No, not Sarah Palin. That’s not the Republican from Wasilla I’m referencing. Rather, I’m thinking of Charlie Huggins, the guy who waltzed in from moose hunting to cast the decisive vote in favor of subpoenaing all the people the McPalin campaign had convinced to stop cooperating in the TrooperGate investgation. The final vote to subpoena those who withdrew their cooperation after Sarah Palin became the Republicans’ best hope to retain the White House was 3-2, with Huggins joining two Democrats; the original vote to launch the investigation was a unanimous 12-person vote.

But the McCain campaign, in explaining why the Governor will no longer deliver the cooperation she earlier promised, now claims the investigation is "tainted," in spite of the fact that the investigation retains bipartisan support.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is unlikely to meet with a special prosecutor looking into whether she or other state officials improperly pushed to punish a trooper, a spokesman for John McCain’s presidential campaign announced Monday.

Since Palin was named as McCain’s running mate Aug. 29, the campaign has dismissed the state legislature’s investigation into her dismissal of the state’s director of public safety, saying that Democrats are exploiting the probe for political gain.

McCain campaign spokesman Ed O’Callaghan said that Palin is "unlikely to cooperate" with the investigation, which he called "tainted."

And remarkably, I don’t think they’re talking about the evidence that the investigator believes a state contractor lied to him because she had a "financial incentive" to do so. 

Nope, I just think they believe this is tainted for the same reason they think every real question about Palin’s qualifications is "sexist." Because McCain’s campaign depends on hiding how unqualified Sarah Palin is to be Vice President–not least because of a long, documented problem with abuse of power.

Sort of makes you wonder whether the Republican from Wasilla, Charlie Huggins, voted to subpoena the witnesses involved in the cover-up precisely because he knows the  abuse of power Sarah Palin is capable of?

Update: Huggins’ spelling corrected per FrankProbst.

John McCain and Sarah Palin both came out today to condemn CEOs who get golden parachutes. Here’s McCain:

We will stop multimillion dollar payouts to CEO’s who have broken the public trust.

And here’s Palin:

We’re going to reform the way Wall Street does business and stop multimillion-dollar payouts and golden parachutes to CEOs who break the public trust.

Seems to me McCain could put that campaign promise into effect right away. One of his top advisors, Carly Fiorina, laid off 20,000 HP workers, oversaw huge losses, and engaged in corporate spying. Sure sounds like she "broke the public trust" to me. And for her troubles, HP gave her $21.4 million in severance pay, plus another $21.1 million in stock options and other benefits. 

Over $42 million for–as John McCain describes it–breaking the public trust.

Call John McCain’s campaign at (703) 418-2008 and demand that McCain stand by his promise to stop this practice. Ask him to demand this his campaign advisor, Carly Fiorina, give back her loot to HP’s stockholders. 

The shit is hitting the fan on Wall Street today, as century-old banks suffocate under the weight of the Big Shitpile, AIG is hemorrhaging under its Fannie and Freddie holdings, and experts are holding their breath to see whether there’ll be a run on other investment firms. As the NYT WaPo describes, the consequences of today’s collapses will be monumental.

The U.S. financial system this weekend faced its gravest crisis in modern times, as regulators resorted to triage on Wall Street to contain the spreading damage from a meltdown in the housing and mortgage market. 

Two of the world’s biggest investment banks, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, appeared almost certain to disappear, Merrill into the arms of banking behemoth Bank of America and Lehman into bankruptcy. American International Group, once the country’s largest insurer, was seeking a financial lifeline. This came just seven days after the government took over housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

For all the drama of the weekend, these were the first steps — but far from the last — in finding a fundamentally new architecture for the financial world. The titans of Wall Street have, over the past 72 hours, been forced to reckon with the reality that the financial sector they built is, in its current form, too big, uses too much borrowed money and creates too much risk for the broader economy.

But in spite of the crisis, John McCain thinks the fundamentals of the economy are still strong.

"You know," said McCain, "there’s been tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall Street and it is — people are frightened by these events. Our economy, I think, still the fundamentals of our economy are strong. But these are very, very difficult time. And I promise you, we will never put America in this position again. We will clean up Wall Street. We will re- reform government."

Between that claim, and McCain advisor Donald Luskin’s claim yesterday that "Things today just aren’t that bad," I can’t help but remember when, earlier this year, McCain repeatedly claimed that our economic problems were all psychological. Just pretend it’s not bad, McCain seems to believe, and it’ll all go away.

