Now that she has resigned as Governor of Alaska can we now have this as the LAST QUESTION about Sarah for a few months?

Please.

She's a wacko! And media obsessed! Even if she blames the media, she's the one saying stuff that's juicy--or idiotic--enough to get pick up.

The liberal media saw a regular pretty mom with an accent and went to town on her. And they especially were cruel to her family.

She was in control until this weekend. She got an apology from Letterman and was making headlines on behalf of the GOP wherever she went. Now she's in free fall.

"Incompetents invariably make trouble for people other than themselves.
Larry McMurtry (1936 - ), 'Lonesome Dove'"

It's official, BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) has been replaced by PDS (Palin Derangement Syndrome).

What a miserable, jealous and hateful crowd the the ultra liberals have become. God help them all.

THE POLITICS OF SELF DESTRUCTION;
By Paul Begala
CNN Contributor


Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist and CNN political contributor, was a political consultant for Bill Clinton's presidential campaign in 1992 and was counselor to Clinton in the White House. He is an affiliated professor at Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute.


Paul Begala says Gov. Sarah Palin was an impediment to the hard work Republicans need to do to rebuild the party.

(CNN) -- I'm sure Republican strategists look at their bench and think of what Casey Stengel said of the 1962 Mets: "Can't anybody here play this game?"

David Vitter is on the D.C. Madam's call list. John Ensign confesses to an affair with a staffer. Mark Sanford cries for his soul mate in Argentina. And now Sarah Palin calls it quits.

The Republican Party was once a solid, serious, stable group of people. It was the party of Eisenhower, of Ford -- and not too long ago, the party of Colin Powell. Now it's got more flakes than Post Toasties.

For all her whining about the ethics complaints brought against her, Sarah Palin is not the victim of the politics of personal destruction. She's the victim of the politics of self destruction.

I have no idea why Palin decided to quit, so let's just pretend she was telling the truth: She believes she can make more of a difference on the issues she cares about as a private citizen than as the chief executive of the Last Frontier. My guess is a lot of Alaskans wish she'd said that when she was trying to become governor, but what the heck.

It is a paradox of the modern Republican Party: If they hate government so much, why don't they leave it to those who can use it as a tool for national renewal? Republicans say government would screw up a one-car parade, and then when they get into government, they set about proving their theory right (e.g., Katrina, Iraq, the economy, etc.).

The speculation is that, rather than returning to being a private citizen, Palin aspires to the presidency. Good luck. She quit her job as city councilwoman to run for mayor of Wasilla. She quit her job as mayor of Wasilla to run for lieutenant governor. She quit her job as the head of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to run for governor. And now she's quitting her job as governor to ... be a private citizen? Right.

Part of the GOP's problem is that conservatism has been discredited by George W. Bush and the Republicans who controlled Congress for most of his presidency. Fiscal restraint, once a hallmark of the GOP, is history. It was Bill Clinton who balanced the budget, and Republicans who ran up trillions in debt. National security, a GOP strength since Vietnam, has been squandered.

A recent Democracy Corps poll shows that by almost 2-to-1, Americans prefer President Obama's approach on national security to the Bush-Cheney approach. Economic stewardship? Please. The Republicans inherited a robust economy, an economy that generated 23 million new jobs -- and left us with a battered, shattered economy that's shedding jobs at a record pace.

And how about family values? If the recent GOP scandals have proved anything, it is that neither party has a monopoly on virtue, but one has planted itself firmly at the corner of sanctimony and hypocrisy.

Republicans need to rebuild, and Palin was an impediment to the hard work they need to do. Sure, they need a charismatic leader -- and Palin is nothing if not charismatic. But Ronald Reagan had ideas to match his charisma. The current crop of Republicans repeat the same disgraced talking points George W. Bush used -- limited government, strong defense, family values. No one's buying their snake oil anymore.

The GOP will rebound, to be sure. Politics is cyclical, but sometimes those cycles take decades. Republicans can hasten their comeback by following the Clinton model: Challenge established orthodoxies, overturn outdated dogma and modernize their movement.

Clinton committed the heresy of supporting welfare reform, tough anti-crime policies, free trade and fiscal discipline. In so doing he paved the way for President Obama. No one today is attacking President Obama on crime or welfare; Clinton took those Republican-dominated issues off the table.

If the Republicans were smart, they'd find a principled compromise on health care and energy -- take those two Democratic-dominated issues off the table -- and then work on rebuilding their fiscal credentials.

Instead, the GOP has a strategy of implacable opposition on issues where the country wants action, increasingly wild attacks on a popular president, and a desperate search for a charismatic savior. That's no way to rebuild their party. The bloviations of Limbaugh, the winking of Palin and the dark brooding of Dick Cheney are no substitute for new ideas.

Until Republicans prove they can revive their beleaguered party, no one will trust them to lead our beloved country.

Don't you really mean it's Obama who is the impediment to America!
--------------------------------------

Give Terrorists Constitutional Rights, Says Obama Administration

Wednesday, July 8, 2009 7:56 AM


WASHINGTON – US administration officials said Tuesday that terror suspects tried before military commissions can claim some constitutional rights, including protection against evidence obtained through coercion.


The commissions, Assistant Attorney General David Kris said, should only allow evidence from detainees' voluntary statements or else risk having convictions thrown out on appeal in higher courts.


"It is the administration's view that there is a serious risk that courts would hold that admission of involuntary statements of the accused in military commission proceedings is unconstitutional," Kris told the Senate Armed Services Committee in written testimony.


Adding the safeguards upholding "due process" principles in the US Constitution would help commission convictions stand up on appeal, Kris told the panel.


His comments, echoed by the Defense Department's general counsel, Jeh Johnson, reflected a debate within the administration and in Congress over how to prosecute detainees under revised rules for the controversial military tribunals.


Republican Senator John McCain questioned the Justice Department official's view, saying he was surprised to hear that terror suspects at Guantanamo, the US naval base in southern Cuba where 229 "war on terror" detainees remain, enjoyed constitutional protections.


"I did not know, nor know, of any time in American history where enemy combatants were given rights under the United States Constitution," McCain said.


The US Navy's judge advocate general, Vice Admiral Bruce McDonald, told the senators he rejected the Justice Department's opinion.


The admiral argued that the legal principle of voluntary statements from the accused made sense in ordinary criminal cases but was impractical for the military commissions, which he said were handling suspects picked up on the battlefield.


Instead, McDonald proposed a list of "considerations" to be taken into account by the presiding judge, including whether a statement was taken on the battlefield or in subsequent detention.


For detainees at the controversial prison camp facing possible prosecution, much of the evidence against them comes from "involuntary" statements in interrogations, legal analysts say.


The Senate hearing focused on a proposed bill, which McCain helped draft, that would introduce new rules for the commissions designed to make trial procedures resemble courts-martial.


In May, President Barack Obama said he would keep the military commissions set up by his predecessor, George W. Bush, to prosecute detainees at Guantanamo but pledged to reform the system.


Human rights groups sharply criticized Obama over his decision to retain the commissions and to allow for the possible indefinite detention of terror suspects.


The latest proposed changes to the commissions amounted to "tinkering," the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said.


"The military commissions are fatally flawed and no amount of tinkering will fix them," ACLU senior legislative counsel Christopher Anders said in a statement.


"The system is set up to ensure convictions, not give defendants an impartial hearing."


One of Obama's first acts after taking office in January was to order a four-month suspension of the commissions.


Obama also promised to close the prison camp by January 2010.


At the hearing, administration officials said they were not ready to predict how many of the remaining detainees would be tried in federal courts, military commissions or held indefinitely.