Download | Play    Download | Play

Sarah Palin's out in Georgia today, ostensibly campaigning for the execrable Saxby Chambliss with her usual brand of right-wing populism that plays especially well in places like Gwinnett and Forsyth counties.

I say ostensibly, because who she's really campaigning for is Sarah Palin in 2012. These campaign stops are all about Palin positioning herself to become the leading figurehead of the Republican Party. Lotsa luck with that, of course. (You betcha!) [Wink]

But in the meantime, the fine folks back in Alaska are wondering what became of their governor. The Alaska Democratic Party's chairman, Patti Higgins, held a press conference a little earlier today raising that question. From their press release:

Palin has been back in Alaska at work for only a few days since running for vice president.

"Alaskans need our Governor here earning her salary and working on key problems facing Alaska families," said Alaska Democratic Party Chair Patti Higgins.

Alaska is facing significant challenges, Higgins said, including:

• Oil prices have dropped dramatically to about $45/bbl from the peak of $144/bbl in July, which threatens the state budget.
• Alaskans are paying some of the highest prices for gas in the nation, averaging $2.87 per gallon, while the national average is $1.91.
• The state's oil production continues to decline, due to falling prices and mature fields.
• The global credit crunch and falling natural gas prices threaten the Alaska gas line.
• The State is failing to meet its constitutional obligation to take care of public education as shown by the high drop out rates and the low graduation rates.
• Many Medicare patients cannot find doctors.
• There is continued flight from rural villages.
• Alaska faces the prospect of reduced federal dollars from Washington, D.C.

"Alaska's challenges are significant, and there is much that needs to be done right now. Our Governor should remember that her primary job is to work on behalf of the citizens of Alaska, not engage in partisan politics in other states," Higgins said. "Governing is more than creating photo ops. We'd like a commitment that the Governor is working, not just scheduling media appearances."

In a way, though, there's a certain symmetry about Palin gallivanting off to campaign for Chambliss. It makes clear she really doesn't give a rat's hindquarters about her actual constituents.

And as Senate Guru explains, neither does Saxby Chambliss. Two peas in a pod.

They really don't come much scummier than Freedom's Watch, the wretched excuses for human beings who smeared Democratic candidates this past campaign with lying robo-calls. The DCCC's anti-FW site has the goods on their deep GOP ties.

Supposedly they're about to go out of business. But evidently -- like the dying sting of a scorpion -- they're taking one last stab.

Now they're running truly vicious ads attacking Jim Martin, the Democratic challenger to Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia currently facing a runoff election:

Yesterday, the struggling Freedom’s Watch released an attack ad against Georgia’s Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jim Martin, saying that he “failed to look out for Georgia’s families.” “First he actually helped block stiffer penalties for drunk drivers,” warns the voice in the ad, which echoes previous GOP ads. “And then, Martin voted against tougher sentences for domestic abuse.”

As it happens, Martin built much of his political reputation as an effective advocate for protecting children from criminals -- no doubt a product of having his then-8-year-old daughter kidnapped. So he made an ad responding to the Freedom's Watch ad by pointing this out. As you can see, it's incredibly effective.

Of course, this is all too reminiscent of the way Chambliss won in 2002 -- with Republican operatives assailing the patriotism of Max Cleland, a decorated war veteran who left limbs on the battlefield.

It may have worked in 2002. In 2008, though, the national mood is different. Recall what happened to Elizabeth Dole when she tried pulling similarly nasty tactics near the end of her campaign against Kay Hagan in North Carolina -- she was spanked by an even wider margin than polls had indicated.

Most people are tired of this nonsense -- they want serious people who will go to work to solve the nation's problems. Hopefully, the voters of Georgia will be thinking likewise.

We knew even before the election that the right was going to be trying to delegitimize Barack Obama's and the Democrats' electoral victory, since it would be their only hope of hanging on to their own few rapidly vanishing strands of legitimacy, not to mention relevance.

Well the whole "ACORN used fraud to win" meme that was originally favored in this role didn't pan out so well, given the size and breadth of the victory.

So now they're going for the tried and true: The Librul Media Made Us Do It. That, after all, was the underlying meme in that phony Zogby poll intended to make Obama supporters look stoopid. It's looking like a desperate grasp at the strawman.