Though, given the scope of today’s crisis, I’m more worried about what this says about McCain’s psychological health than his lectures to us that our economic problems are all in my head. If McCain really thinks the fundamentals are strong, he’s not just dangerous, he’s nuts.

Update: Oops! Gave the NYT credit for the WaPo’s work.

I noted the other day that John McCain had falsely claimed that Sarah Palin was governor of the state that provided 20% of the nation’s energy.

Now aside from the fact that McCain is wrong about his claim that Alaska provides 20% of our energy supply (it provides 20% of our oil, relatively little–at least thus far–of our natural gas, and insignificant amounts of coal, nuclear, wind, or solar power), he’s basically arguing that a guy like George Bush has the national security qualifications to be President.

And we saw how well that worked out. 

All in all, I’d say, McCain’s making a great case for voting against Sarah Palin.

Apparently, the woman McCain says more about energy than anyone else in the country–Sarah Palin–believes the same erroneous thing.

GIBSON: But this is not just reforming a government. This is also running a government on the huge international stage in a very dangerous world. When I asked John McCain about your national security credentials, he cited the fact that you have commanded the Alaskan National Guard and that Alaska is close to Russia. Are those sufficient credentials?

PALIN: But it is about reform of government and it’s about putting government back on the side of the people, and that has much to do with foreign policy and national security issues Let me speak specifically about a credential that I do bring to this table, Charlie, and that’s with the energy independence that I’ve been working on for these years as the governor of this state that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy, that I worked on as chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, overseeing the oil and gas development in our state to produce more for the United States.

GIBSON: I know. I’m just saying that national security is a whole lot more than energy.

PALIN: It is, but I want you to not lose sight of the fact that energy is a foundation of national security. It’s that important. It’s that significant.[my emphasis]

 Here’s FactCheck.org correcting McCain and Palin (and me–turns out I was too generous to Alaska in my earlier post):

Palin claims Alaska "produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy." That’s not true.

Alaska did produce 14 percent of all the oil from U.S. wells last year, but that’s a far cry from all the "energy" produced in the U.S.

Alaska’s share of domestic energy production was 3.5 percent, according to the official figures kept by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

And if by "supply" Palin meant all the energy consumed in the U.S., and not just produced here, then Alaska’s production accounted for only 2.4 percent.

Now, I’m not so interested that McCain and Palin have been caught in a lie, again. After all, that’s getting to be old hat. Rather, I’m interested in what it says that a team claiming to support all sorts of alternative energy sources simply forget about those sources when they’re making up talking points?

Is this the proof that McCain, who used to support alternative energy has ditched that support in favor of an exclusive love affair with big oil?

Or is Sarah Palin just using this opportunity to shamelessly booster for Alaska’s oil industry, in case this Veep thing doesn’t work out?

I don’t know the answer–but the consistency of this erroneous talking point sure suggests that when they were screaming "Drill! Baby! Drill!" they meant "Drill and Do Nothing But Drill!"

Remember the rationale the FBI gave for why he sent anthrax to Senators Daschle and Leahy?

In 2001, members of the Catholic pro-life movement were known to be highly critical of Catholic Congressional members who voted pro-choice in opposition to the beliefs of the Catholic Church. Two of the more prominent members of Congress who fell in this category were Senator Tom Daschle, then Senator Majority Leader; and Senator Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, both recipients of the 2001 anthrax mailings. 

The FBI suggested Ivins was ardently pro-life, which contributed to his selection of Leahy and Daschle as targets.

Problem is, they never actually prove that Ivins was ardently pro-life. Rather, they describe him discussing his wife’s pro-life activities as head of the local Right to Life group.

On July 10, 2002, in an e-mail to a friend, Dr. Ivins identified his wife, [redacted] as the President of the Frederick County Right to Life, as well as having connections to many other pro-life/anti-abortion groups. 

They go on to include another excerpt from the email that suggests he considers himself pro-life–though it also suggests he is not entirely sure an anti-choice stance is the true Christian stance.

Dr. Ivins later states in the same e-mail, "I’m not pro-abortion, I’m pro-life, but I want my position to be one consistent with a Christian.

Without providing the context of that sentence, Ivins’ use of the conjunction "but" in the sentence does more to suggest Ivins has some doubt whether traditional pro-life activities are Christian than it does to prove that he–and not just his wife–was ardently pro-life.

