Sarah Palin was illegal and must repay nearly $400,000 to donors

A legal defense fund for former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was illegal and must repay nearly $400,000 to donors, according to a settlement with a state-appointed lawyer announced on Thursday.But Palin, the feisty former Republican vice presidential candidate who has become a fixture of the conservative Tea Party movement, probably violated a state ethics act without knowing she was doing so, independent counsel Tim Petumenos said.

While governor, Palin faced some two dozen ethics complaints, which she said left her with a legal bill of more than $500,000. Her political action committee raised a fund to pay for her defense.A preliminary ruling by another independent counsel last year said the fund was illegal because it used her official position as governor to raise money for her personal gain.Petumenos confirmed the decision and said no such legal defense fund had ever been set up before for a state official in Alaska.

Palin violated the ethics rules because she was a beneficiary of the fund but probably relied on bad advice from out-of-state lawyers to conclude it was above board, Petumenos said at a news conference.He added that Palin should have checked with the state attorney general before pursuing the fund.

“It is the responsibility of every public official to make sure they are personally compliant with the (Alaska Ethics) Act,” he said.The deal requires Palin’s fund to give back to donors $386,856 collected while she was in office. A further $33,546 collected after she resigned will not be affected by the deal.Palin, no longer a public official, has launched a new defense fund. She is now independently wealthy but her lawyer, Thomas Van Flein, told reporters he still believed she ran up the legal costs in her capacity as governor and so a new fund was justified.(Reuters)

Sarah Palin is going to Supporting Racist Profiling Law

Communities across America have been asking whether leading Republicans would choose racism or reform in the debate over Arizona’s new racial profiling immigration law. This weekend, we got the answer when Sarah Palin endorsed the Arizona law, a placebo solution focused on racialized police targeting. They’re choosing racism.

Palin also took the odd step of making it personal; she told her supporters to personally email me. Many took the opportunity to send me racist and hateful messages. Though I’m an American citizen, several said they wanted me to leave “their” country. The tone reminded me of Sen. John McCain’s recent advertisement where he’s praised by a white sheriff’s deputy as “one of us.” The message of the advertisement and Sarah Palin’s supporters is clear: America belongs to white people and us colored folks ought to just get out.

She’s picked her side; now let’s have a debate. America deserves a full airing of the issue, and I’ll gladly debate the former VP candidate anytime and anywhere. Let’s have a complete airing on whether the Arizona law is the right solution to our broken immigration system.

I contend that the misguided Arizona law stems from the intense desire Americans have for our leaders to do “something.” Sarah Palin apparently thinks that serious immigration reform entails asking brown people to produce their papers on demand. In my view, the law is un-American and does nothing to address the serious problems with the current immigration system. We need to continue improving border security, enforce laws against unscrupulous employers and provide a path to legalization that enables qualified families currently here to become fully integrated members of our communities.

This comprehensive approach is what experts and leading members of both parties have endorsed. Well, they did until recently when Republicans like Jon Kyl, Lindsey Graham and John McCain decided it would be far better for their careers to politicize it. That’s the rub really, people like Sarah Palin don’t seem to really want to have a serious debate about practical solutions to immigration because if they did, they wouldn’t be able to rile up the most extreme and hate mongering members of their party.

But I’m willing to be proven wrong. If Sarah Palin wants to have respectful and real debate on immigration reform, I am waiting.

P.S. Want to text Sarah Palin and tell her to engage in a real debate on immigration reform?
Text PALIN to 69866

Palin and Gov. Jan Brewer were in Phoenix to put the blame on the back of Obama's administration

Sarah Palin joined the battle over Arizona’s immigration law.  Palin and Gov. Jan Brewer were in Phoenix to put the blame on the back of Obama’s administration, and his criticism of the law.CNN reports that Palin says, “It’s time for Americans across this great country to stand up and say We’re all Arizonan now and, in clear unity, we say Mr. President, do your job, secure our border.”

Gov. Brewer used the event to announce her first appointment to the state’s new Joint Border Security Advisory Committee.  Arizona has a website to fight what the Jan Brewer calls a national misinformation campaign about Arizona’s new state law.