Mark Halperin, the onetime ABC News honcho now writing for Time, was out there yesterday doing his best to help. He told a crowd that the media bias in Obama's favor this election was overwhelming:

"It's the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war," Halperin said at a panel of media analysts. "It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage."

Yeah, all that media silence about Jeremiah Wright, while they couldn't seem to stop talking about Pastor Hagee -- that was so biased! ... What's that? That's not what happened? I guess Halperin has me confused.

Now, it's probably true that the media coverage tended to make Obama look like a principled, thoughtful leader, and McCain look like a gimmick-driven hack willing to say or do anything to get elected. But then, that might be because McCain's campaign itself -- from taking on an unqualified dimwit like Sarah Palin as a running mate to dragging out Joe the Plumber at every stop -- made him look that way. As Colbert says, reality does tend to have a liberal bias.

But I have to say, Halperin's line that this was "the most disgusting failure in our business since the Iraq war" is a real piece of chutzpah.

Because when there was a chance for the media to do something about properly informing the public about the Iraq war, Halperin -- who had the reins of one of the three major network's news operations at the time -- did nothing. The media's coverage of the war, particularly during the critical runup period, was in fact a historic case of misfeasance that has had disastrous consequences for the nation. And Mark Halperin was a major player in that failure.

Continue reading »

Via Blue Texan.

Apparently the Republican Senator from Georgia doesn't like it when asked normal questions by a reporter about refusing to honor a subpoena in the lawsuit against a sugar company that sought his help to insulate them from culpability in the wake of an explosion at one of its plants that killed 14 people.

As he makes the cameraman say hello to Mr. Hand, he mutters:

"You can take it away now."

So evidently, not only is Chambliss above the law, he's above any kind of accountability to the public. Sounds like a classic Republican to me.

Go Jim Martin!

Download | Play    Download | Play

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council was out repeating the nonsensical yet much-repeated "America is a center-right country" meme for CNN's Lou Dobbs program Wednesday, and he added something of a new twist:

I think there is a strategy that's going to be going forward for the conservative movement. I think many in the conservative movement, if you will, believe that the Republican Party took over the conservative movement and kind of ran it off the road. And, uh, conservatives are ready to take back control of the conservative movement, and if the Republican Party wants to be a governing party, as it has been in the past, then it's going to have to return to those conservative principles.

I think most people -- Republicans like Kathleen Parker included -- see it the other way around: the Republican Party was taken over by the conservative movement. One upon a time, the GOP actually was home to genuine moderates like Lowell Weicker and John Chafee; but ever since Ronald Reagan's ascension in the late 1970s, it gradually become a wholly owned subsidiary of the conservative movement.

Certainly, nearly every step taken by George W. Bush during his tenure had the movement's ardent support -- until, that is, it became self-evident to everyone but the 20-percenter kool-aid drinkers that his presidency was an unmitigated disaster for the nation. Now they want to blame that disaster on everyone but the misbegotten philosophy that caused it.

As Digby put it some time ago:

George W. Bush will not achieve a place in the Republican pantheon. Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. (And a conservative can only fail because he is too liberal.)

Now, part of what makes movement conservatives the lovable wingnuts they are is that they are nothing if not spectacularly un-self-aware. They're like people who wear their underwear on their heads and then are puzzled when everyone points and laughs.

So Tony Perkins goes on, while repeating the right's favorite meme, and even admits that Republican governance has been a fiasco:

Look, America is a center-right nation. Barack Obama and the policies he reflects are not reflective of the nation. I think he offered, you know, what he called change, and Americans were ready for change. You know, Republicans have not governed well, and America was looking for a new path, and Barack Obama offered that. Now, his success is going to depend on whether or not he can govern as a moderate, as he campaigned, or whether he is going to be a liberal, as his record would indicate.

Continue reading »

[Image courtesy Tom Tomorrow.]

Nate Silver interviewed John Ziegler, the wingnut who commissioned that falsehood-based poll purporting to demonstrate that Obama voters were stooopid.