Yet the claim that Bruce Ivins was pro-life was the primary reason the FBI gave for why Ivins targeted Daschle (they brought up the PATRIOT Act, but focused more on Leahy’s involvement in slowing the passage of the bill). In addition, the FBI explained the "Greendale School" reference on one of the envelopes because of the couple’s joint membership in the American Family Association (with no indication that Bruce Ivins–and not his wife–was the active subscriber of their materials).  

Which is why it’s so damning to the FBI case that Ivins wrote instructions in his will that if his family refused to cremate him and scatter the ashes, he would give a huge donation to Planned Parenthood.

Six weeks after Bruce E. Ivins killed himself, the cremated remains of Mr. Ivins, the Army scientist and anthrax suspect, are stored at a funeral home here, awaiting the outcome of an unusual probate court proceeding.

In a will he wrote last year, a few months before the Federal Bureau of Investigation focused the anthrax letters investigation on him, Dr. Ivins wrote of his wish to be cremated and have his ashes scattered. But fearing that his wife, Diane, and their two children might not honor the request, he came up with a novel way to enforce his demand: threatening to make a bequest to an organization he knew his wife opposed, Planned Parenthood.

“If my remains are not cremated and my ashes are not scattered or spread on the ground, I give to Planned Parenthood of Maryland” $50,000, Dr. Ivins wrote in the will. Court records value the estate at $143,000.

Ivins’ clever trick with the will in no way indicates he was pro-choice. All it does is show that he gambled his wife’s own opposition to choice was stronger than her desire to bury him. But it does make it clear that his wife was the anti-choice zealot in the household, not him. The membership in the American Family Association and the articles opposing Leahy and Daschle? There’s no reason to believe Ivins cared about them or even read them.

But if Bruce Ivins wasn’t an anti-choice zealot, then several more pieces of the FBI case fall apart.

There’s a potential bombshell hidden at the end of USAT’s story on the subpoenas about to be issued in TrooperGate:

Branchflower said he needed subpoenas to interview several Palin aides who had been in meetings about the matter. And in one case, he said, he needed to compel the interview of a state contractor whom he said may have lied to him.

Murlene Wilkes owns Harbor Adjusting Services in Anchorage, which has a contract with the state to process workers’ compensation claims, Branchflower said. She told him the governor’s office did not pressure her to deny a claim for Wooten, he said. But in August, one of her employees called a tip line and claimed there indeed was such pressure, Branchflower said.

"I remember at some point in the conversation she had mentioned or said something to the effect that either the governor or the governor’s office wanted this claim denied," Branchflower quoted the tipster as saying. "I don’t care if it’s the president who wants this claim denied, I’m not going to deny it unless I have the medical evidence to do that."

Wilkes may have had a financial incentive to cover up, Branchflower said. Wilkes did not respond to a voicemail left at her office Friday afternoon. [my emphasis]

As a reminder, when Frank Bailey called State Trooper Lieutenant Rodney Dial in February to pressure him about Wooten, Bailey mentioned "funny business" about a workers comp claim Wooten had submitted–basically that days after Wooten submitted the workers comp claim, he was caught on a snowmobile. Bailey also suggests that Wooten may have hid a pre-existing injury on his Trooper application.

It sounds like someone from the Governor’s office called the workers comp contractor, Murlene Wilkes, gave her this information, and pushed her to deny the coverage on that basis. Wilkes refused to deny the claim. But when Wilkes spoke with Branchflower, she said the Governor’s office had not pressured her. [Update: Andrew Halcro has some on this.]

And Branchflower says, "Wilkes may have had a financial incentive to cover up." Sure, it may just be that Wilkes didn’t want to lose the contract with the state, and so didn’t admit the pressure to Branchflower. Branchflower may just mean that Wilkes decided, on her own, not to piss off Sarah Palin.

But it sure makes you wonder whether someone made the threat of losing the contract explicit. 

It’s now apparent that the McPalin campaign will lie about anything: earmarks, foreign travel, crowd size, even who paid for Meghan’s Prius. As the Obama campaign asked today, "is there anything the McCain campaign isn’t lying about?"

Is it possible that McCain’s bravado about how well Iraq is going is all a lie, too? According to Bob Woodward, that may well be the case.

Woodward’s latest book about the Iraq war, "The War Within," portrays McCain as offering a rosy assessment to the public about the surge’s progress while privately telling U.S. officials he thought the country was on the brink of losing the war.

