So who will watch the supposed watchdogs? Will that be illegal? Is no one accountable?

Don't you bad bad media do any negative reporting.
I don't know what I'm doing , why I did it, or have any concrete plans other than the definitive word salad I just gave you.
All news is to be filtered through Fair and Balanced Faux News . Serious reportage will also come from the Wall Street Journal.

if the bozos in the media had a modicum more spine than, say, the average democrat, there'd be a hoard of them heading to alaska to snoop around... today...

Ah, Smoke equals Fire

ProgressiveAlaska has a YouTube for Mr. Van Flein to discuss with his client. D'oh.

Holy bush league, batman.

"Ah, Smoke equals Fire"

For shame, Berttheclock! It's just that kind of liberal pseudoscience that gave us the tax-money pits commonly known as local fire departments. Every right-thinking individual knows that fire is just a fantasy created by scientist who want to destroy creation. Ism.

Serious reportage will also come from the Wall Street Journal.

WSJ's actual news-reporting operation is quite serious, and completely separate from the batshittery of the editorial page.

So now the lawyer's letter is front page news. Sounds like either stupidity, or a distraction from whatever else drove Gov. Palin to seek 'more time with her family."

My theory remains that she saw hard times ahead for Alaska that would require Alaska's governor to take unpopular action - so she quit to avoid having it happen on her watch. This way, she thinks that she can sit out the next 2-6 years on the Republican lecture circuit, cashing in while awaiting her chance to re-enter the fray - all while blaming the "nattering nabobs of negativism" populating the news media.

It could be that corruption isn't Palin's biggest problem, and that's at least partly a diversion. The picture at http://xnerg.blogspot.com/2009/07/one-picture-is-worth-thousand-rumors.html may or may not mean anything, but some people are already talking about it and that makes it significant in that sense alone. (It was already posted in comments downsite or I wouldn't put it here, first.) We can only hope that no one accuses anyone of anything, especially considering the age factor; but it's a heads-up of possible sequellae down the road.

Or is it a Briar Rabbit approach? "Oh, big bad media - don't defame me, or then I'll be a victim of the MSM, and my base will love me more!"

I doubt that any competent lawyer would have advised Palin to do this-- it's undoubtedly an Order From Sarah. The upshot is that we should not expect Palin & Co. to fade away quietly.

Sarah makes me clap my hands like a six-year-old watching a bear ride a bicycle.

Nice move. What there is left of "real journalists" will have the specter of what amounts to an alleged criminal act, threatening a law suit if they go after the truth. Given that the term "true journalists" is pretty much a vestige organ, PALINaroundwithterrorists's legal group, who are probably paid for by right wing wingnuts, are smart to preempt anyone nosing around lest the former Governor be held accountable for her alleged deceit. Don't you just love that she paid back the Alaskan state for travel concerning her kids and yet she did nothing wrong in allowing it to happen. Same strategy used by Sanford for his travel. I'm sad I am unable to do the same. Wait, I'm just an ordinary citizen who doesn't have a right wing PAC to fund my indiscretions. Nauseating...

Can she be a commentator on Fox news?

I tend to doubt it. I don't think she has the creativity or the smarts to do a commenting gig. She can't even string words together. I also don't find her particularly charismatic when speaking extemporaneously. Could she really handle even half-an-hour a day?

I don't watch much Fox news, but my guess is she'd be a very dull commentator.

Very intimidating. This will surely have a pronounced chilling effect on Something Awful. They wouldn't dare speculate about awkward reasons behind Palin's Tosca finale.

I find it odd that he'd include the NYT and WaPoop in this attempted intimidation. It'd require some investigative journalism for them to learn about anything, and, well, the NYT and WaPoop just don't do that kind of thing.

Makes sense to me. I was reading comments on some lunatic blog where she was compared to Joan of Arc. For real. The more she seems like a martyr the more she becomes one. The heroine of Harley-riding gun-toters can do no wrong.

In an extraordinary four-page letter

Ah, the governor wrote it for her attorney?

Classic Palin and a exact replay of her behavior in the recently revealed Steve Schmidt emails. She wanted to refute chatter about Todd and the Alaska Independence Party with a public statement. Schmidt told her to just leave it alone, no need to add fuel to the fire. He won the argument but the Palin Unleashed of July 09 has no Schmidt to stop her from calling attention to peripheral rumors.

Yes, this is designed for her base audience, to bolster the idea that she had to quit because the press was persecuting her. It will make her look even more persecuted when people dare to talk negatively about this letter.

Lecture circuit. Books. Special guest appearances. The woman is going to make MAJOR money.

No wonder she quit. It's a goldmine.

For crying out loud, demoraptor, that kid is, what, eight years old? Knock it off, please.

She needs Steve Schmidt. He's the only one who told her not to open up a can of worms about Todd's seven year membership with AIP. Van Flein is just racking up the fees. This time he put Palin in the center of the media bull's eye. Instead of taking the focus off of her, this just opens her up to more speculation and investigations. Furthermore, if the sports complex and the house were non-issues, why draw attention to them?
Palin has a long way to go before she's ready for primetime, and so does van Flein.

Joan of Arc? If only an Ingrid Bergman type could play me in the movie. Clark Gable could play Todd. Margaret Hamilton could play Meg Stapleton.

Sarah Palin, a gift from John McCain that just keeps on giving. You go girl!!!

Is anyone else reminded of the scene in "The Producers" where Max Bialystock offers the theater critic for the New York Times a $20 "tip" in an effort to insult the critic so that he would savage the play, which Bialystock needed to be a flop? Like Benen writes, I can't think of a better way to ensure that the Times and WaPo take a hard look into possible scandals in the background than to threaten them if they do look into them.

