Tales from the Trail

By Robby O’Daniel

A Tennessee college student on trial for hacking into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account and posting it on the Web during the 2008 presidential campaign heard from Palin’s daughter, Bristol, who testified she was flooded with phone calls as a result.

One call  to the then-17-year-old’s cell phone came in the middle of the night at the family home in Wasilla, Alaska, from “a bunch of boys” who claimed to be outside the house and wanted to be let in.

“That was scary because we lived in the middle of nowhere,” Bristol Palin told the jury at the trial of  David Kernell, the 22-year-old son of a Democratic state legislator. Kernell faces several years in prison if convicted of fraud, identity theft and other charges.

Prosecutors say Kernell was angling for information to damage Sarah Palin, Republican John McCain’s running mate in the campaign.

Kernell has pleaded not guilty to what his lawyer said amounted to a misguided prank. Kernell had been intrigued by published reports that Palin used the e-mail account for state business as governor of Alaska, and he had managed to guess the answers to the account’s security questions and changed the password.

Conservative darling Sarah Palin had no trouble stirring up Tea Partiers at a rally in Boston, not far from the site where colonists staged the original Tea Party revolt centuries ago.

The problems in the United States are “nothing a good old fashioned election can’t fix,” she told the crowd of several thousand on the Boston Common. “The first test will be at the ballot box in November.”

The former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate, who wore a red leather jacket, brought plenty of red meat rhetoric to the anti-tax Tea Party.

Sarah Palin, who made “drill baby drill” a 2008 campaign slogan, isn’t too pleased with President Obama’s new energy plan as laid out today.

Palin, the former governor of Alaska and Republican vice presidential candidate in 2008, said on her Twitter page that she agreed with House Republican leader John Boehner that Obama’s plan is aimed at getting his “job-killing, energy-depleting, burdensome” cap and trade legislation through Congress.

A source who is close to Palin said Palin believes Obama is trying to use his drilling plan as a sweetener to get some Republicans to support cap and trade as part of comprehensive energy legislation, and that meanwhile, the review process for getting new drilling operations approved would be lengthy.

President Barack Obama buried the news.

It took him seven minutes of a 15-minute speech to get to the nub, after layers and layers of words about the environment. He was, after all, a Democrat pushing for expanding offshore oil drilling … helllooooo, that’s right, a Democrat expanding offshore oil drilling.

“So today we’re announcing the expansion of offshore oil and gas exploration, but in ways that balance the need to harness domestic energy resources and the need to protect America’s natural resources,” Obama said at Andrews Air Force Base standing in front of the “Green Hornet” fighter jet that uses a mix of biofuel.

Well not all the environment friendly organizations saw it quite that way.

“Is this President Obama’s clean energy plan or Palin’s drill baby drill campaign?”  Greenpeace Executive Director Phil Radford said, referring to the memorable slogan from Sarah Palin when she was running for vice president.

House Democrat Barney Frank says Republican leaders should apologize for threats and vandalism against Democrats who’ve had the temerity to back President Barack Obama’s legislative agenda.

Why? The Massachusetts Democrat says Republicans have actually been cheering on the bad behavior. And, he adds, recent Republican condemnations have not gone far enough.

“I’m glad that my Republican leadership colleagues now have decided to denounce it. But they’ve been very late to do that. Over the weekend, they were much more egging on this kind of behavior than denouncing it,” he told ABC’s Good Morning America.  ”I think there ought to be some apologies.”

Sarah Palin really has the 2010 congressional elections in her cross hairs now.

As President Barack Obama signed healthcare reform into law, the potential 2012 Republican White House wannabe was out on Facebook with her own campaign to unseat 20 House Democrats who voted for the legislation. The page identifies targeted congressional districts via a map of the United States dotted by white and red cross hairs.

“We’re going to fire them and send them back to the private sector, which has been shrinking thanks to their destructive government-growing policies,” she says in a rallying note to supporters that also seeks donations for her political action committee, SarahPAC.

Palin’s aim is to go after House Democrats who voted for Obamacare and represent districts that she and John McCain carried in the 2008 presidential race.  

(Reporting by Zorianna Kit)

What a difference a year makes! Last year, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was catching flak for her shopping habits during her 2008 campaign. This year, she's strolling around Hollywood's Oscar gift suites with family members having items given to her -- leopard print sandals to match her leopard print jacket, for instance.

The morning after her appearance on "The Tonight Show", and amid reports she was in Hollywood talking to TV executives about a possible TV show (see below and here on the blog), the former Alaska Governor turned up at the Silver Spoon gifting suite in West Hollywood with daughter Willow, grandson Trip and an entourage of about seven people, according to the suite's organizers.

The gifting suites, in case you don't know, are set up by merchants to promote their products during Hollywood's Oscar week when the town is filled with A-list  celebrities. The idea is to have your product photographed or in some way associated with a celebrity and, as a result, people will want to buy it. And who better to help sell a product than politician-turned-celebrity Palin?

Sarah Palin may be about to add another high-profile credential to her resume by taking TV viewers moose hunting in Alaska.

She can already boast about being a mayor, a governor, a vice presidential nominee, a bestselling author — she’s also writing a new book about American virtues and strengths — a TV political pundit and a Big Name campaigner for candidates in the 2010 congressional elections.

Now she wants to be a reality show TV star, too.

One of the most visible Republican figures on the White House wannabe stage, Palin is teaming up with TV producer Mark Burnett to shop a proposal for a reality show based on her family and their life in picturesque Alaska to at least three major broadcast networks.

Mitt Romney gives Barack Obama an ‘F’ for his performance as president. But that’s not because the former Republican presidential candidate still wants the job — at least, he’s not ready to say yet whether he wants it or not.

“I’m not going to give him a passing grade for the year,” Romney said of Obama on NBC’s Today show.

Sure, the economy was in free-fall a year ago and is now growing. Sure, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is back above 10,000. Sure, the U.S. no longer seems headed for a new depression.

Rep. Ron Paul today seems to be little more than a voice crying in the wilderness of Republican politics. But the Texas libertarian and 2008 presidential candidate may have a lease on the future of the Republican Party’s conservative wing, at the age of 74.

Paul, the big winner in the presidential straw poll at the American Conservative Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference, ascribes his victory to young people who don’t like the way the Republican establishment is handling things.

“Right now, I think there is a disconnect with the people, especially with the next generation,” he told MSNBC.  ”They feel like the burden is being dumped on their shoulders and I think that’s what the vote represented, a lot of young people saying they don’t like what’s happening.”