Sarah Palin Exposed

Today’s good news: Newt Gingrich’s team of senior staff has been decimated by the resignation of his campaign manager and half a dozen important advisers. Although the former House speaker had been absent from the campaign trail for two weeks, his advisers threw in the towel because they opposed the direction his campaign was taking, which had started in a disastrous manner with a series of contradictory statements that alienated the conservative voters. As The Washington Post headline of June 9 put it: “Gingrich Presidential Campaign Implodes.” The conservatives are going to find it difficult to find a candidate worthy of becoming a president of the United States.

More good news: Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska for less than half of her term before traveling all over the U.S. in a mysterious manner on board her bus, has just been obliged to release no fewer than 24,000 pages of private email messages. Palin’s private and political life, which has already been well-scrutinized, may well yet reveal some gems.

This Friday, the (current) governor of Alaska will publicize these thousands of messages sent by Sarah Palin during her term. The law has decided that the messages of John McCain’s ex-running mate on the 2008 presidential campaign, which were often written from her private email address, were in reality public documents because they concerned affairs of state of which Palin was in charge.

The six boxes of copies of the messages, which can be obtained for $750, weigh 125 kilos. Last year, at NBC’s request, the state of Alaska was required to publicize more than 3,000 documents concerning Palin’s husband, Todd. They revealed that he was strongly involved in affairs of State, discussing hiring, posts in the judicial system and even dismissals.

Last year, a first batch of Sarah Palin’s documents revealed that she had lobbied for the firing of a state trooper who had divorced her sister. It will be interesting to see what Palin was hoping to hide from the public by using a private email address, at a time when she is thinking perhaps to enter the race for the White House — a horrifying prospect.