Didn't I read somewhere last year that Palin was a journalism major? Has she never heard of New York Times v. Sullivan?

Van Flein is just racking up the fees.

On the other other hand, if I wanted a court precedent that caused Times v. Sullivan to be limited, or make blogs SLAPPable, or explicitly not extended to blogs -- and Alito, Thomas, Roberts and Scalia will distinguish Jiff from Skippy on originalist grounds if it helps The Cause -- this is just the sort of thing I'd gin up.

"...an FBI official said yesterday the GOVERNOR is not a target..."
May I suggest, however, that the First Dude is?

The picture I referred to above is said to be eight-yo Piper and not Willow, but many are implying the latter. Could it be another false-flag operation, like that infamous Kos diary about Sarah Palin's pregnancy issues, was alleged to be? In any case, heads up and be careful referring to any "new family issues" since it could be a double cross.

I read Shannyn Moore's blog regularly, and the has been no mention of the embezzlement clain on her blog -- except for one mention by a commenter.

I understand she may have referred to it on Twitter, but that's different. And I haven't heard her radio show -- wish I had, since last night's seems to have been a major example of her getting mad.

Apparentky, according to the Anchorage Daily News, Shannyn merely stated that 'these rumors were floating around Alaska,' which is true. (I read of them during the campaign.) And WaPo and the NYT hadn't published anything about them at all, but Palin's lawyers argued that 'they were asking questions.'

I am tempted to list all of the rumors I have personally read about the Palins, but that would make this the longest comment I've ever made -- and people who plow through my posts know what I mean by saying that.

I hope -- and expect --that the two papers have some of the guts they showed 40 years ago and will start researching -- and listing -- even some of them.

Note to the ex-gov: That copy of the Constitution you have must be defective. The Amendment on guns is the 2nd one. There's an earlier one, that talks about freedom of speech and the press.

Has she never heard of New York Times v. Sullivan?
-----------------------

If you'll recall, during the campaign there wasn't much to indicate that she had ever heard of anything.

should speculation that until now has largely been confined to blogs about whether Palin embezzled funds in the construction of a Wasilla, Alaska, sports arena find its way into print.

A poster commenting after Sarah P resigned said just such a thing. Apparently, the construction of her Wasilla home and the sports arena were done by the same company and the windows of each bear a striking resemblance.

Hmmmmm. I'd say someone in Alaskan politics has Sarah Barracuda by the balls with evidence and is forcing her to step down "or else". The only explanation that makes any sense to me.

This statement from the lawyers, it's not so stupid as it seems. This is made-to-order for foxnews. Foxnews "coverage" after the holdiay weekend will now obsess over:

1. The librul media's coverage over the weekend, and how horrible they are.
2. The pre-demonization of any media outlet that dares cover this possible scandal (one that nobody has yet reported, by the by).

Fox will be the first to report it, from their victimized, rally-the-base point of view. This way, when the real facts of this scandal are reported, foxnews viewers have already dismissed it as liberal media bias.

This is how they get in front of the story. Palin is being advised by foxnews, and as stupid as anything she does may seem, do not underestimate what fox can do with it.

The following statements are all provably true. I draw no conclusions, but leave them to the reader.

The Mat-Su Valley is the 'meth capital of Alaska,' according to the Alaska State Police.

There were 42 labs found in this sparsely populated area in 2004 alone, and nine the year before.

A researcher was unable to find any mention of methamphetamine connected to the MatSu Valley during the Administration of your predecessor, John Stein.

When you ran for mayor, for Governor, and for VP, despite your use of Republican/Conservative talking points, I am unaware of any speech you made on drugs in general or methamphetamine specifically. Nor did my Google search turn up any such speech.

There is no record of you, as Mayor or Governor, instituting and anti-meth program.

One of your first actions as Mayor was to fire the Chief of Police.

Wasilla is a small town, relatively, and one traditional fact about small towns is that 'everybody knows everybody else's business.'

Your daughter's boyfriend's mother, who lives in Wasilla was recently arrested for a drug offense, though not one connected with meth.

You own 'one of the largest homes in the area.'

Since 1996 you have been employed only in relatively low-paying government jobs. Before that you worked as a sports reporter for a local tv station.

Your family, before the birth of Trig, consisted of you, your husband, and four young children.

A family of six, anywhere, requires a lot of money to merely keep up, not to mention the amount of money required to build (or even own) a large house.

The cost of living in Alaska is substantially higher than anywhere else.

Your father was a school teacher, Todd's father 'had a position with' a utility company. Neither mother worked at a high paying job. (Though, apparently, the family owns a 'fishery business.)

Todd is an oil field supervisor during the winter and a fisherman during the summer, and has enough 'free time' to help raise the children and to take part in the annual 'Iron Dog' snowmobile race.

I draw no conclusions about these facts.

Amazing. Sarah Whackadoodle is so fucking stupid, she goes and hires a lawyer who never took Constitutional Law in law school.

Sullivan v New York Times (1964) is the relevant precedent. To wit: public figures lose their ability to sue for defamation or libel unless they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the party being sued knew that what was being said was a lie and intentionally published it anyway. And "political opinion and comment" was specifically excluded. Reporting on news regarding a politician is not actionable.

But then, why would Sarah Whackadoodle be represented otherwise? Would an actual, competent attorney want to wreck their reputation by representing her?

Maybe she thinks by resigning she's no longer a public figure....

Why is he even raising the issue, except in a defensive posture against something he knows is coming? If there was nothing there, any lawyer would keep his mouth shut, or it wouldn't even occur to him to rebut something that doesn't exist. Dumb and dumber.

One would hope that the 1st Amendment would hold sway, but if it goes to the SCOTUS, it will end up 5-4 that the librul media needs to be put in its place.