F.Y.I.

Governor's office provided us with a detailed breakdown of the millions Palin has claimed has gone to defending against ethics complaints. It does list roughly $1.9 million in expenditures.

But Murrow, the spokesperson, acknowledged to our reporter, Amanda Erickson, that this total was arrived at by adding up attorney hours spent on fending off complaints -- based on the fixed salaries of lawyers in the governor's office and the Department of Law. The money would have gone to the lawyers no matter what they were doing. The complaints are "just distracting them from other duties," Murrow said.

In other words, while these lawyers might have been free to do other legal work for the state, the ethics complaints have apparently not had the real world impact Palin has claimed, and didn't drain money away from cops, teachers, roads and other things.

The Anchorage Daily News did a thorough analysis and backed up the spokesperson. The ethics complaints took up time that staff could have spent doing other work, but they did not cost Alaska any money.

"Is it a check that we wrote, no, but is it staff hours, yes," Sharon Leighow, spokeswoman for Palin, said of the expenses related to state employee work.

Those state employees would have been paid regardless.

A large chunk of that work went into the state personnel board's "Troopergate" investigation, which Palin herself initiated on the grounds that a legislative probe was politicized. Only three of the ethics complaints are still pending, a fact that makes Palin's explanation seem even less sensible.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/09/adn-confirms-palins-story_n_228683.html

They would have been paid anyway, but they didn't do work for the public during that time, they did work for her opponents. The hours wasted on that simply means that the workload was deferred and that means the work not done will have to be paid for in the future.

You are a good con artist, but I know all those cons and tricks.

Try working for free if you are not full of it. How many man hours do you think they got for free?

It was a waste of time and money and you want to believe that they would have been paid anyway justifies it.

Do you work at the White House?

You should.

Follow the White Rabbit.

Take the morons with you.

Thank you for bringing this information about the charges who instigated them. I was wondering if any other news media would address this glaring exaggeration. I'd like each one of them identified. - Partydish

So you are saying the fact that

• the legislative troopergate investigation found Palin acted inappropriately
• Palin had to refund misused funds for children's travel
• Palin may have to refund her very creative per-diem charges
• These efforts it harder for other officials to avoid transparency efforts by using private email and other internet goodies

is a meaningless effort? Don't entirely buy the terminal decline theory.

Yes, lawyers were working on This instead of That. I'd like to hear exactly what THAT would have been. It's seems to me that government should have to be able to describe to the citizens what it has been up to. And it shouldn't be expensive and time consuming and require pulling of teeth like the FOIA.

Why are you so obsessed with Sarah Palin?

I was afraid Joan had not only deleted your early morning post, but had banished you from her blog because she remains ill-equipped to answer your well-reasoned questions. And also because you didn't respond again till the end of the day. I truly believe you presented a worthy challenge this morning and even a better challenge an hour ago -- both of which Joan has been unable to overcome. This, I believe, is why she resorted to the lowly deed of of deleting your post early this morning. What a coward. I am interested to see if she has chutzpah to actually answer your questions this time. Continue to fight the good fight, dude! Call Joan on her nonsense!

It's not like he's out of line. He's asking some very compelling questions about sexism at Salon and backing it up with facts. It's a subject only the Editor-In-Chief at Salon can really answer. If not, maybe you are in desperate need of ombudsman.

. . . because she's a pathological liar and/or has absolutely no grasp on reality.

It's that simple. She is simply incapable of telling the truth because the fantasy that is rolling around inside her head is so much more fun than the real world.

To say we dodged a bullet...it's such an understatement!

My friends and I turn off the TV or grab the remote whenever we see Palin on TV. If the media stop talking to and about her, she will be Palin,Who?

Since her narcisism knows no bounds, anything she says should be suspect. These kind of people don't recognize any truth unless it comes out of their mouths. Lies become truth to them; everything is about them. No one else matters much unless it impacts these people. She is a classic case, and as such, she should not be listened to except by her own family, who may have similar problems.

This Walsh commentator(whoever she is)hates Sarah Palin-This has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with the hateful envy of one woman for another simply because of the other woman's (far) superior looks,brains and personality. I'm sorry Ms. Walsh that you fell far short but don't take it out on another woman. It's not her fault.

Why is the left-leaning media so obsessed with Sarah Palin? If she's so incompetent/ignorant/stupid/(insert derogatory adjective here), why article after article, post after post? I don't agree with close to anything Palin stands for but come on! Guess what, when Palin markets herself to conservatives (and sorry she's by far the most popular national Republican right now) saying she's the object of a liberal witch hunt, Salon, et al are handing her the evidence.