The book describes McCain’s press conference after visiting the Shorja market in Baghdad in early April of 2007. After touring the market — protected by more than 100 soldiers — McCain said, "Things are getting better in Iraq, and I am pleased with the progress that has been made."

McCain was widely mocked for those statements later after television crews showed the level of protection surrounding him at the market.

But what was not known at the time was how different his private assessment of the war was.

According to Woodward, McCain was invited to visit with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice after he publicly made the positive comments at the market. "Rice had expected him to reiterate his optimism, but after some pleasantries, he let loose," Woodward writes.

"We may be about to lose the second war in my lifetime," Woodward quotes McCain as saying to Rice. Woodward writes that McCain "launched into a full-throated critique of the State Department’s role" in the war effort. [my emphasis]

Now, after the WaPo published this story this morning, the McCain campaign issued a rebuttal.

McCain campaign senior advisor Mark Salter sought to clarify McCain’s position Saturday afternoon. "Senator McCain returned from Iraq and met with Secretary Rice to discuss the concerns of U.S. officials in Iraq that the personnel the State Department had sent to Iraq were too few and too junior," he said. "He expressed to Secretary Rice the same opinion of the surge’s prospects he had expressed in public. It would be tough, but it was the last and only chance for the U.S. to succeed in Iraq."

Of course, given the McCain campaign’s pathological inability to tell the truth, there’s no reason to believe Salter’s refutation in any case. But note what Salter didn’t do: fundamentally challenge the story that McCain "let loose" with Condi.

Remember–Woodward has been known to tape important interviews.

McClatchy has an important fact check on Sarah Palin’s latest interview with Charlie Gibson–noting her, um, fluid views on climate change.

Charles Gibson seemed a little confused about Gov. Sarah Palin’s answers on global warming when he interviewed her this week while strolling beside the trans-Alaska pipeline.

The ABC anchor has plenty of Alaska voters for company. Since entering the governor’s race here two years ago, Palin has shimmied back and forth on the key question of whether warming trends are natural or a byproduct of human activity.

Most interesting, though, is the description of where Palin got the money to sue the Federal government in an attempt to delist the polar bear as an endangered species.

Earlier this year, the state legislature approved $2 million for a conference inviting climate change skeptics here to hash out the causes.

"It is important to remember that climate change is occurring, but then it has occurred continuously for millions of years," wrote the legislature’s Republican leaders, House Speaker John Harris and Senate President Lyda Green. "And, so far, there are too many dissenting opinions to state matter-of-factly that it is being caused by humans."

The project was derided by some as a "conference to nowhere" and now appears unlikely to take place. Much of the money was later diverted to fund a lawsuit by the Palin administration against listing the polar bear as a threatened species. [my emphasis]

The reality-haters in Alaska wanted to host a party for similar reality-haters. But instead, the listing of the polar bear as an endangered species gave them their opportunity to challenge reality on a national scale. With the added bonus for them, of course, that if they won, they could continue to trash the polar bear’s habitat with abandon.

I realize Sarah Palin is suing the government for practical reasons, so, if she won, Alaska could continue to get rich off of selling the Japanese gas and oil, without worrying whether it’ll wipe out polar bears once and for all.

But at some level, isn’t she just going after the polar bears as a propaganda stunt?

Photo credit: Steve Hillebrand / USFWS

One of the, um, creepiest things about Sarah Palin is that her husband lurks around the Governor’s business, sticking his nose in where private citizens should have no involvement. This includes oil and gas negotiations, her emails, and hiring and firing decisions–including that of Walt Monegan. In fact, when I was reading Wevley Shea’s warnings to Palin, I kept thinking: "Wevley, Dude, she can’t get out of this because she can’t fire one of the "aides" most intimately involved in pressuring Monegan: her husband."

Well, now she might wish she had, because in addition to the seven Palin aides who are cooperating in the McCain cover-up (and therefore NOT cooperating in the TrooperGate investigation), the investigator has asked to subpoena Todd Palin.

The committee investigating this has to vote on who will get a subpoena–so Todd Palin does not yet have to bone up on his "spousal privilege" (no, not that kind of privilege–with Republicans it’s about the cover-up, you know). 

But at the very least, this ought to focus some attention on whether it is appropriate for Todd Palin to be making the hiring and firing decisions of Alaska’s public servents.

Update: In a bipartisan 3-2 vote, the committee has approved the subpoenas.

The state Senate Judiciary Committee voted 3-2 today to subpoena 13 people — including the husband of Gov. Sarah Palin — in an investigation of whether Palin abused her power in trying to get her former brother-in-law fired.

