Accept no substitutes

Palin Purloined emails revealed – They belong to the people and the state

A lot of people are excited about the screen grabs of Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email pages. How they were gotten is less important than what they indicate; Sarah Palin and her staff, like many of us, comingle personal and business email. The difference is that for most of us our business isn’t government business and the use of a Yahoo, Gmail, or Hotmail account isn’t partially aimed at avoiding the sunshine that state business requires. Palin’s does that in several cases.

Now that we know that Palin transacted the business of the state of Alaska in this manner, those emails belong to the people of the state and should be available via FOIA or by subpoena. Further it would be illegal for Palin or anyone else to destroy those emails (those that transact state business).

What anonymous has done is to reveal what she has, possibly illegally, hidden.

Now that the purloined emails are known to exist, let the press, the people and the courts do their work.

Update: Palin ordered to preserve emails on private accounts if they regard state business. October 13.

3 Comments

  1. J. Rees

    I’m glad you checked in on this issue. I seem to remember you were involved in a panel or some other working group when the N&O exposed the email shenanigans happening in North Carolina State House. But I can’t find it now. Any help on a link?

  2. Jeff Shear

    It’s Todd Palin we might want to think about here, as well. He fits into this email morass in an odd-Todd way. Consider, he has no official position, but he sits in on official and unofficial meetings, according to the NYT (I think, check me on this). Are these meetings at the administrative level? If so, who appointed him; who does he represent? Is he a registered lobbyist? Who pays him? In this way, he represents the kind of parallel “casual government” that Sara Palin presents to us in her emails. Is this a rebirth of the Star Chamber, as well as the Cyber-Star Chamber?

  3. Paul

    I wasn’t on that panel. My colleague Ferrell Guillory was as reported here on NBC 17. I have opinions as this post shows tho.

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