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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Legal Newsline)-The Alaska Supreme Court has decided to hear an appeal that would block the release of findings of an abuse of power investigation that could prove damaging to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. The state high court will review a decision by Anchorage Superior Judge Peter Michalski, who Thursday dismissed a request by a group of Republican legislators to block the investigation.

I would urge someone close to members of the editorial board of the Boston Globe to let them know that the world is not flat, the moon is not made of green cheese, and Elvis is, indeed, dead. I say this because obviously the Boston Globe is way behind the times in discovering facts that debunk rumors and it’s clear they have no capacity to do any research. I mean, they must not be paying attention to reality because in today’s editorial, the Globe again raises the thoroughly debunked claim that Sarah Palin charged rape victims for their rape kits...

Of course the AP couldn't syndicate an article without inserting a lil' spin. They coulda said she earned all her tax deductions the old fashioned way....by birthing them.....

WASILLA, Alaska - Sarah Palin and her husband have pieced together a uniquely Alaskan income that reached comfortably into six figures even before she became governor, capitalizing on valuable fishing rights, a series of land deals and a patchwork of other ventures to build an above-average lifestyle.

As election day comes ever nearer, Democrats and open-government advocates are pressing for the GOP vice presidential candidate to release her tax filings, a campaign tradition that extends at least to the post-Watergate era. Instead, Palin has to date declined to share the documents, becoming part of an ever-more-select historical group of candidates who waited until this late in a campaign year to release their tax filings. Since 1976, every major-party presidential and vice-presidential candidate has provided that information to the public, according to an analysis by ABC News. Until Palin, only three hopefuls have held onto their tax returns...

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Alaska's attorney general says state employees subpoenaed in the investigation of Gov. Sarah Palin will not testify. In a letter to the Democratic state senator overseeing the investigation, Attorney General Talis Colberg asks that the subpoenas be withdrawn. He also says the employees will not appear before the investigator unless either the full state Senate or the entire Alaska Legislature votes to compel their testimony.

Katie Paul at Newsweek alerted me that Newsweek printed a correction to their story claiming that Palin cut funding for teen mothers and the state WIC program. I blogged about it here and had extensive conversations with Alaska officials about the claims. Ms. Paul was also diligent to work with Alaska officials to correct the story once I made her aware of the facts. Here is the correction (at the end of page 2): Clarification (updated Sept. 11, 2008) : A number of readers have challenged the assertion in this story that Gov. Palin “cut by 20 percent the funding...

After having famously joked at her party's convention, "You know what they say about the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick," what sort of lipstick does Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin prefer? The Insider spoke to Palin's closest friends and found out, uncovering these five (more) things you may not know about her: • She's frugal. "Sarah gave me a thank-you card after I helped her with her lieutenant-governor race," said her friend, Kristen Cole, who has known the Alaska governor since childhood. "She liked the card so much that she didn't sign it so I...

Lots of paper is flying connected with Troopergate today. Now: > Five Republican lawmakers went to court asking a judge to issue an emergency order blocking the legislature's investigation. Earlier blog post here. > House Speaker John Harris sent a letter this morning to Sen. Kim Elton, chairman of the Legislative Council, demanding that the body convene within a week "for the purpose of discussing the status of the investigation currently underway by Stephen Branchflower...The political landscape certainly has changed since this investigation was authorized by the Legislative Council on July 28, 2008. What started as a bipartisan and impartial...

Sarah Palin issued a response to the Troopergate investigation yesterday by releasing internal memoranda that show Walt Monegan got fired for insubordination on budget matters and not because of his refusal to fire Palin’s former brother-in-law. Monegan went behind Palin’s back to attempt to revive a project Palin had vetoed, which “stunned” the Office of Management and Budget Director. On another occasion, Monegan held a press conference with Hollis French to dissent from Palin’s budget priorities — the same Hollis French pushing the ethics complaint against Palin: Walt Monegan lost his job as public safety director because he resisted Gov....

