Finally the Mainstream Media is Looking at the Palins' Secessionist Ties
I have been waiting a long time for this. For months TPM and other bloggers have exposed the connection between Todd Palin (and to a lesser extent Sarah Palin) connection to the Alaska Independence party. In the Arizona Republic a columnist talks about how the McCain's ridiculous charge that Obama pals around with terrorists makes him unfit for the highest office open the campaign up to questions about Palin's dubious associations.
This may force the mainstream press to ask Palin to explain why she remained associated with this dubious political party for as long as she and her husband did. Also it may answer the question that many have been asking: is supporting a party that coordinates with other anti-government groups, sought the support of Iran, and wants to promote a Christian theocracy truly American? Should we question John McCain fitness for office for choosing as his running mate someone who may be folksy but supports a party that advocates secession of Alaska?
This may force the mainstream press to ask Palin to explain why she remained associated with this dubious political party for as long as she and her husband did. Also it may answer the question that many have been asking: is supporting a party that coordinates with other anti-government groups, sought the support of Iran, and wants to promote a Christian theocracy truly American? Should we question John McCain fitness for office for choosing as his running mate someone who may be folksy but supports a party that advocates secession of Alaska?
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FYI - Tueday afternoon 2pm CST - CNN just gave 10 minutes to David Niewert on Palin's secessionist ties. I just missed it !! hopefully it will be up on the CNN site this afternoon
October 14, 2008 4:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for the heads-up on this. I couldn't find it on the CNN website when I checked, hopefully it will be up later.
I have been a regular reader of Dave Neiwert at his blog Orcinus and at Firedoglake.
He does an excellent job of covering issues of racism and neo-fascism. In this case, he has written about the links between the AIP and a number of other pro-secession groups including militias and white-supremacists.
October 14, 2008 10:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
You can see it here http://www.republicansforobama.org/?q=node/3243
October 15, 2008 12:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Max Blumenthal is the best single source on the Alaska Independence Party and Sarah & Todd Palin's close ties to this scary Secessionist group. This is Max Blumenthal speaking on Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now!":
. . . .And what we found was that she was more closely associated with this party and with fringe right-wing elements than the media had previously discovered or than Palin was willing to acknowledge. And not only did she, you know, associate with them in order to advance her political ambitions, she advanced their agenda on a local and state level. Beginning with Mark Chryson and a character named Steve Stoll, who’s known around Wasilla as “Black Helicopter Steve,” because he’s rumored to have buried several high-powered automatic weapons in his front yard in expectation of the federal government ushering in the new world order, these characters are very paranoid, conspiratorial people who loathe the federal government and believe that the federal government is responsible for all the ills that have befallen their state. That’s why they—you know, that the Alaskan Independence Party was founded. It was founded to find a means, some remedy, so that Alaska could secede from the union. Its founder, Joe Vogler, said, “I’m an Alaskan, I’m not an American. And I hate America and all her damned institutions.” So this is what the party is about. . . .
http://maxblumenthal.com/2008/10/palintology-on-democracy-now/#more-396
http://maxblumenthal.com/
October 15, 2008 1:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
There's a claim on Daily Kos that the McCain campaign has called and got CNN to pull the story which is no longer being shown.
I can't find the exact source of this information in the diary though.
CNN Scrubs AIP Story After McCain Lashes Back!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/14/151519/61/145/630389
October 15, 2008 1:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Learn to spell: the word is --
S-E-C-E-S-S-I-O-N.
Now got READ the Constituion through, noting the constraints on states which render SECESSION unconstitutional.
James Madison, "Nullfication and Secession had the same poisonous root," The Constitution of the United States: Defined and Carefully Annotated (Washington, DC: W. H. & O. H. Morrison, Law Book Sellers, 1868), George W. Paschal, at IX.
And see: Texas v. White, 7 Wall. 700 (1869), holding that SECESSION is unconstitional.
It is in addition to those facts that the AIP was found by terrorist Joe Vogler, and has all along been and is now led by far-right lunatic fringe extremists who are America-haters. Which makes Palin a hypocrite by having sworn the oath of office which requires that she uphold "the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, and the constitution and laws of the State of Alaska".
