Palin Emails: Todd is a “private citizen”…except when he’s not…
I have a little bit of personal experience with this Palin email thing. However, mine were so redacted, they were no fun at all. So, like many others, I’ve enjoyed making up my own searches of the awesome 2011 Palin Email Database, courtesy of MSNBC and Crivella West. The REAL fun happens when I’m searching on one topic and stumble upon another quite accidentally. For example, I was doing a search on a lobbyist name or two and found this email from Palin’s assistant/residence manager: From : Erika Fagerstrom [[email protected]. ak.us] Sent: Friday, April 20, 2007 1:43 PM To: Governor…
Pop, Ooze, Dung, and the Alaska Personnel Board.
Lots of good stuff floating around the internets. Here’s a little smorgasbord of tasty treats you may have missed. POP! Gubernatorial candidate Bob Poe wrote an excellent compass piece for the Anchorage Daily News that begins like this: I support equal rights for all people. And I support banning discrimination in Anchorage due solely to someone’s sexual orientation. I support a comprehensive equal rights ordinance because it’s the right thing to do, period. Sh. sh. shhh. Listen. Do you hear those faint little noises, like Pop Rocks? Remember all those people in red shirts who testified at the Anchorage Assembly…
Sarah Palin is the Easter Bunny.
“A thorn in Governor Palin’s side.” That’s how the latest article in Vanity Fair describes Andree McLeod. In government ethics, you can be on one side or the other – the side of the government, or the side of the people. Governments tend to want to conceal, and the governed tend to want to find out what is being concealed. It’s human nature. Considering the apathy of most people when it comes to holding their government accountable, we should all be raising a glass to Andree McLeod. In many ways, she’s doing our job. That’s not to say that…
Ethics Complaint #18 Filed Against Sarah Palin
Anchorage resident and registered Republican Andrée McLeod has filed an ethics complaint today with the Attorney General’s Office charging that Governor Palin violated the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act and knowingly, intentionally and willfully abused her official position and state resources for partisan political purposes and withheld official action for personal and political interests. “We’ve been had,” says Andrée McLeod. “Sarah Palin failed to preserve, protect and safeguard the office of the governor for selfish reasons and the State of Alaska and Alaskans were left vulnerable and exposed.” Signed and completed official travel documents show that upon being summoned by…
Numbers Shmumbers…
“In the past two years, the state of Alaska has spent millions of dollars processing ethics complaints, public records requests, and related lawsuits.” That was the claim coming from the office of Governor Sarah Palin, who likes to use the phrase “frivolous ethics complaints.” That was nine days ago. Today, we learn that “millions of dollars” is in fact, actually $296,000, as far as ethics complaints go. Numbers shmumbers. The complete breakdown is not yet available, but we do know this about the three spendiest ones: $187,797 stemmed from the Troopergate investigation, a good chunk of which Palin initiated herself….
Palin Ethics Complaint Dismissed.
Regarding this latest ethics complaint against Gov. Sarah Palin to be dismissed, filer Andree McLeod says that “her publicly funded partisan and publicly funded state staff and resources for personal partisan political purposes that have nothing to do with the state’s interests and everything to do with her personal, extremely partisan political Washington, D.C., beltway interests.” The Personnel Board disagrees. Here’s part of the latest press release from the governor’s office. Please note the naming of a private citizen in the title of the release, and the disclosure of the employment history of that private citizen as it relates to state…
The Palin Administration’s $64,000 Question.
So, what’s the $64,000 question? Ethics watchdog Linda Kellen Biegel just asked it, apparently. She made a State of Alaska records request to find out what kind of communication has been going on between the governor’s office, right-wing shock jock Eddie Burke, and Anchorage Daily News gossip columnist Sheila Toomey. After Bill McAllister, Palin’s communication director said in a state press release that he “hoped there would be backlash” against those filing ethics complaints, there started to be….well…backlash against those filing ethics complaints. Go figure. And it started to manifest in interesting ways. See HERE and HERE. Was there direct…
Palin Email Hacker’s Lawyer Seeks Dismissal Because Emails are Public Record.
Wade Davies, attorney for David Kernell, the notorious Palin email hacker who retrieved and published emails from Governor Sarah Palin’s off-the-radar email account, (cleverly disguised as [email protected]), has asked for a dismissal of charges. On what grounds? Because “an Alaska court has issued an order requiring Ms. Palin to preserve the correspondence in her private e-mail accounts on the grounds that the e-mails are public records.” The court ruled on this after local political watchdog Andree McLeod pointed out that the governor was illegitimately using this personal email account to conduct official state business, speculating that this unorthodox use of private emails may have…
Monday Morning Cleavage!
Here’s an interesting little story. There is cleavage in the story, but the point of the story isn’t really about cleavage. I figured I’d just get that out of the way right off the bat and come back to it later to illustrate a point. The players in this little story are Mike Nizich, Governor Palin’s Chief of Staff; Annette Kreitzer, Commissioner of the Department of Administration, and citizen watchdog Andree MacLeod. Andree McLeod has filed several ethics complaints against the Governor in the past few months. She’s also filed a public records request that asks the state to turn over a…
Ethics Complaints Against Sarah Palin – A Drama in an Undisclosed Number of Acts.
Well ethics complaints seem to be the theme of the day. In an article on Politico, the number of ethics complaints against the Palin administration (12 or 13 that we know of) was described as “unusual”. I don’t think many would dispute that. This means one of two things. 1) The number of ethics complaints is a function of a whole lot of politically motivated people who have decided to create a string of bogus ethics complaints for the sole reason of taking down the governor because they hate her and they’re just bad bad people. 2) The number of ethics…