The Sarah Palin Blog has broken the news that a Defense Fund for the Alaska governor is up and running:
A defense fund to help Sarah Palin pay her mounting legal bills is now up on the web and operational…
According to the organizer,the defense money raised will go directly to Thomas Van Flein, Governor Palin’s private attorney.
The fund is managed by Clayton Paslay, also the organizer of FreeAmericanCitizens.org, a non-affiliated PAC.
Here’s the link: Sarah Palin’s Defense fund. And here’s a link to the Free American Cititzens website.
Though this is not THE official Sarah Palin Legal Defense Fund (that one should go active this week, perhaps as early as Thursday), the governor’s attorney “has given his assurance that this fund is legal and legitimate.”
Celtic Diva, Andree McLeod and the rest of those who thought they could bankrupt the Palins with nuisance lawsuits and other schemes may soon learn the meaning of EPIC FAIL, as Gov. Palin’s supporters make these funds grow. In fact, the governor’s enemies may have unwittingly provided a barometer of Sarah Palin’s national support. Let’s see how quickly the bucks add up.
Update: By e-mail, Team Sarah reports that it asked Palin Family Spokesperson Meghan Stapleton about the unofficial Defense Fund and received this reply:
The continuing generosity of Alaskans and Americans is overwhelming as many reach out to assist Governor Sarah Palin and her family with their legal bills.
However, the official legal defense fund for Governor Sarah Palin has not been formed and the Governor cannot accept monies for those obligations from any other entity than the one in formation. Numerous federal and state laws to need to be abided by and the official legal defense fund will have very strict donation guidelines.
We thank everyone interested in helping the Governor. The best way to assist her will be through this official fund which will launch later this month.”
If the governor cannot directly accept the money the unofficial fund is raising, then it will either have to be returned to the donors or Clayton Paslay will have to find a way to legally donate it to the official fund, once the latter is finally up and running.
Questions:
If Gov. Palin can’t legally accept money from the unofficial fund, why didn’t Palin attorney Thomas Van Flein say so when The Sarah Palin Blog inquired about it? According to TSPB, Van Flien said that the unofficial fund is “legitimate.”
Why did a SarahPAC official tell TSPB yesterday, “It is legal. It’s just not the official one. Please tell people that the official one is soon to come. Again, we do not know that donors will comply with our terms and guidelines which are very strict – we may end up needing to contact every single donor to ask the questions that we will be asking. However, we appreciate any and all assistance! Thank you.” …but today says the governor cannot accept money from the unofficial fund?
It’s either legal, or it isn’t. And who should know legal better than Sarah Palin’s lawyer?
- JP
Steve Maley
KnightsofMalta
Dan Spencer
Moe Lane
Dan McLaughlin
I'm in! We need to shut this tactic down quick.
Michael Dugas (Diary) Tuesday, April 7th at 10:35PM EST (link)I’m not sold on Palins future in national politics but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let the left use this tactic to shut down conservative voices.
I wish we could slap back with libel ans lander suits as a counter attack until they get the picture.
Intro to Federalist Papers; section 5;
paragraph 4.
“…dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the zeal for a firm and efficient government.”
Remember: A Citizen on the dole is a Liberal Vote at the Polls.
END ENTITLEMENTS!
Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum !
I'm not sold on Palin either ...
erp Wednesday, April 8th at 8:06AM EST (link)but she needs to be given a chance to run on an even playing field. I looked for an address to send a check to her defense fund, but didn’t see it anywhere.
Can’t be said too often, the left’s tactics are disgraceful.
erp
Just exposing them should do the trick.
Josh Painter (Diary) Tuesday, April 7th at 10:43PM EST (link)Once taxpayers learn how much of their money is being wasted in the endless requests for information and litigation these people are jamming up the system with just to satisfy their partisan political mean streak, there will be scan public sympathy for them or their tactics.
- JP
“An armed society is a polite society” – Robert A. Heinlein, “Beyond This Horizon” (1942)
The problem there, Josh
TNJim (Diary) Wednesday, April 8th at 1:13AM EST (link)is libs just love wasting money on endless requests for information and litigation against Republicans in general and conservatives in particular. Nevertheless count me in on this, too
scan => scant
Josh Painter (Diary) Tuesday, April 7th at 10:43PM EST (link)- JP
“An armed society is a polite society” – Robert A. Heinlein, “Beyond This Horizon” (1942)
Thanks, Josh!
azaeroprof (Diary) Wednesday, April 8th at 12:00AM EST (link)I just made my (first) donation to this fund. What these imbeciles are doing to her is sickening.