Both Palin and Brewer plan on fighting the boycotts and punishment of the state of Arizona for trying to stem the flow of crime in Arizona and doing what the Federal government should have already done if it had secured the border.President Obama’s claims that the law is misguided are according to Palin and Brewer misguided and it looks like 67% of Americans are in agreement with Arizona.

Sarah Palin plans to appear with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer at a campaign event in Phoenix on Saturday

PHOENIX Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin plans to appear with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer at a campaign event in Phoenix on Saturday.Brewer’s campaign says the event will feature the launch of a national effort to educate America about border security and encourage support for Arizona.The event comes amid increasing calls for a boycott of Arizona from cities and groups across the nation because of the state’s tough new law cracking down on illegal immigrants. National polls show strong support for the measure.

The Republican governor signed the law three weeks ago. Brewer automatically became governor last year after former Gov. Janet Napolitano was appointed Homeland Security secretary. Brewer now is seeking a full term in office.Brewer and Palin will appear at the 4:45 p.m. event in north Phoenix.

President Barack Obama's major priorities dropped from the agenda of an election-year Congress facing voter disillusionment

WASHINGTON Immigration reform has become the first of President Barack Obama’s major priorities dropped from the agenda of an election-year Congress facing voter disillusionment. Sounding the death knell was Obama himself.The president noted that lawmakers may lack the “appetite” to take on immigration while many of them are up for re-election and while another big legislative issue – climate change – is already on their plate.

“I don’t want us to do something just for the sake of politics that doesn’t solve the problem,” Obama told reporters Wednesday night aboard Air Force One.Immigration reform was an issue Obama promised Latino groups that he would take up in his first year in office. But several hard realities – a tanked economy, a crowded agenda, election-year politics and lack of political will – led to so much foot-dragging in Congress that, ultimately, Obama decided to set the issue aside.

With that move, the president calculated that an immigration bill would not prove as costly to his party two years from now, when he seeks re-election, than it would today, even though some immigration reformers warned that a delay could so discourage Democratic-leaning Latino voters that they would stay home from the polls in November.Some Democrats thought pushing a bill through now might help their party. If it failed, they could blame Republican resistance, though in reality many Democrats didn’t want to deal with an immigration bill this year either.

Perhaps seeing the handwriting on the wall, top Senate Democrats released a legislative framework for immigration reforms anyway. The draft proposal, obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday, called for, among other things, meeting border security benchmarks before anyone in the country illegally can become a legal permanent U.S. resident.By Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered little hope that the issue was still alive on Capitol Hill.”If there is going to be any movement in this regard, it will require presidential leadership, as well as an appetite, is that the word? … as well as a willingness to move forward in the Congress,” she said.House Republican leader John Boehner was more blunt. “There is not a chance that immigration is going to move through the Congress,” he said Tuesday.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, the Democrats’ leading advocate for immigration reform, has said he voted for health care reform on the understanding that Obama and congressional Democrats would move a major immigration bill.Even though he would like to see Latinos turn out to vote for Democrats in 2010, Gutierrez said “many will probably decide to stay home.” However, he added, a strict, new immigration law in Arizona may change that dynamic. The law requires law enforcement officers to question anyone they suspect is in the country illegally.”On one hand you are not going to vote because you don’t believe people you voted for are doing a good enough job,” Gutierrez said. “Then you say, ‘I got to vote, because the enemy is so mean and vindictive, I got to get out there.'”The Hispanic vote is growing, largely because of Latinos’ increasing population. The 9.7 million Latinos who cast ballots in 2008 made up about 7.4 percent of the electorate, according to a 2009 Pew Research Center study.

Hispanic voters helped flip the battleground states of Colorado, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico from Republican to Democratic in the 2008 presidential election.But even though Latinos’ numbers have been increasing, in some parts of the country their portions of voting populations are not large enough to affect election outcomes.

Democrats hold a 254-177 majority in the House, with four vacancies. But 48 are in districts where Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain did better than Obama in the 2008 elections.Matt Angle, a Democratic political strategist focused on Texas, said it would be worse for Democrats to propose a bill that has no hope of passing or getting Republican support. Doing so would allow Republicans to cherry-pick parts of the bill to use against Democratic candidates, he said.