North to Alaska: It turns out that well before he was jettisoned for what he says was his refusal to fire trooper Wooten at the behest of Sarah Palin, Monegan had his own share of domestic troubles - some of them spilling all the way down to the Bay Area. In October 1994, Monegan's estranged wife, who had moved from Alaska to the Peninsula with the couple's two daughters after more than 10 years of marriage, sought a temporary restraining order against him - accusing Monegan of threatening to kill her, waving a gun at her and dislocating her shoulder,...

The New York Times does the all-so predictable Sarah Palin bill of indictment for its Sunday front page. It certainly sounds compelling in the paragraph called the “nut graf”: "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.?" But what is so remarkable is how little there is in the page after page of minutiae thrown against the wall by the Times. And indeed there’s plenty of favorable...

Sarah Barracuda tidbits TRUE OR FALSE: Hoops title changed Palin's life, but what about that nickname? By RON WILMOTrwilmot@adn.comPublished: September 14th, 2008 12:44 AMLast Modified: September 14th, 2008 02:29 AM Sports infuse Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's life.Palin the hockey mom. Palin the wife of a four-time Iron Dog snowmachine champion. Palin the point guard for Wasilla High's 1982 state championship basketball team. Palin the sportscaster for Channel 2 news, Anchorage's NBC affiliate. Palin the fish slayer. Palin the hunter (and the only candidate on either presidential ticket who can field dress a moose).Here are a few more sporting...

CITY OF WASILLA •Office of the Mayor• We at the City of Wasilla have received many emails and requests for information about “banned or censored” books at the Wasilla Library while former Mayor Palin was in office. We have no records of any books being “banned or censored” ever. Below is the policy to request reconsideration of library materials: Reconsideration Requests of Library Materials In accordance with the Wasilla Public Library Collection Development Policy, the library, “…strives to achieve a balanced collection of materials in the major information categories, as well as a fiction collection calculated to satisfy the widest...

Shirley Eberle of Sunnyside didn't know it at the time, but as she plucked roe from kelp at an Alaskan fishery 20 years ago she was working next to future vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Years later, Betty Chavers of Yakima sensed Palin might be destined for something bigger when she worked as an accountant for the city of Wasilla, Alaska, between 2001 and 2003. Palin was mayor at the time. "She is one tough lady. Very gracious, very well-informed," said Chavers, who owns the Quiznos on South First Street. "Being in accounting, she would say, 'Is this necessary? If...

"In response to a Boston Globe article today, the Palin camp has been forced to clarify exactly where Sarah Palin traveled in her July 2007 trip to the Middle East to visit Alaskan National Guard troops" "Last summer, Governor Palin traveled to Kuwait where she visited Alaskan National Guard troops deployed to the war in Iraq at Camp Arifjen. While she was there she traveled to the K Crossing on the Kuwait-Iraq border, and a quarter mile into Iraq. According to the General who traveled with her, while she was there she presided over a re-enlistment ceremony of an Alaskan...

WASILLA, Alaska -- On Sept. 24, 2001, Mayor Sarah Palin and the City Council held their first meeting after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The council condemned the attacks and approved a $5,000 gift to a disaster relief fund. Palin said she would try to obtain materials from both attack sites to include in the town's "Honor Garden." And then the council and mayor returned to their normal business: approving funds to upgrade the public well, issuing a restaurant permit and taking up a measure forbidding residents from operating bed-and-breakfasts in their homes. After...

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,...

Sarah Palin's abrupt appearance on the national stage sparked an enormous array of questions, one of which is: Has she ever traveled abroad? I asked her new spokeswoman, Maria Comella, who noted that Palin visited Germany and Kuwait in 2007 to visit Alaska National Guard troops. Comella said she'd also visited one other country: Ireland.

Did you know that Sarah Palin has never been to Mongolia? Yeah, and despite the fact she never claimed to have visited there, we are making a big deal about it because of the impression she left only in our fervid imaginations that she did indeed visit Mongolia. Think that was ridiculous? Well, guess what? That is exactly what CNN is doing with a manufactured scandal that Sarah Palin never visited Iraq. The problem for CNN is that Palin never claimed to have visited Iraq. Here is her answer in the recent ABC interview with Charles Gibson about her foreign...