Our first head of the Department of Homeland Security has written a tell all and it’s more of the same we’ve heard from insiders about the former administration. They politicized nearly everything and made the wrong decision and nearly every turn.
From US News:
Among the headlines promoted by publisher Thomas Dunne Books: Ridge was never invited [...]

f there is one lesson that any close political adviser to a sitting president should have learned by now, it is this: It is not necessarily actual conflict of interest or impropriety that bites you in the ass. It is the appearance of conflict of interest and impropriety that is political poison. Axelrod is a very smart guy. He knows how to cover his tracks. He knows how to walk the line. That is why it is so surprising that he still chooses to walk so very very close to the ethical edge.

Early this month, Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge reported on the case of Sergey Aleynikov (pictured above), a former employee of Goldman Sachs who allegedly stole the code that runs their automated high frequency trading software.
Well, this could have been the catalyst for the recent focus on high frequency trading and may ultimately lead [...]

Maybe not all of the 7 that Doug proposed, but enough to make me comfortable that we’ll be getting a lot more information about his staff’s contact with the Illinois Governor’s office.
Ambinder has more…
In a press conference today, President-elect Barack Obama said that he’s “absolutely certain” that no one in his campaign had anything to [...]

Here’s the short version: Blagojevich = Moron.
Now for the long version…

One interesting thing that Lynn Sweet brought up in that clip was the idea of how little Blagojevich was involved in the Obama campaign. In fact, she said she would have been laughed at if she had asked what role Blagojevich played in the campaign. [...]

That’s the speculation at this hour…

And it looks like Blagojevich was going after everybody for money, even Warren Buffett…
In a November 11th conversation with John Harris, his Chief of Staff, Blagojevich said he could start a 501(c)(4) political organization to extract money from the billionaire Sage of Omaha, whom the governor called Obama’s “friend.”
“What, for [...]

MSNBC checks out the new Congressman we wrote about yesterday here and here.

One thing I want to focus on is how House Minority leader John Boehner characterized this victory…
In a memo to colleagues called “The Time is Cao,” Boehner says that Anh “Joseph” Cao’s win over Jefferson in a heavily Democratic district points the way [...]

Well, looks like he’s going to fight the conviction, but his claim of prosecutorial misconduct seems rather weak. I mean, Ted, the prosecutors didn’t remodel your home and put all that furniture in your house for free.
In any event, from Stevens website comes the following statement…
“I am obviously disappointed in the verdict but not surprised [...]

I found Palin’s response today to one of the biggest ethics scandal in her state to be pretty clear code for “Get lost old man.”
Here’s what she said…
“The verdict shines a light on the corrupting influence of the big oil service company that was allowed to control too much of our state. It was part [...]

Hi, this is Danielle Ivory at the American News Project in DC. Thanks to Justin Gardner for allowing us to post story items here! We’ll start doing this regularly next week.
Just by way of introduction, the ANP is an independent non-profit video news organization in DC. We produce pieces for the web, but [...]

The second TrooperGate investigation gets under way soon.
Today is not a good day to be a Palin…
The Alaska Personnel Board is conducting the investigation, led by an independent counsel.
It will be the first deposition of the Alaska governor, but the second inquiry into the matter. The first investigation by the Alaska state legislature found that [...]

Her “hometown” paper fires back in one of the more strongly worded editorials I’ve seen this campaign season.
Again, I don’t know how she thought she was going to get away with it, but the press is now hammering her for trying to spin her way out of these ethics findings, thus ensuring that the story [...]

TODAY has the story…

They won’t let her spin her way out of this.
My guess is that this is the final nail in the McCain/Palin coffin. If people didn’t trust her before, now they have a real reason not to support her.

The Branchflower report and the McCain camp’s clearly dishonest spin was bad enough, but it looks like the McCain campaign opened up Palin to even more scrutiny when they didn’t even need to.
From Newsweek:
Some weeks ago, the McCain team devised a plan to have Palin file an ethics complaint against herself with the State [...]

Again, I don’t why she thought she was going to get away with this, but maybe she’s not used to reporters asking more follow up questions.
From Jake Tapper…
One can make the argument, as Palin and her allies have tried to do, that this investigation — launched by a bipartisan Republican-controlled legislative body — was somehow [...]

First, the McCain camp and Palin herself are saying that the investigation found no laws were broken or nothing unethical was done.
On the first count they’re right. No laws were broken. But do you know why she didn’t break any laws? Because the employment law states she A) could either fire him for any reason [...]

Not only are they wrong…they’re REALLY wrong.
First, here’s McCain’s response to the report…
Today’s report shows that the Governor acted within her proper and lawful authority in the reassignment of Walt Monegan. The report also illustrates what we’ve known all along: this was a partisan led inquiry run by Obama supporters and the Palins were completely [...]

MSNBC has the report…

No doubt that the Obama campaign will jump all over this. But will this come up in the next debate? Or will Obama continue to ignore Palin and simply focus on McCain?
Seems like Biden might come out and start hammering here on this.
So then, what will be the fallout here?

Looks like there was enough “there” there for a 12 person legislative committee to unanimously decide to release this report and find her guilty of ethics abuse.
From NY Times:
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — 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 [...]