Sullivan Back; Still Hates Palin

He sees possibility of a 'huge scandal' and needs time to get it right

(NEWSER) - Readers of Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish blog will have to be patient: The site has "gone silent" for only the second time in its 10-year run so Sullivan and his two assistants can devote all their time to dissecting Sarah Palin's new book. "There is a possibility here of such a huge scandal that we would be crazy not to take our time either to debunk it or move it forward for further examination," Sullivan tells readers in a note . More»

Man kept from Sarah's Alaska signing gets answers

(NEWSER) - Turns out Todd Palin was behind the banning of certain bloggers from wife Sarah’s book-signing event in her Alaskan hometown Tuesday. One of those barred from the event talked to the store manager, who told him, “The ‘banned list’ is just four names he wrote in a notebook after getting the names from Todd Palin.” Continues Dennis Zaki in his email to Talking Points Memo , “Yes Todd Palin. The shadow governor.” More»

Critics kicked out of hometown 'Going Rogue ' event

(NEWSER) - Dying to attend one of Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue book signings? Better make sure you’re not on the banned list first. It includes four names so far, one of whom hasn’t been identified. The first three:

• Jesse Gryphen: An Alaska kindergarten teacher who posted Palin divorce rumors on his blog, refusing to take them down even after Palin’s lawyer threatened to serve him with libel papers in front of his class. He tells the story of being kicked out of the book signing on his blog .

Pundits see president's speech as a populist offensive

(NEWSER) - President Obama delivered a feisty, populist State of the Union address last night ( excerpts here , pictures here ), and naturally pundits are dissecting and grading it today. Here's what they're saying:

• "Obama had a simple message for Republicans: Game on," writes Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post . What on the surface was a typical post-partisan Obama speech was actually full of populist challenges to Republicans. "This is Obama version 2.0: Harder, more cynical but perhaps also more effective."

Woman ordered to pay $2.5M for online defamation

(NEWSER) - In what could end up being very bad news for outspoken bloggers across America, a federal judge has decided that a blogger was not acting as a journalist when she accused an Oregon lawyer of acting unethically and illegally as a trustee in a bankruptcy hearing. The judge denied Crystal Cox's request for legal protections customarily offered to journalists, and a jury subsequently ordered her to pay $2.5 million for defaming lawyer Kevin Padrick and his company. More»