Silver's questions, as you can see, are perfectly normal and reasonable, but Ziegler completely loses it. By the end, he's doing a Cheney.

It starts to go downhill when Silver, who know a wee bit about polling, asks a perfectly reasonable question:

NS: Why would you commission a survey question with no correct response?
JZ: The purpose of the question, you pinhead, was we wanted to determine the Tina Fey Effect.

In short order, Ziegler starts attacking Silver over the phone:

NS: Where the interviews conducted by telephone or online?
JZ: How can you ask a question like that and pretend that you have any clue what you're writing about! That's unbelievable that someone could write what you did! That is unbelievable that you wouldn't know that it's a telephone or an online poll and that you went on my summaries of the questions before the questions were even released!

NS: We’ve heard reports from our readers that very similar questions had been asked in an online format. There was no online component at all?
JZ: That is correct, which you would have known if you had looked at the information. Before you called this a push poll -- you don't seem to know the definition of a push poll. How do you have this website?

NS: What did Zogby charge you -- what did you pay for this survey?
JZ: I'm not going to tell you that, I'm not a fucking idiot.

By the end, Ziegler is simply hostile -- not to mention thoroughly convinced that his bullshit don't stink:

Continue reading »

Download | Play    Download | Play

Mark Begich finally takes down Ted Stevens, the rampaging Hulk from Alaska.

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, the Republican lawmaker convicted on felony corruption charges in October, appears to have lost his bid for re-election to Democrat Mark Begich, according to a release from Begich's campaign and unofficial results from state officials.
Democrat Mark Begich (left) has claimed victory over Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska.

The statement and results Tuesday come two weeks after the election, after absentee ballots were counted.

With 100 percent of Alaska's precincts reporting, Begich, the mayor of Anchorage, had roughly 47.7 percent of the vote, compared with about 46.6 percent for Stevens, according to unofficial results posted on the Alaska Secretary of State's Web site.

He appears to have bested Stevens by 3,724 votes, according to the posted results.

So much for Sarah Palin's hopes of sliding over to the Senate.

And the Democratic tally in the Senate now reaches 58, with two more races still in the balance.

Rarrrrghhh!!!

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air is plumping the efforts of an outfit called HowObamaGotElected, which in turn is now being bandied eagerly throughout the wingnutosphere.

Their main theme, apparently, is that Obama voters were "ignorant" because they hadn't absorbed the wingnuts' favorite smears about Obama during the campaign. The site claims that it commissioned a "Zogby Poll" which came up with the following results:

512 Obama Voters 11/13/08-11/15/08 MOE +/- 4.4 points

97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates

Results to 12 simple Multiple Choice Questions

57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)

81.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)

82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)

88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)

56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).

And yet.....

Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes

Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter

And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her "house," even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!

Only 2.4% got at least 11 correct.

Only .5% got all of them correct. (And we "gave" one answer that was technically not Palin, but actually Tina Fey)

Now, the data about the voters' ability to correctly identify facts about Sarah Palin -- as well as their understandable confusion about what Palin actually said about Russia, considering that in fact she did say that one could see Russia from Alaska -- is essentially meaningless; a survey of McCain voters would almost certainly come up with similar statistics.

But as Nate Silver says, this is flat-out push-polling. Look at the questions in the first half of the data summary -- nearly every one of the supposed "facts" is either simply false or a grotesque distortion:

Continue reading »

Download | Play    Download | Play (h/t Scarce)

There is a coordinated effort by Conservatives to play the "Obama is stealing elections" game since they've been resoundingly rejected by the American people. The RNC is actually sending out fundraising letters which are blatantly claiming that Obama and activists are actively stealing elections away from Republicans. Mike Duncan, soon to be exc-RNC head is called out on this lie by CNN's American Morning host John Roberts who thought Duncan was way out of line too.

Roberts...but this fundraising letter clearly said that they are trying to steal these election victories.

Duncan: Well, we have to be careful. There have been a lot of reported irregularities in this election going back to ACORN when....

Roberts: Is it accurate to say that they are trying to steal these elections or did that language go too far?

Duncan: John, haha, I've not got that in front of me right now, but I want to make sure that we are vigilant and allow anyone to irregularly out influence the outcome of this election and we have to have resources to do that.

