Palin e-mails reveal a powerful ‘first dude’
February 5th, 2010 . by TexasFredPalin e-mails reveal a powerful ‘first dude’
Officially he was the first gentleman of Alaska. More people called him the “first dude.” But newly released e-mails show that Todd Palin was busy doing more than snow machine driving and salmon fishing during Sarah Palin’s two and a half years as governor and vice presidential candidate.
Nearly 3,000 pages of e-mails that Todd Palin exchanged with state officials, which were released to msnbc.com and NBC News by the state of Alaska under its public records law, draw a picture of a Palin administration where the governor’s husband got involved in a judicial appointment, monitored contract negotiations with public employee unions, received background checks on a corporate CEO, added his approval or disapproval to state board appointments and passed financial information marked “confidential” from his oil company employer to a state attorney.
While 1,200 separate e-mails were released this week, 243 others were withheld by the state under a claim that executive privilege extends to Todd Palin as an unpaid adviser to the government. Still, just the subject lines of those e-mails provide a glimpse of the ways the Palins divvied up their responsibilities when she became governor in December 2006, less than two years before Republican Sen. John McCain pulled her onto the national political stage by nominating her as his vice presidential candidate.
The still-secret e-mails between Todd Palin and senior officials reach into countless areas of state government and politics: potential board appointees, constituent complaints, use of the state jet, oil and gas production, marine regulation, gas pipeline bids, postsecondary education, wildfires, native Alaskan issues, the state effort to save the Matanuska Maid dairy, budget planning, potential budget vetoes, oil shale leasing, “strategy for responding to media allegations,” staffing at the mansion, pier diem payments to the governor for travel, “strategy for responding to questions about pregnancy,” potential cuts to the governor’s staff, “confidentiality issues,” Bureau of Land Management land transfers and trespass issues and requests to the U.S. transportation secretary.
Full Story Here:
Palin e-mails reveal a powerful ‘first dude’
I already know what the Palin fans are going to say, ‘Well, look at the source, it’s MSNBC!’, I am certain that’s going to be the response from many. ‘MSNBC is the left wing MSM and they hate Sarah!’.
I know, I hear it all the time. I hear how I’m a Palin hater too.
It’s not true, I don’t hate Palin, I just think that she’s a very much overexposed fluff piece. I don’t see her as the leader of the Conservatives, the TEA Party, the GOP/RNC or this nation.
What I do see is a group of people that are so desperate for another Ronald Reagan that they are willing to canonize Sarah Palin and overlook the obvious.
Every time I see Sarah Palin I have alarm bells going off in my head. Maybe that makes me a ding-a-ling, but I think she’s a Media Whore and I just don’t see the political genius that so many seem to. I never saw it in Bill Clinton and his better half, our current Sec. of State, Hillary Clinton either.
What I DO see with this story about the behind the scenes activities of Todd Palin is a somewhat reminiscent throwback TO the Clinton administration.
“I’m not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president” — Hillary Clinton commenting on the release of subpeonaed documents. SOURCE
I’m pretty sure that all husbands or wives exert at least some influence on the administration of their elected spouse, we’ve seen evidence of that in the past, the above quote is but one of many examples.