The legislative probe has taken on new significance since Republican presidential candidate John McCain picked Palin as his running mate.

Retired prosecutor Stephen Branchflower asked the state House and Senate judiciary committees for power to subpoena the 13 witnesses, including Todd Palin, the governor’s husband.

"He’s such a central figure. … I think one should be issued for him," Branchflower said.

The Senate committees granted the request. Voting for were Sens. Charlie Huggins, R-Wasilla, and two Anchorage Democrats, Hollis French and Bill Wielechowski.

If you’ve been watching Sarah Palin’s attempt to cover-up her abuse of power in TrooperGate, it may have reminded you of Bush’s attempt to cover up his US Attorney purge: An executive wants to retaliate against those who have put the rule of law above partisan or personal grudges, so she fires people. And then, when people notice, she starts stone-walling and back-tracking on promises to cooperate.

Kagro X has already made this comparison explicit.

Warning to Democrats Americans: Republicans are fighting this investigation like it was Florida 2000. If you’re harboring any thoughts of taking a hands-off approach, rising above the fray, and then doubling back to investigate it later if she gets elected, think again. At that point we’ll be hearing nothing but how it was "thoroughly investigated" by the Alaska state legislature. The quashing of the subpoenas won’t be mentioned, and all will be forgotten. You know it’s coming.

This is a direct parallel to federal issues playing out as we speak in Washington, with Harriet Miers a no-show once again today on a subpoena that’s now well over a year old.

Turns out, Kagro X isn’t the first one to make such a comparison. One of Sarah Palin’s own personal advisors is.

WSJ broke and CNN did a follow-up story on the warnings Palin’s ethics advisor, Wevley Shea, gave her just as the story that she fired Walt Monegan started to break back in July.

An informal adviser who has counseled Gov. Sarah Palin on ethics issues urged her in July to apologize for her handling of the dismissal of the state’s public safety commissioner and warned that the matter could snowball into a bigger scandal.

He also said, in a letter reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, that she should fire any aides who had raised concerns with the chief over a state trooper who was involved in a bitter divorce with the governor’s sister.

In an interview with CNN, Shea compares the TrooperGate cover-up (and remember–this is a description coming from one of Palin’s friends!) and the US Attorney purge:

"The problem, in my opinion, is that there has been out-and-out cover-up and misleading statements by staffers in the governor’s office," he said. "And the parallel that I tried to draw is, you know, the problem with the firing or terminating of the U.S. attorneys."

But it’s in a later letter to Palin that Shea makes the extended comparison (kudos to the WSJ for linking this–I recommend you all click through and read this series of letters because it is absolutely damning).

On August 4, between the time the investigation began and proof of Palin’s direct involvement came out, Shea wrote Palin a detailed review of Federal rules about Congressional contempt. It then goes into a three-page analysis of the Judge Bates’ July 31 opinion on the Miers/Bolten case, including this passage:

… the Executive cannot be the judge of its own privilege … Ms. Miers is not excused from compliance with the Committee’s subpoena by virtue of a claim of executive privilege that may ultimately be made. Instead, she must appear before the Committee to provide testimony, and invoke executive privilege where appropriate.

He then closes with the suggestion that those running the legislative investigation–Steve Branchflower and Hollis French–probably don’t know all that much about executive privilege claims.

This overview is to provide you with Congressional contempt criteria and "immunity" alternatives. I know Investigator Steve Branchflower has a limited understanding of executive privilege. I doubt your leadership in the Department of Law or Senator Hollis French and his colleagues have any in-depth understanding of the capacity of the potential complexity of the issues. I want to emphasize my federal court analysis, especially the United States Supreme Court, may be applicable to your present investigation situation.

Shea appears to have shifted, between his July warnings about the gravity of the situation and his August analysis of Palin’s options regarding executive privilege, from someone advising her to avoid the cover-up to someone advising her of the legal dangers in stone-walling. He seems most concerned about helping her avoid contempt charges–and this concern appears to have borne fruit, since the legislative committee investigating this has promised not to subpoena Palin. And frankly, given Shea’s comment to CNN, he still seems to be just as appalled at the cover-up as we are.

Yet that doesn’t change the fact that he used the Miers/Bolten case as an outline of what she could and could not declare off-limits. Palin is using the Republican experience in the US Attorney purge cover-up and applying those lessons to her own cover-up.

No wonder it all looked so familiar.