Newsweek reports a judge warned Sarah Palin and her relatives in writing against smearing her ex-brother-in-law, Alaska state trooper Michael Wooten:

Court records obtained by NEWSWEEK show that during the course of divorce hearings three years ago, Judge John Suddock heard testimony from an official of the Alaska State Troopers' union about how Sarah Palin—then a private citizen—and members of her family, including her father and daughter, lodged up to a dozen complaints against Wooten with the state police. The union official told the judge that he had never before been asked to appear as a divorce-case witness, that the union believed family complaints against Wooten were "not job-related," and that Wooten was being "harassed" by Palin and other family members.

By Dave Lindorff

I got an urgent email from an uncle of mine yesterday evening. A
sweet man, retired career military and very religious, he was genuinely
worried about an email he had received purporting to convey an article
said to have been written by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and
published on June 29, 2008 alleging that much of the Obama campaign's
"small donations" over the Internet had actually come from several Arab
sources overseas.

Tell Governor Palin and the State of Alaska to put OUR money where HER mouth is:

http://www.petitiononline.com/giveback/petition.html

This is a petition just started to ask Congress and the President of the United States to request that Gov. Palin and the State of Alaska return the funds that are so obviously scorned by Sarah Palin.

The truth is, by the time she got into office, Congress had already released those funds to Alaska to use on any transportation project in the state... and they did. So Sarah didn't speak to Congress AT ALL. And she never told anyone "Thanks, but no thanks."

It is that kind of exaggeration and swagger than typifies the Republican message both by Palin AND McCain.

Where's the beef?

While much is being written about Sarah Palin's extreme religion (her churches speak in tongues and fight demons, so does she?), little is being written about Palin's equally extreme feminism.

In separate filings, the state was billed about $25,000 for Palin's daughters' expenses and $19,000 for her husband's.

Flights topped the list for the most expensive items, and the daughter whose bill was the highest was Piper, 7, whose flights cost nearly $11,000, while Willow, 14, claimed about $6,000 and Bristol, 17, accounted for about $3,400.

By Dave Lindorff

Okay, I have to vent here. We all get a little crazy sitting alone
at our keyboards in this business, and it's finally gotten to me.

I know there are serious signs of a complete mental breakdown in the
US, with polls reporting that millions of people are actually excited
at having a low-rent religious fanatic who consistently mispronounces
pundit as "pundint" (shades of Dubya!), pilfers state funds for her
family's personal use, lies about her alleged opposition to Washington
pork, claims the bloody war in Iraq is "God's will," forces her
17-year-old daughter to make a momentary mistake into a lifetime one by
marrying the kid who got her pregnant, and refers to blacks as "sambo"
and to Alaska's indigenous people as "arctic arabs," running for vice
president on the ticket with a man who is a walking medical disaster
waiting to happen.

Hunter makes an excellent argument about Palin:

So she lied. Baldly and repeatedly. McCain is now on a multistate tour, repeating the very same lies -- and for Republicans, they are applause lines. Huzzah to the "anti-pork" governor whose state is more dependent on pork than any other state. Hooray for the "anti-earmarks" candidate who made a name for herself as a champion of the earmark.

The question is: what of it?

Josh Marshall sums it up:

We've now had a week of blaring headlines and one-liners about Sarah Palin as the mavericky, pork-busting reformer from Alaska. But we seem to be witnessing the first stirrings of a backlash and a dawning realization that the 'Sarah Palin' we've heard so much about over the last few days is a fraud of truly comical dimensions.

From the great minds at DemocraticUnderground - all she needs is antlers!

Paid for by Michael Palin for President - who cares if he's a Brit?

Obama's new ad hits McCain and Palin right between the eyes. Mavericks my ass! McCain's campaign is run by lobbyists, and Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it. "Politicians lying about their records? You don't call that maverick, you call it more of the same." GObama!!