Roberts: It just seems to me to steal these election victories is pretty charged language and you should have something to back that up.

Duncan: Do you want anyone to steal an election?

Roberts: I don't want anyone to steal an election. but if there's no evidence that anybody is than it's hard to reconcile with how you put that language in a fundraising letter.

So he's telling us that the one and only Mike Duncan, the head of the RNC doesn't know what his own fundraising letter contained in it after he signed it and sent it out. What a liar.

Orrin Hatch is also engaged in similar behavior.

From an Human Events email blast:

Help Defeat MoveOn.Org

So Evan Bayh is leading what appears to be a growing chorus of "let bygones be bygones" Democrats who want to let Joe Lieberman keep his seat as chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee:

“We can take away his chairmanship, that’s something we have the right to do,” Bayh said on MSNBC. “What you will have at that point is someone who may very well resign, or someone is embittered ... who might not be with us on some of these key votes.”

Bayh said that Lieberman must first issue a “sincere apology” for campaign attacks warning of the perils of an Obama presidency and a large Democratic majority in Congress. He said Democrats should allow him to keep his chairmanship on the condition that he would not use his subpoena power and influence as chairman to undermine Obama’s presidency. Otherwise, Democrats would take away his gavel at any point next Congress, Bayh warned.

Bayh said Democrats should tell Lieberman sternly, “Look, we’re giving you a chance here, but if you don’t do the right things as chairman, and we see any continuation of this kind of behavior ...the game is up at that point.”

Democrats need to look beyond the mere fact of Lieberman's egregious disloyalty in the past campaign, which of course is at least an understandable reason to remove him, if not the most compelling one in a post-election season aimed at bridging rifts.

A far more compelling reason is that Lieberman in fact parts ways with Democrats on many issues besides merely the Iraq war. Think Progress has a pretty thorough rundown on just how many ways Joe is not with us when it counts: on taxes, Social Security, torture, health care, energy ... the list is long and damning.

But the ultimate reason to remove Lieberman as chair of Homeland Security is that his record as chair of that committee has been abjectly conservative, partisan, and in the end a menace to Americans' civil rights: In other words, Lieberman is antithetical to the progressive mandate Democrats have just been handed.

Continue reading »

Excuse me a moment while I go throw up (no offense to David Edwards and Muriel Kane at Raw Story):

Madison County, Idaho was once dubbed "the reddest place in America" by Salon, but that didn't make it any less shocking when elementary school children started chanting "assassinate Obama on the school bus.

Matthew Whoolery told KIKD News he found out about the chanting from his second and third graders, who had no idea what the word "assassinate" meant.

"They just hadn't heard anything like this before," Whoolery stated. "I think the thing that struck us was just like, 'Where did they get the word and why would they put that word and that person together?'"

Whoolery, a psychology professor at Brigham Young University in Rexburg, is not an Obama supporter, but he was shocked that any public official would be threatened in that way. "I don't think that the majority of people in Rexburg have extreme ideas like that, but we were just surprised that it would go that far," Whoolery told KIKD.

The Madison County School District has sent out an email saying that students are to be told this sort of behavior is unacceptable.

OK. I grew up in southeastern Idaho -- Idaho Falls, to be exact, about 30 miles south of Rexburg. I've spent a fair amount of time in Madison County; it was where one of my more traumatic experiences as a young adult occurred. So I can talk a little about why this kind of thing might happen there.

This particular corner of the country, as the Raw Story piece notes, is heavily Mormon. Roughly 90 percent of the population there is LDS. And because of that, there is a virulent and entrenched strain of John Bircherite extremism in the body politic. That in turn has helped produce a long-running parade of right-wing extremists (particularly tax protesters and "constitutionalists") who have made Madison County their home.

At the same time, it is by nearly all outward appearances a classic slice of American heartland. My great-aunt and -uncle, both non-Mormons, lived most of their lives there and were not just perfectly comfortable, thoroughly accepted members of the community, but they loved it. There is a decency and integrity to the town and that transcends political considerations.

So having their schoolkids chant "assassinate Obama" must have shocked their sensibilities deeply, which is why school officials and parents made a point of standing up against it.

