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Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin abused her power as Alaska's governor in the firing of her public safety commissioner, but violated no laws, a report for the state Legislature concluded Friday.
Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan's refusal to fire Palin's ex-brother-in-law from the state police force was "likely a contributing factor" to Monegan's July dismissal, but Palin had the authority as governor to dismiss him, the report by former Anchorage prosecutor Stephen Branchflower states.
The bipartisan Legislative Council earlier Friday went into executive session to discuss the Branchflower report before its scheduled release.
Only a portion of the report is scheduled to be made public after the executive session, said state Sen. Kim Elton, the Legislative Council's chairman. A second part of the report contains "confidential" information and will be kept under wraps, said Elton, a Democrat who has been under fire from Palin's supporters.
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The bipartisan Legislative Council earlier Friday went into executive session to discuss the Branchflower report before its scheduled release.
Only a portion of the report is scheduled to be made public after the executive session, said state Sen. Kim Elton, the Legislative Council's chairman. A second part of the report contains "confidential" information and will be kept under wraps, said Elton, a Democrat who has been under fire from Palin's supporters.">
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Josh Wolk, EW: In the midst of re-creating the controversial New Yorker cover illustration of Barack and Michelle Obama for the cover photo that graces this week's edition of Entertainment Weekly, Jon Stewart stops briefly to pose a taste question. As he stands by the catering table in ''secret Muslim'' garb, he ponders, ''Would it be weird to be dressed like this and have a bagel, salmon, and a schmear?''
Pseudo-blowhard Stephen Colbert has his own worries. Striking his best Michelle-as-Black-Panther pose, he glances at the original cartoon and realizes that he's ''hippier'' than the potential First Lady. Gesturing at his own waist, he moans, ''I could drop a baby like a peasant.''
Other than that, though, their worries are few. Both of their Comedy Central shows just received an Emmy (The Daily Show won best Variety, Music, or Comedy Series, while The Colbert Report took home a best writing trophy), and they have five more weeks of an election battle starring three men and an Alaskan moose-skinner that has given the satirists more fodder than an infinite number of Dick Cheneys shooting an infinite number of friends in the face.
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Pat Doyle, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Gayle Quinnell, 75, of Shakopee, approached McCain near the end of his hour long give and take with the crowd and told him she didn’t trust his opponent Barack Obama because “he’s an Arab.”
McCain said that wasn’t true, and again called Obama a decent man. After the town hall meeting ended, Quinnell elaborated on her position in talking to reporters.
“I don’t trust Barack Obama because he’s an Arab,” she said. “He’s a Muslim. I’m afraid if he ever got to be president what would happen to this country.”
Obama’s father was Muslim, but Obama is Christian.
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AP ANCHORAGE, Alaska: A legislative committee investigating Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has found she unlawfully abused her authority in firing the state's public safety commissioner. The investigative report concludes that a family grudge wasn't the sole reason for firing Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan but says it likely was a contributing factor.
The Republican vice presidential nominee has been accused of firing a commissioner to settle a family dispute. Palin supporters have called the investigation politically motivated. Monegan says he was dismissed as retribution for resisting pressure to fire a state trooper involved in a bitter divorce with the governor's sister. Palin says Monegan was fired as part of a legitimate budget dispute.
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Charles Eisenstein, Reality Sandwich: I think we all sense that we are nearing the end of an era. On the most superficial level, it is the era of unregulated casino-style financial manipulation that is ending. But the current efforts of the political elites to fix the crisis at this level will only reveal its deeper dimensions. In fact, the crisis goes "all the way to the bottom." It arises from the very nature of money and property in the world today, and it will persist and continue to intensify until money itself is transformed. A process centuries in the making is in its final stages of unfoldment.
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Jon Perlow, Gmail engineer: Sometimes I send messages I shouldn't send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can't always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we're launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.
When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you're in the right state of mind?
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Mathew Ingram, Globe and Mail: So how can a band get some positive attention in these multi-platform, attention-deficit times we live in? You could try what Captain Caucasian and the Raging Idiots did: they asked their fans to make them the most searched-for term on Google, and it seems to have worked, if only briefly.
Captain Caucasian was the top Google Trend search term for part of Friday, until it was finally overcome by other important topics, such as GM's stock price and pictures of Angelina Jolie breast-feeding. Some sites tried their best to suck in traffic by mentioning several topics at once, like the site with the headline "Captain Caucasian on the W magazine cover?"
This kind of Google-gaming isn't new. It even has its own name: it's known as "Google-bombing." In most cases, it consists of people trying to rig the search engine so that the number one result for the term "miserable failure" is a photo of President George Bush (for example), by mentioning and linking those things in as many blog posts as possible.
In the case of Captain Caucasian, the lead singer of the band happens to be a DJ in Austin, Texas who goes by the name Bobby Bones, and he mentioned his desire to be the number one search on the radio. Apparently some fans heard his plea
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This kind of Google-gaming isn't new. It even has its own name: it's known as "Google-bombing." In most cases, it consists of people trying to rig the search engine so that the number one result for the term "miserable failure" is a photo of President George Bush (for example), by mentioning and linking those things in as many blog posts as possible.
In the case of Captain Caucasian, the lead singer of the band happens to be a DJ in Austin, Texas who goes by the name Bobby Bones, and he mentioned his desire to be the number one search on the radio. Apparently some fans heard his plea">
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One man’s pain is another man’s pleasure. It will be no comfort to beaten-up bankers that their plight has spawned a mini-boom in publishing. The Economist counts at least 18 books on the crisis that are either in the works or already in the shops. With publishers still sniffing out possible authors and agents hawking proposals from grizzled hacks, expect at least another dozen to join them.
Those already published range from the populist (“Plunder” by Danny Schechter) to the highbrow (“The Subprime Solution” by Robert Shiller, of home-price-index fame). The publisher of “Plunder”, Alexander Dake, admits that the book was “kind of a rush job”—though, he insists, impeccably researched. Others have benefited from good fortune: Charles Ellis’s “The Partnership”, a weighty history of Goldman Sachs, appeared just as the investment bank took centre-stage. A history of finance by Niall Ferguson, a Harvard professor, was also well timed.
Mr Dake says a race is on to sign up authors. Like any good bank in the pre-crash days, some publishers are splashing out to secure talent. Penguin’s American arm has been particularly eager, bagging four inky-fingered “stars” in the past month, reportedly at a cost of over $2m in advances.
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