Art, I don’t know if you want to contribute and it’s certainly none of our biz one way or the other. But I have to say it would be a nice show of conservative unity if even the not-so-Palin-fans would help out.
Why is it again that the State of AK isn't paying for her defense?? nt
mbecker908 (Diary) Wednesday, April 8th at 12:15AM EST (link)I think
mom2oneson (Diary) Wednesday, April 8th at 12:57AM EST (link)it may be because of her husband being involved too. Achance knows more about how it works, I had the same question, he will post I’m sure.
if you know how to search
mom2oneson (Diary) Wednesday, April 8th at 12:59AM EST (link)Achance answered it for me a while back. I don’t know how to search on here. It was a thread by Martin K I think.
I'm in too.
Rod_Patrick (Diary) Wednesday, April 8th at 12:59AM EST (link)Actually, it’s my wife. She was first to learn this thing. She said that’s she’s gonna save some bucks for Sarah. It’s a woman’s thing for her (that breaking the ceiling blah blah).
So is Bill O’Reilly. I think Rush and Glenn Beck are into it too.
Ahh Josh, why isn't AK paying her legal bills? nt
mbecker908 (Diary) Wednesday, April 8th at 8:45AM EST (link)Celtic diva is just a lefty blogger. Andree McLeod
Achance (Diary) Wednesday, April 8th at 4:26AM EST (link)is just getting her 15 minutes of fame. The Democrat Party and others may be egging them on or putting up money, but none of this started out as any nefarious plot. Gov. Palin brought most of this on herself or at least had it brought on her by people who work for her. She’s going to lose the email thing and should never have tried to finesse the Public Records Act. Somebody should have given her better advice and if they did and she didn’t follow it, it’s her own damned fault. Her Commissioner of Administration is just as hard-headed as she is, so some of the Administration’s position may be coming from Com. Kreitzer. Gaming the per diem system is the sort of thing that totally POs the public. The good people of Anchorage may like it that she’s jabbing Juneau with a pointy stick by not staying in the Capital, but they also don’t like her getting paid per diem for living at home. I suspect somebody did that for her and once it was done, hard-headedness is ruling her actions. Even the eeeeeevvvuuuuul Frank Murkowski didn’t charge the State for taking his family along with him on State trips. Again, I think Gov’s office staff told her it was OK. It’s not, but that’s what she gets for keeping holdovers around.
If she’s really confident of her position on these things, all she has to do is ask the Attorney General to step in and substitute the State as a defendent, provide a defense for her, or indemnify her and pay for her outside counsel. Alaska Statute (AS) 09.50.250 et seq. sets it all out. One may be permitted to wonder why she hasn’t availed herself of her statutory rights.
In Vino Veritas
Not so fast, Art:
Josh Painter (Diary) Wednesday, April 8th at 5:40AM EST (link)“Gov. Palin has spent far less on her personal travel than her predecessor: $93,000 on airfare in 2007, compared with $463,000 spent the year before by her predecessor, Frank Murkowski.”
“Leighow said that the governor’s staff has tallied the travel expenses charged by Murkowski’s wife: $35,675 in 2006, $43,659 in 2005, $13,607 in 2004 and $29,608 in 2003.”
Washington Post
*
“Gov. Frank Murkowski’s wife, Nancy, accompanied her husband on scores of trips. The state was reimbursed for only a handful.”
Alaska Daily News
*
“The Anchorage Daily News reported Tuesday that for items including travel, lodging, and meals, Palin spent about $900,000 less than did former Gov. Frank Murkowski while he was in office. Palin also spent less than former Gov. Tony Knowles but the difference was not dramatic, the newspaper noted.”
Moldova/Politicom
*
Care to re-phrase your claim that “Frank Murkowski didn’t charge the State for taking his family along with him on State trips”?
Nice try, though.
- JP
“An armed society is a polite society” – Robert A. Heinlein, “Beyond This Horizon” (1942)
No, Josh, I don't.
Achance (Diary) Wednesday, April 8th at 6:07AM EST (link)Gov. Palin drug the kids along with her on all sorts of trips even going so far as to make contact with those places inviting her to have them invite the kids as well. Go check some airfares to rural Alaska and see what that costs.