October 14, 2008 4:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry for the misspelling. You don't have to be so harsh about it. But I do agree with your points and know the constitution. The whole Palin candidacy has been fraught with contradiction.
October 14, 2008 4:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Harsh? I'm fed up with poppings off about Constitutional issues which leave out the Constitution. Since the AIP matter has come up, there has been an uptick in foolish, fact-free assertions about scecession being a good idea, and a "right".
In essence, I am constantly appalled -- and alarmed -- at how widespread and "bipartisan" is ignorance of the Constitution. At very least, try to get the spelling right.
October 15, 2008 5:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Learn to spell: the word is --
S-E-C-E-S-S-I-O-N.
sorry, couldn't help it.
October 15, 2008 8:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Say, I don't want to get technical, but I think the word that you were looking for is "founded" and not "found."
All of this interesting too in light of McCain using an individual who lobbied against the U.S embargo on the Iraqis during the time SH was dictator as part of his transition team to the White House.
October 15, 2008 8:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Secessionism is hardly the exclusive bastion of right-wing extremists. The "s" word is routinely bandied about by Libertarians when they get together.
There has been an arguably tongue-in-cheek secessionist movement in the Pacific Northwest to for the sovereign nation of Jefferson out of Oregon, Washington and Northern California.
The AIP most certainly has a vulgar spokesman in Mr Vogel, but I wonder how much of the movement is serious and how much of it is social.
October 14, 2008 4:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
It doesn't matter how serous or non-serious the AIP movement is. Those jokers who were plotting terrorism in Florida were not given a pass because they were too idiotic to be taken seriously. They received the full attention of the feds for quite a bit of time.
If our government operated in a fair manner, the Palins would both be given some long serious questioning by the FBI, with full press coverage. Advocating treason or insurrection is illegal, even if you are just being social.
People who joke about carrying a bomb on board a commercial aircraft face certain sentences to federal prison for it. Why would Todd Palin get a less serious sentence?
October 14, 2008 4:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Most/all the secessionist assertions and claims are intended to be serious -- and are false in terms of Constitution and law.
October 15, 2008 5:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Libertarians are just anarchists with money.
October 15, 2008 12:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
I thought Vogel was dead? Just having the MSM put the light of day on this relationship will cast further darkness on Sarah's star.
October 14, 2008 5:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Vogel is dead.
October 15, 2008 5:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
And buried in Canada, waiting for the day he can come home to an independent Alaska. Great story, it'd play well on prime time news.
October 15, 2008 11:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
HoppyCalif2 has the right of it.
It doesn't matter how serious or non-serious the AIP movement is.
I'll bet the the Southern Secessionist movement began with some disgruntled planters in South Carolina (or Mississippi) whoopin' and hollerin'
about the damnyankees encroachin' on our right to
own nigras (and I lived in both states for 26 years, and heard those attitudes, thinly veiled, into the 70s and 80s).
Far-Northern secessionists are "just a lunatic fringe", but when they get the support of a perky but not too bright or well-informed Governor, they
can become a danger to the populace.
October 14, 2008 5:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
And as the first of the two named individuals explained in the "Salon" article about AIP, they are about infiltrating the system in order to change it from within. In other words, they field "stealth" candidates who claim to be mainstream, and endeavor to hide that they are not by lying.
We saw that with G. W. Bushit. And we saw the transition by Palin from expressing her fringe lunacy -- then learning to couch it in terms which sound "moderate" and mainstream, even as they mostly make no sense.
October 15, 2008 6:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Jngara
Your rude and trivial attack on someone's spelling is totally out of place in this kind of a supposedly intellectual forum. Especially when you follow your rudeness with:
Now got READ the Constituion
October 14, 2008 6:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Jngara
Your rude and trivial attack on someone's spelling is totally out of place in this kind of a supposedly intellectual forum."
I have an actual education in actual law, and have been dealing eye-to-eye and toe-to-toe with the very far-right lunatic fringers who are subject of this thread for nearly twenty years. I am fed up with law-illiterates who don't know the law popping off about it and getting it wrong.
