there?

Do note this is distinct from forced confessions etc. since they are inherently unprovable.

[General Zod]

He's probably just thinking of a legal system that makes sense rather than the US legal system which rewards clever ways of hiding evidence. We've had the whole "fruits of a poisonous tree" argument out a few times on this board. Frankly if the evidence can be shown to be real, who the fuck in a sane system cares how it ended up there?

That's the problem really. Since whatever you find could have a massive impact on public opinion, if the evidence wasn't obtained 100% legitimately, then it could cause a nasty backfire and just get people to go ahead and vote for the Republicans again anyway. It's not as if the voting populace is known for their intelligence. A few well timed attacks by the Republitards would pretty much guarantee a lot of sympathy in their direction.

[Sephirius]

He's probably just thinking of a legal system that makes sense rather than the US legal system which rewards clever ways of hiding evidence. We've had the whole "fruits of a poisonous tree" argument out a few times on this board. Frankly if the evidence can be shown to be real, who the fuck in a sane system cares how it ended up there?

That's the problem really. Since whatever you find could have a massive impact on public opinion, if the evidence wasn't obtained 100% legitimately, then it could cause a nasty backfire and just get people to go ahead and vote for the Republicans again anyway. It's not as if the voting populace is known for their intelligence. A few well timed attacks by the Republitards would pretty much guarantee a lot of sympathy in their direction.

Sorry, I suppose I should watch more Law and Order (I still think there's a way to skirt this, but I concede the point for now)

But be honest Zod, doesn't this amuse you in the least?
Also, the other thread reminded me of this, I believe one of the mails was discussing the state trooper mentioned in the other thread, but I cannot recall the context.