I guess I wouldn’t have cared much if she’d taken her husband along, though I don’t think it would properly be State business. Murkowski had kids still living in the State that I’m sure would have loved a trip to Barrow. I think Brian was working in Houston at the time, but maybe he would have like to reacquaint himself with Alaska. As far as I know, Murkowski usually followed the federal rule when Nancy accompanied him on the State jet. Unless she was specifically invited, if she went, she paid standard airfare. Granted that’s a benefit as the private jet probably cost more than that. I think he did take Nancy along on more ceremonial trips Outside and I wouldn’t begrudge Gov. Palin taking Todd to, say, a National Governors Association meeting. I don’t know if she took the kids along so they could see the State or as props or what, but it is real hard for me to see what State business they were conducting. I know that I spent many years travelling under those rules and in many of those years was among the most travelled State officers or employees and I would not have DARED take my wife or kids and try to charge the State for it. For most of my tenure, even if you had a discount companion fare, if you were going to take someone with you, you had to pay the fare difference to the State – at least if you told them you were doing it. The Governor really isn’t special here; s/he is just another working bureaucrat who works under most of the same rules as everyone else. Either this Governor doesn’t like following those rules or she isn’t keeping close enough tabs on the people who work for and advise her.
Basically, until she became the VP nominee, she almost never went anywhere Outside. Most Governors’ travel is from Juneau to Anchorage and on to other places in the State. She never goes to Juneau except during the Legislative session and really doesn’t travel much.
In Vino Veritas
Taking the kids on trips?
erp Wednesday, April 8th at 8:12AM EST (link)Why isn’t Pelosi being sued for taking her grandchildren hither and yon as props. Probably on the military planes she likes to use.
erp
Pelosi doesn't travel under the rules
Achance (Diary) Wednesday, April 8th at 11:17AM EST (link)in the Alaska Administrative Code, Gov. Palin does.
And Gov. Palin hasn’t been sued. She has had Ethics Act complaints filed against her and has resisted a Public Records Act request for her emails. As far as I know, that is the only one that is actually stll in court.
As I’ve explained elsewhere, if she were that confident of her position, she could just ask the Attorney General to defend and indemnify her. For example, if it is the considered opinion of the Palin Administration that under current law they have the right to withhold correspondence made in the course of the Governor’s duty or done on the State network, it should be the AG and the State taking that position, not the Governor personally. Likewise, Gov. Palin could have asked the AG to defend and indemnify her in the Monegan/Wooten affair and the Legislative investigation. She didn’t, but rather she went to private counsel. Likewise, the subordinate employees who resisted the subpoenae should have been provided with State counsel and if the Executive Branch really believed that under current law, it did not have to respond to those subpoenae, it should have been the AG and the State seeking to quash them.
In Vino Veritas
hmm
investedinterest Wednesday, April 8th at 11:41AM EST (link)Is there any chance that courts will side with Palin on the email requests?
I don't think so.
Achance (Diary) Wednesday, April 8th at 1:29PM EST (link)There’s a pretty large body of AKSC decisions on public records, though none yet specifically on email. The Courts have NEVER sided with the government or with a State officer or employee in withholding anything other than the specifically enumerated exceptions in the Public Records Act. Executive Privilege and Private correspondence are NOT among those exceptions.
The Courts have generally held that ANYTHING you do in the course of your State job or using state resources of any sort is public record. There is no executive privilege as that is (barely) understood under federal law. There is a deliberative privilege that holds in the pendency of a decision, but once a decision is made, everything underlying that decision becomes public.
One of my nightmares always was insecure or obsessive-compulsive bosses who wanted memos on our bargaining strategy and options. I could usually but not always talk them out of wanting it all in writing because I could offer them no assurance that I could deny a union’s public records act request for all memos regarding strategy and objectives. The law is that wide open, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
In Vino Veritas
The money goes directly to Van Flein
AKSteveB (Diary) Wednesday, April 8th at 1:38PM EST (link)who I believe was hired specifically for Troopergate. She brought that one on herself. This is an intra Alaska pissing match. It has little to do with some national campaign to bring her down.
Hell is other people – Sartre
You gotta love politics, apparently Gov. Palin and Randy Ruedrich are taking each others calls again nt
AKSteveB (Diary) Wednesday, April 8th at 1:40PM EST (link)Hell is other people – Sartre
She needs Republican friends here in Alaska,
Achance (Diary) Wednesday, April 8th at 1:53PM EST (link)and she doesn’t have many. She can’t rely on the Ds anymore since she’s become their bete noir. So, now there’s a long list of Rs she needs to make nice with starting with Randy, Sen. Stevens, Sen. Murkowski, Rep. Young, and a whole bunch of Murkowski appointees she kicked to the curb for the “crime” of having worked for Murkowski. And then she can start working on getting along with the Rs in the Legislature and all the Rs in Southeast Alaska. That’ll keep her off the streets and out of the pool halls for awhile.
In Vino Veritas
Never a better time to tell Tom Irwin et al to get a deal done on the pipeline. nt
AKSteveB (Diary) Wednesday, April 8th at 1:58PM EST (link)Hell is other people – Sartre