At the same time, it's not terribly surprising. And not just because there is such a deep streak of ultra-right thinking that runs through this community -- but also because the campaign just finished by Republicans was so rife with rabble-rousing rhetoric that it is, frankly, a wonder this hasn't happened more often, and in more places than just southeastern Idaho.

In fact, it very likely -- indeed, almost certainly -- has. And it's to the credit of Rexburg's conservative Mormons that they drew attention to it. Perhaps they will stop and take a good hard look at the kind of hate they've been spewing before their children.

If only other Republicans in the rest of the heartland would do the same.

Before Election Day, the NRA was doing what it always does: Raising the specter of the liberal bogeyman -- you know, the Incipient Dictator Who Wants To Take Your Guns Away -- in the person of Barack Obama. See, for instance, this ad.

So it shouldn't really be a big surprise that, after the election, one of the only segments of the retail economy that did well was in guns:

Weapons dealers in much of the United States are reporting sharply higher sales since Barack Obama won the presidency a week ago.

Buyers and sellers attribute the surge to worries that Obama and a Democratic-controlled Congress will move to restrict firearm ownership, despite the insistence of campaign aides that the president-elect supports gun rights and considers the issue a low priority. Video Watch shoppers snap up guns of all types »

According to FBI figures for the week of November 3 to 9, the bureau received more than 374,000 requests for background checks on gun purchasers -- a nearly 49 percent increase over the same period in 2007. Conatser said his store, Virginia Arms Company, has run out of some models -- such as the AR-15 rifle, the civilian version of the military's M-16 -- and is running low on others.

Such assault weapons are among the firearms that gun dealers and customers say they fear Obama will hit with new restrictions, or even take off the market.

There is also a racial component to these fears, which surfaces in attitudes like those voiced in this NYT piece about the decline of the South's political influence:

"I am concerned," Gail McDaniel, who owns a cosmetics business, said in the parking lot of the Shop and Save. "The abortion thing bothers me. Same-sex marriage."

"I think there are going to be outbreaks from blacks," she added. "From where I'm from, this is going to give them the right to be more aggressive."

But mostly, this is paranoia about gun ownership whipped up by the NRA:

Continue reading »

Democrats are going to need to recognize that there are real limits to the current urgings of "bipartisanship." Because the fanatical right has no intention of dealing with Obama in good faith.

Exhibit A: Michael Reagan:

EXPOSE LIBERAL CORRUPTION -- With the Democrats back in power in both Congress and the White House, you KNOW that they'll be falling right back into their habits of taking lobbyists' money under the table, trading votes for campaign contributions, spying on and sabotaging Republican legislative plans, covering up their leaders' sexual "flings," and spending taxpayer money on personal expenses like never before. But this time, YOU AND I will be there every step of the way, making sure that no stone is left unturned, every dark corner is filled with light, and every illegal act is paid for with censure, impeachment, recalls, investigations, and jail time for every criminal we expose in Washington, D.C.

As Matt Stoller says:

Reagan is basically giving the playbook for the conservative movement, which is to kick up dust, accuse everyone associated with Obama of sexual misconduct, personal corruption, pay-to-play politics, and lobbyist ties, and then call for impeachments and investigations. And this isn't some loon. Reagan's not only the (adopted) son of a former President, he's a conservative pundit with, well probably not a million listeners but a good number. And he's a well-received citizen of the DC establishment, taking the blame the media narrative to an remarkably audacious level. Though he's called CNN the Terrorist News Network, Reagan appeared on Larry King as recently as October to appear opposite Robert Kennedy Jr, and he has refused to appear on MSNBC because he claims he receives death threats, or so he said at an exclusive party for television industry executives at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

He's also the guy who went on the air a few months ago and said this:

There is a group that's sending letters to our troops in Iraq ... claiming 9/11 was an inside job -- oh, yeah, yeah -- and that they should rethink why they're fighting. Who -- we ought to -- excuse me, folks, I'm going to say this: We ought to find the people who are doing this, take them out and shoot them.