The Senate also has a number of competitive races, some in states with significant numbers of Hispanic voters, such as in Nevada, the home state of Majority Leader Harry Reid. Latinos are about 12-15 percent of likely voters there.”For Democrats it is critical they can deliver if they want to continue nurturing the support they want from this community,” said Clarissa Martinez De Castro, National Council of La Raza immigration and national campaigns director.(AP)

Stormy Daniels said that she will not run for U.S. Senate in her home state

NEW ORLEANS Louisiana-born porn star Stormy Daniels announced Thursday that she will not run for U.S. Senate in her home state, ending a yearlong flirtation with politics that began as Republican incumbent Sen. David Vitter was working to overcome a sex scandal.In an e-mailed statement, Daniels said she cannot afford a run for the Senate and, comparing herself to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, complained that the media never took her interest in the race seriously.

“To begin with, like Governor Palin, I have become a target of the cynical stalwarts of the status quo,” Daniels said. “Simply because I did not fit in their mold of what an independent working woman should be, the media and political elite have sought to relegate my sense of civic responsibility to mere sideshow antics.”

Daniels recently declared herself a convert to the GOP with a press release making light of news that the Republican National Committee had picked up a nearly $2,000 tab at a sex-themed California nightclub. But her political publicity has been handled by Democratic operative Brian Welsh.

If nothing else, a Daniels campaign for the Republican nomination would have been a constant reminder of the 2007 scandal that broke when Vitter’s phone number appeared in the records of a Washington prostitution ring. Other than admitting a “serious sin,” he has steadfastly refused to discuss the matter.

Meanwhile, his political career seems to have survived intact. He has raised plenty of campaign money while bashing the policies of President Barack Obama, who is not popular in the state.

At the end of last year, Vitter had about $4.5 million in campaign cash, compared with about $2 million for his Democratic rival, U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon. Updated campaign finance reports for the first quarter of this year were due Thursday at the Federal Election Commission. The Vitter campaign released a summary of the latest report showing more than $5 million on hand as of March 31, with $1.1 million raised and more than $618,000 spent during the quarter.

Vitter may yet gain another well-known rival because former Republican state legislator James David Cain has said he may enter the race as an independent. Vitter so far has no major opposition in the GOP primary.

Daniels (real name Stephanie Clifford) said during a listening tour last spring that she decided to explore a possible campaign after fans tried to draft her in light of Vitter’s troubles.

“I completely ignored the whole thing for a while, and then I just got so much encouragement and feedback that I thought at the very least I owe it to myself and to the people to come out and see what they have to say,” Daniels said at the time.

An exploratory committee incorporated last year solicited funds through the Web site TeamStormy.com, but because Daniels never became a candidate, she was not required to report finances to the FEC.

The TeamStormy site has not been updated in months, nor have there been any posts on the TeamStormy Twitter account as of midday Thursday. On another Twitter site, Daniels has made no mention of the possible campaign, but has continued to promote her adult films and personal appearances – including one this week in Raleigh, N.C.

Her political story took a bizarre turn last summer when she was arrested on a domestic violence battery charge after she allegedly hit her husband at their home in Tampa, Fla., during a dispute about laundry and unpaid bills. Charges later were dropped.

Her arrest came two days after Welsh, the Democratic operative, said his parked 1996 Audi was damaged by fire outside his apartment in an upscale downtown area of New Orleans. She didn’t say much about her campaign after that until her announcement earlier this month that she was becoming a Republican.

Daniels accused Vitter of financing his campaign with special interest money but said she still might support him if he goes along with her proposal to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and the federal income tax in favor of a “fair tax” plan that includes a national sales tax.(AP)

Sarah Palin's push for 2012 presidential run by the fans

Sarah Palin's

Lynn Giese calls Sarah Palin the best thing that’s happened to the U.S. in a long time, and the 57-year-old housewife says she’d work tirelessly for the former Alaska governor were she to run for president in 2012.

