**UPDATE**

As mentioned by Josh Painter, here is the Palin Piece that CNN played Vinnie Barbario with (what? Who? Where?)

But before we get into this op ed, I have to relate a bit of history first. I originally posted this on Sunday on my NewsBusters.org posting. It raged all day Sunday and into the night among Palin fans and center right bloggers. Lucianne.com, FreeRepublic and many other sites linked to the story. Gretta Van Susteren even posted about it on her FoxNews blog (It garnered 4 pages of comments there, too).

Well by the time Monday morning arrived, CNN quietly and without explanation or apology erased Sarah Palin from the article I describe below.

Showing they have no sense of morality, no grasp of corruption and no understanding of what defines a criminal, CNN gives us another one of those ubiquitous year in review stories, this one titled “Politicians who fell from grace in 2008.” In this one, CNN has decided to reveal for us their top eight politicians that found 2008 to be a “career-buster” because of their “crimes and misdemeanors” or their outrageous controversies.

CNN features corruption mired Rod Blagojevich, the sex crazed Elliot Spitzer and John Edwards, and the criminal bribe taker Ted Stevens among four others. Each of these men in the CNN list have either been convicted of criminal actions, are indicted for corruption, lost their positions, been drummed out of their party, or are soon to face jail time. Among these eight criminals, however, is a name that doesn’t belong among this class of serial abuser of the public trust. It won’t be shocking to note that among the worst sex criminals, bribe takers, liars and thieves in politics for 2008, CNN ridiculously included the name of Governor Sarah Palin.

Palin, however, has done nothing remotely like what these other political ner-do-wells have done. She did not take bribes, she did not indulge in sexual dalliances with co-workers or call girls, she did not get booted from her party or lose her job as Governor. She is not under indictment nor does she face jail time, yet CNN includes her in a list with Rob Blagojevich, John Edwards, Kwame Kilpatrick, Larry Langford, Tim Maloney, Elliot Spitzer and Ted Stevens.

This CNN slide show is based on the idea that these eight politicians have fallen from grace because of their criminal actions. Many of them have lost their political office either by being thrown out, voted out or having resigned. Some of them are about to go to jail and nearly all of them took bribes and illicit freebies and then made false statements to investigators as well as filing false tax statements. Seven of these politicians are criminals and right there, before our eyes, CNN has Sarah Palin among them.

Of course, there is no legitimate reason at all to lump Sarah Palin among these creeps as she has done nothing even remotely like what they have done. Each of the other seven at the very least have been disowned by their party. None of them could rally 10 people to their side should they try to make a public appeal. On the other hand, Palin has been an in demand participant in rallies all across the country as well as a sought after media guest.

Just this past December, for instance, Palin was asked to go to Georgia to rally voters to return Senator Saxby Chambliss to office in a runoff election. This request was fully a month after she lost her bid to become vice president on the McCain ticket, yet Chambliss has repeatedly said that he won the reelection in part because she rallied the voters to his side. If Palin had a “fall from grace” as CNN claims, how was this possible?

Palin is even supposedly an odds on favorite to be nominated president in 2012! How is that evidence of her being disgraced in 2008?

Now, let’s have a quick review what the other seven have done:

• Rob Blagojevich (D-IL)- Caught in a criminal bribe taking pay-to-play scheme to sell Barack Obama’s senate seat to the highest bidder
• John Edwards(D-NC)- Had an affair with an underling as his wife was dying of cancer, an affair he hid from public knowledge as he ran for president
• Kwame Kilpatrick (D-MI)- Sentenced to 4 months in jail for obstruction of justice for impeding a criminal investigation into his actions as Detroit’s mayor
• Larry Langford (D-AL)- Birmingham, Alabama mayor arrested on charges of bribery, fraud, money laundering and filing a false income tax statement
• Tim Mahoney (D-FL)- Replaced sex crazed Rep. Mark Foley in Florida while hiding his own extra-marital affairs from the voters, then lost his bid for reelection once the truth came out
• Elliot Spitzer (D-NY)- Caught with a prostitute, lost his job as governor of New York
• Ted Stevens (R-AK)- Faces jail for bribery and making false statements to the feds

How does Sarah Palin fit in with these criminals and scum? Well, truth is, she does not. Yet CNN placed her among these criminals anyway and termed her a disgraced politician!

The only thing “exposed” here is CNN’s hate for Palin, its leftist agenda to destroy her and its extreme bias.

**UPDATE Continued**

So, as I was saying in the intro, it appears that CNN has thought better of including Governor Sarah Palin’s name among the other criminal politicians of 2008. They quietly and without explanation removed her from their slide show. We have a small victory for holding the Old Media accountable here, I suppose, but it is awfully interesting that CNN just rewrote history without explanation. Don’t you think?