Tales from the Trail

A leaked e-mail is providing more grist for speculation that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is seriously pondering a run for president in 2012.

In the e-mail, Palin’s husband, Todd Palin, complained to Alaska Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller and Tim Crawford, treasurer for Palin’s SarahPAC political organization, after Miller declined to endorse the possibility of a Palin presidential candidacy.

Sarah Palin had endorsed Miller in his successful Senate Republican nomination fight against incumbent Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, and it is clear from the e-mail that Todd Palin expected some loyalty in return.

Miller, asked on Fox News Sunday in September whether Palin was qualified to be president, was non-committal, saying, “I am not going to get distracted by other candidates.”

The Todd Palin e-mail was leaked to themudflats.net, an Alaska website that reports on Palin and other political figures in the state. 

Former President Bill Clinton, who jokes that a cell phone weighed five pounds when he took office in 1993, told a VeriSign event to mark the 25th anniversary of dot com that he’s a big fan of the Web, cell phones and email, but hasn’t yet sprung for an electronic reader.

Clinton marveled at how the Web has revolutionized fundraising for his foundation, which tackles a range of global issues from health problems facing the poor to climate change.

“An enormous amount of what we do is either made possible or leveraged because of the Internet,” he said. “I don’t know what I would do without it.”