Really. Just find the people who are sending those letters to our troops to demoralize our troops and do what they are doing, you take them out, they are traitors to our country, and shoot them. You have a problem with that, deal with it. But anyone who would do that doesn't deserve to live. You shoot them. You call them traitors -- that's what they are -- and you shoot them dead. I'll pay for the bullet.

It will be instructive indeed to observe who goes marching off with Reagan on his quest for ignominous irrelevance.

Download | Play    Download | Play

On MSNBC this afternoon Chris Kofinis delivers the whammy on Sarah Palin and how she actually is a gift who keeps on giving to Democrats:

Kofinis: Sarah Palin is like that crazy relative who comes over and doesn't want to leave. She just seemingly does not want to leave the limelight. You know, maybe a better way to put it, one of my friends said, 'You know, she's like Sanjayah from American Idol. When is the fifteen minutes gonna be up?'

Of course, Republican strategist Ron Christie gives us the answer -- to wit, the wingnut core of the Republican Party sees her as their once and future leader, when Kofinis observes that "voters decided on Tuesday" that Palin wasn't qualified:

Christie: Voters did not decide that on Tuesday. It was a very close election. I mean -- 52 percent, you can't say that he had a mandate. The Republican Party needs to attract more people like Governor Palin, who are outside of the Beltway, who hold firm conservative values.

... I think the United States of America is still a center-right country. It is not a center-left country, despite what Chris Kofinis might think. This is still a very conservative country, a very pro-family country, pro-religion, pro-country -- that's where Sarah Palin. What the Republicans failed to do -- and this is why we lost -- we failed to articulate a message of why we were the party for limited government, small taxes, and keeping government out of our sights, and that's why we lost.

Kofinis: With all due respect, if that's -- I keep hearing this from Republicans. I hope you keep doing this. You keep talking about going back to conservative principles. You keep talking about going back to Reagan. If that's the strategy or philosophy that you think is gonna resurrect the Republican Party, I suggest putting Dr. Kevorkian as the head of the RNC, because it's a suicide mission. It will not succeed. Personally, I love it.

Christie winds up by promising to "smoke you guys in the next election." 'Tis good for a low mordant chortle or two.

Apparently not one to go gently into that good night, Sarah Palin is determined to keep the spotlight on her for as long as the media will allow it. She sat down with Matt Lauer on The Today Show, insisting that despite overwhelming discussion of the tension between her and McCain (coming from anonymous campaign staffers as well as the media that covered them) that she and McCain are still BFFs.

LAUER: There is this feeling, and some of this comes from leaks and other, just perception, people just getting a gut that there was increasing tension between you and Sen. McCain in the final stretch of this campaign. Tell me what the relationship was like.
PALIN: We have a great relationship. Had from Day One. Had from the first time that I met him, last year, he and his wife. I just have been great admirers [sic] of them, of their family, of all that Sen. McCain has accomplished. Never once was there any inkling of tension between the two of us. Perhaps within the campaign, there was campaign staffers who…
LAUER: Well, describe that for me. Who was butting heads?
PALIN: You know, I don’t even know. That inside baseball stuff regarding the way a campaign works on that level, I certainly didn’t get bogged down in any of the potential skirmishes or perceived problems…
LAUER: Have you listened to some of the leaks that have come out since the election, where they’re saying that the McCain people leaked anonymously or saying,‘we couldn’t control her.’ ‘She was a rogue.’ ‘She didn’t want our consultants around her.’ And it became tense. Where do stories like that come from?
PALIN: I honestly do not know, because it’s not true, Matt. And Sen. McCain and I, we have a great relationship. I have nothing but honor and admiration and love for him and for his family. And I think that is mutual. In fact, I talked to him just today, again. And we touching base [sic] nearly every day…
LAUER: So it’s a warm and friendly relationship, even to this day?
PALIN : Very warm and friendly and professional and I…again, I have nothing but honor and admiration and love that I will show for this great American hero.

Well, I'm convinced. (/snark)

In other news, it's being reported by AP that Palin is going through the closets of her husband and kids to return all the clothes purchased for them by the RNC, including Todd's silk boxers. I know that the Republicans want to have a reputation (however unearned) of being fiscally prudent, but really, let them keep the knickers. What would you do with used undies from the Palin family any way?