With the news that even Todd Palin, who is not an Alaska government employee, is going to refuse to testify before the troopergate investigators, someone needs to ask Sarah Palin the following questions:

Why are you going back on your earlier promises to cooperate with the investigation?

If you are asserting that the investigation is political and partisan in nature, how do you account for the fact that the investigation was convened months prior to your nomination, by a Republican assembly?

If you take the position that the investigation should be tabled until after the election, in order to avoid tainting the election, and if you are elected, will you pledge to resign the office of the Vice-Presidency if the investigation eventually uncovers wrongdoing on your part?

Amid all the EXCELLENT NEWS!!!FOR MCCAIN! -- the Dems coming together in Denver, his unpaid advisers telling everyone without health insurance to go to the ER, Gustav bearing down on New Orleans -- I haven't seen much mention of the GOP platform being assembled ahead of next week's Minnesota convention.  NPR had a piece on it this morning.  The highlight, for me, was this bit:

Unlike the last GOP platform, which mentioned George W. Bush on
nearly every page, this platform mentions McCain only in its preamble —
and some of the positions it takes fly in the face of McCain's own
record as something of a Republican maverick.

Pennsylvania
state Sen. Jane Orie read the party's stance opposing same-sex
marriage: "We call for a constitutional amendment to protect marriage
as the union of a man and a woman."

McCain has consistently opposed such a constitutional amendment because he thinks it's an issue for states to resolve.

He
has also urged action to curb global warming and favors a cap-and-trade
system that many in his party oppose. The GOP platform makes no mention
of cap and trade, while it rails against what it calls "doomsday
climate change scenarios."

David Keene, chairman of the
American Conservative Union, considers the platform "very conservative"
and says it clearly falls short of what the McCain campaign would have
wanted.

"Obviously, they're very interested in not being slapped
in the face, and the party's not interested in slapping the candidate
in the face," Keene said. "But the party has not taken the position
that you would've wanted them to take if you were a campaign operative
for John McCain."

It seems McCain has more to worry about from members of his own party than Obama does from Hillary and Bill.  Will the MSM ask him how he's going to reach out to the right wing of the GOP? We're waiting to hear ...

This seems to be a new infection in political campaigning. Farrakhan, Hagee, Ferraro, Wright, Power, Billy Graham.  Each one must be denounced and rejected.  To do so demonstrates "presidential timbre", and that the candidate is not going to allow "loyalties" to take precedence over independence of judgment.

But I fear this will go too far, if it hasn't already.  For one thing, loyalty itself shows good character.  Not to excess, of course, nothing to excess, but still, what does it show when a candidate throws a supporter under a bus for a triviality? For another, look at the flack Obama took when Samantha Power abruptly left his campaign, apparently in response to a demand by the Clinton campaign.  He was immediately excoriated for his "weakness".

What does he have to do, denounce and reject his own wife when she goes off message? (For that matter, is Hillary supposed to denounce and reject Bill when he goes off?) What do we want: for Obama never to have any contact with Rev. Jeremiah Wright again? Where does it stop?

This sort of thing didn't seem to happen in previous presidential campaigns; certainly never to this degree.

Some people are saying that Obama needs to deal with this Wright thing, forcefully and soon.  The calls for him to deal with this are, of course, self-fulfilling prophecies -- if they don't let up, then he will indeed have to.  So it is ironic that they are coming from Obama's supporters.

What I would like to see is for Obama to stand up and say something to the effect of this: I am running for president, not for magician.  I do not have the power to make my supporters stop saying things that they want to say, any more than all of you do.  I don't agree with everything they say, and if you ask me whether I agree with one of their *statements*, I will tell you that I agree with it, or else I will repudiate it: the statement, not the speaker. I nevertheless appreciate their support -- these people are friends and associates, and in the past, have offered me valuable counsel -- if they hadn't, they wouldn't be friends or associates in the first place.  If you want to know my position on an issue, ask me and I will tell you.

Loyalty is a virtue, when did it become a vice? And why are we Obama supporters showing so little of it?

Josh posted this afternoon about a video of a sermon given by Jeremiah Wright, the pastor of Barack Obama's church in Chicago. I agree with the crux of Josh's post, but I had a very different reaction to watching the video itself.

Is it just me? Jesus, but we white people seem to have thin skins! I just cannot for the life of me understand what anyone would find offensive in Rev. Wright's sermon.  Maybe the supposition that Hillary Clinton, as a white female person, has never suffered discrimination of any kind? That's about the only thing I can find in his sermon that I disagree with.

Was it his use of the "n-word"? But that was a form of reported speech, or rather the opposite, a report of speech that never happened: "Hillary ain't never been called a n*****."

That's a fact. And it is so highly probable as to be a virtual certainty that Barack Obama *has* been called the n-word in his lifetime.

So what is it that's so offensive in his sermon?  Why is the MSM getting away with labeling Rev. Wright's church "a black radical church"? Is it radical to say that there is racism in America?  If that causes offense, then let me say that I am offended to hear someone deny that there is racism in America. The United Church of Christ is considered to be a mainstream denomination by almost any measure.  The words that Rev. Wright used are used in black society all the time.  And by many whites as well.

In his TPM post, Josh called the sermon "racially charged." Sure, OK. But so what? How can truths about race be told in a non-"racially charged" manner?

And Josh wrote "we wouldn't be seeing this stuff now if it weren't for the fact that
this is the kind of campaign Hillary Clinton's campaign has decided to
wage -- often directly and at other times indirectly by not reining it
in in her supporters when it crops up on its own".  Leaving aside the question about whether it is any candidate's obligation to rein in his or her supporters in the first place (I think it is not), it is truly a shame that "we" wouldn't be seeing this stuff if she didn't conduct her campaign the way she does.  "We" *NEED* to see and hear this stuff.

The New York Times today wonders whether the fact that John McCain was born in the Panama Canal zone renders him ineligible for the presidency.

When are we going to see pictures of McCain in his native Panamanian garb? Does this mean he is a practitioner of Santería or some other Caribbean/Latin American voodoo religion? Is his middle name Aureliano or Arcadio? or perhaps Chávez? Or even (shudder) Fidel?