“I’d do anything, go anywhere,” said Giese, of Bokoshe, Okla., while waiting in line at a Sam’s Club in Fayetteville where Palin signed copies of “Going Rogue,” her best-selling memoir.She’d also have support from Kayla Hogue, a 20-year old student who came to the same event sporting a button melding a photo of Palin and Ronald Reagan. And Bob Rutz, 78, first in line at Palin’s book signing a day earlier in Springfield, Mo., who said, “I’m hoping she’ll be drafted (to run).”

These are the foot soldiers in Palin’s army: thousands of devoted fans who show up to catch a glimpse of the one-time GOP vice presidential nominee on her book tour and urge her to seek the nation’s top job.

In Fayetteville, hundreds of people – some camping out in frigid weather nearly a day before the event – formed a line that snaked around the back of the store. They wore camouflage fatigues and suits, work boots and dress loafers, ball caps and cowboy hats and T-shirts that read, “Palintologist.”

But while huge crowds greet her with roars of “Run Sarah Run!” as she tours the country in a bus, many national Republicans look on nervously, worrying the unparalleled enthusiasm she generates among some conservative voters isn’t enough to power a Republican victory over President Barack Obama in 2012.

“People look at her and see themselves: patriotic, religious, family oriented outsiders looked down on by a liberal elite,” said Jim Broussard, a political science professor at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania. “But what makes her so attractive to her base makes her less attractive as an actual candidate, because you can’t win with just your base.”

In an increasingly urban multicultural country, the hordes coming out to see Palin are overwhelmingly white, conservative and from small towns (not surprisingly, since her book tour largely avoided cities.) They often express disdain for Obama, the mainstream media and the culture of Washington, which they said doesn’t reflect them or their concerns.

“B.O. scares me,” said Miki Booth, 59, of the president, adding that Palin “is as American as it gets.”

Palin played into that fear on a radio show Thursday, telling host Rusty Humphries that voters “rightfully” have questions about the legitimacy of Obama’s birth certificate. The so-called birther conspiracy around Obama’s U.S. citizenship has been widely discredited, and state health officials in Hawaii have repeatedly confirmed that the president was born there in 1961.

Palin later backed off the comment on her FACEBOOK page, saying she had never questioned Obama’s citizenship but believes that voters and reporters had a right to ask candidates whatever questions they wish.

Palin has not indicated whether she plans to run in 2012. But in a wide-open Republican field with no obvious front-runner, she is better known and excites much bigger crowds than others eying a run, including Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a 2008 contender who might compete with Palin for the votes of social conservatives, saw his presidential prospects diminish this week after a man whose prison sentence Huckabee commuted nine years ago shot and killed four police officers in Washington state.

But Palin also has much higher negative ratings than her potential rivals, especially among Democrats and many independent voters. An ABC News/Washington Post poll taken in mid-November found 52 percent of those surveyed had a negative opinion of her, compared to 43 percent who viewed her positively.

Republican pollster John McLaughlin commended Palin’s ability to “give voice to people who think the government doesn’t care about them and really see Washington as disconnected and adversarial to their lives.” But he warned that the negative impressions generated during her time as John McCain’s 2008 running mate could prove a steep hurdle to overcome as a presidential contender.”There are some inside the Republican Party who think she’s too conservative and not up to the job,” McLaughlin said.

Greg Mueller, a GOP strategist with deep ties to the conservative movement, acknowledged Palin’s strongest constituent was on the Republican Party’s more rightward edge. But he noted that she also had support among nonaligned voters more concerned about taxes and spending than conservative social issues – the kind of voters who supported Ross Perot in the 1990s – as well as women who thought she had been mistreated during the 2008 campaign.

“Her appeal is anti-establishment, populist, and to center-right women finally seeing one of their own emerge only to be attacked and undermined,” Mueller said. “It goes beyond presidential politics – it’s cultural.”Still, even some of Palin’s stalwart supporters don’t necessarily see her as a likely 2012 contender.

“Do I think she’s presidential material? Um …” said Sandy Adrian, 38, at the Fayetteville book signing, pivoting one hand in a gesture of ambivalence, even though three copies of Palin’s book were stacked in her shopping cart.
But, Adrian added, “you don’t have to be president to change the world.”