If the person who began this thread knows the law, then why an error so wide of the mark?
I am fed up, in short, with the anti-intellectualism revealed in the hubris of those who, though they lack education in law, presume to know law without knowing that they don't.
And I consider it rude to defend that hubris by attacking the critic/s of it. Otherwise I don't give a damn about your view of the matter: I am not the issue: the illiteracy and imprecision are; but let's do it your way: let's keep it all "fuzzy" so some of us can pretend that the 2000 election wasn't stolen; or was stolen "fair and square".
"Especially when you follow your rudeness with:
"Now got READ the Constituion."
READING the Constitution is rude? Bad advice? Let me know when you've read it and are thereby properly humbled.
October 15, 2008 5:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
READING the Constitution is rude? Bad advice?
No, using the wrong verb ("got" instead of "go") in a thread in which you've snarked at someone else's spelling is...well, not rude, just a tad ironic.
Also: Vogler, not Vogel.
October 15, 2008 8:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Vogler disappeared in 5/93. Vanished with no indication of what happened. The conclusion was that he had left his home with someone he knew.
A convict admitted to Joe's death the following year because of "a plastic explosives sale gone bad." The remains were found, identified and sent to Dawson to be buried per his directions.
Vogler's death presented the possibility that the group might lose it's numbers and influence. Didn't happen. There is streak of frontier law and justice in enough Alaskans to be more than a nuisance, regularly.There is plenty of anger and obstinance in those folks. Usually blended with fundamentalist anger and supported by open carry laws.
Alaskan version of the monkey joke.
How many rednecks, driving how many pick ups, shooting buckshot into how many road signs, would it take to write a Shakespeare play in Braille?
Palin on a presidential ticket = more millitary operations(invasions, occupations, etc)
October 14, 2008 8:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
According to the Salon article, Joe Vogler was stabbed by another AIP member. I never heard anything about "a plastic explosives sale gone bad." Where did you read this?
October 14, 2008 8:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Was talking with a former Alaska State Trooper today.
Vogler was killed over an explosives sale argument with apparently another AIP member who buried him so he wouldn't get caught. Eventually the guy was caught and revealed where he had buried Vogler. Vogler was buried in Canada and there is the famous statement about not wanting to be buried under the US flag.
October 14, 2008 9:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Was talking with a former Alaska State Trooper today.
Vogler was killed over an explosives sale argument with apparently another AIP member who buried him so he wouldn't get caught. Eventually the guy was caught and revealed where he had buried Vogler. Vogler was buried in Canada and there is the famous statement about not wanting to be buried under the US flag.
October 14, 2008 9:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Palin was selected by McCain 6-7 weeks ago.. the "months" part of your post seems to reflect a lack of focus on reality.
October 14, 2008 11:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Isn't 1.7 months "months"? :-)
October 15, 2008 2:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ah...the 100 pound AIP in the room....
October 15, 2008 12:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
The CNN piece was damaging. It spanned a few commercial breaks. They showed Palin's AIP video address. A link between Tim McVeigh's sympathies and the philosophy of AIP was pointed out. McCain refused to provide a spokesperson as did the Governor's office. McCain's campaign sent a muddled, statement saying focusing on the AIP is like scrutinizing Obama's religious ties. This story obviously has them rattled. I hope CNN has the balls to run it again today.
October 15, 2008 10:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
I appreciate CNN reporting on Palin's ties to AIP. Did they "say we invited Gov. Palin to comment on this but we never heard back"?
October 15, 2008 11:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MODT4y90k90
Here's the link for the interview.
October 15, 2008 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the link. I will check this out.
October 15, 2008 11:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes it was great to see it on CNN but apparently, from what I'm reading on Daily Kos, McCain's camp threatened a lawsuit against CNN and they pulled the story. There was no followup by Larry King, Campbell Brown or any of the other CNN reporters! Amazing...
October 15, 2008 11:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
That's astounding. CNN should have called their bluff. The story would have exploded.
October 15, 2008 1:34 PM | Reply | Permalink