Palin's Lost Concession Speech

Governor's appointees include loyalists with iffy qualifications

(NEWSER) - Sarah Palin has touted herself as a reformer, telling voters she "took on the old politics as usual in Juneau." But an LA Times investigation shows the Alaska governor gave more than 100 state jobs to campaign contributors and their relatives, many of whom lacked qualifications for the positions. One controversial appointee received a note from a Palin aide that read, "Well now your foot's back in the door." More»

(NEWSER) - If you saw Alec Baldwin's courtly interaction with Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live and you're wondering what's gotten into the well-known liberal firebrand, he's wondering something, too: What's your problem? "What did some of you people actually think would happen?" he writes in a post that went up on Huffington Post today. More»

PR firm helped her woo pundits, make case

(NEWSER) - Sarah Palin likes to play up her outsider credentials while decrying the media elite, but she’s relied on both throughout her career. Belying her mockery of the “mainstream media,” Palin hired a well-connected PR firm to target East Coast journalists and courted conservative media insiders who eventually championed her VP candidacy. Jane Mayer of the New Yorker looks at a "surprise" nomination that was months, if not years, in the making. More»

Chides newspaper editors for questions on Palin, truth of ads

(NEWSER) - John McCain showed his combative side in a videotaped interview with the Des Moines Register yesterday, taking umbrage at questions about whether Sarah Palin might be inexperienced and whether some of his campaign ads might have stretched the truth. “I have always had 100%, absolute truth, and that's been my life of putting my country first," McCain asserts with annoyance in one clip. "And an assertion that I've ever done otherwise, I take strong exception to." More»

(AP) - More than 6 years before Sarah Palin visited ground zero as the Republican VP nominee, her parents were there as part of the response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks—trapping rats. Chuck and Sally Heath have been part-time Department of Agriculture wildlife specialists for 15 years, trapping or killing animals in Alaska. In January 2002, they went to New York for 2 weeks to make sure birds and rats did not disturb the World Trade Center debris in a Staten Island landfill. More»