Let’s Investigate Journalists’ Salaries Next

Bailouts?  Earmarks?  Gas profits?  If we’re going to concentrate time and effort looking into misappropriation of funds, why not determine how much money “journalists” make to report stories like these?  AP-Yahoo News wants to know why Sarah Palin kept a $1,000 donation from a guy she “urged to resign” for corruption:

Sarah Palin felt so strongly about the public corruption indictment of a Republican state senator this summer that she urged him to resign — but not strongly enough to return the $1,000 he gave to help elect her governor.

The donation from John Cowdery was one of three from Alaska legislators who contributed to Palin’s 2006 campaign weeks after the FBI raided their offices. The sprawling public corruption scandal that followed became a rallying point for candidate Palin, who was swept into office after promising voters she would rid Alaska’s capital of dirty politics.

The article points out that while the contribution does not suggest any wrongdoing, both  John McCain and Barack Obama have “given back” money in the past.

Over the years, both McCain and Democratic nominee Barack Obama have returned campaign donations tied to corruption, expressing regret in both cases. Obama’s campaign says he’s given to charity $159,000 tied to convicted Chicago real estate developer Antoin “Tony” Rezko. In the early 1990s, McCain returned $112,000 from Charles Keating, a central figure in the savings and loan crisis, after a Senate ethics inquiry.

By those standards, maybe Obama should have sold Rezko back his land.  AP-Yahoo also has this story (horrors!) of Palin being “blessed from witchcraft.”

A video on her hometown church Web site shows Sarah Palin being blessed three years ago by a Kenyan pastor who prayed for her protection from “witchcraft” as she prepared to seek higher office.

Good to know she was elected in spite of not being a witch.  In more pressing news, the Chicago Tribune has the “exclusive:”  Barack Obama prefers the Stones over the Beatles!  On his way to the White House for meeting with the president about the nation’s economic woes, the press put the question to the Democratic nominee:

Now the news: apparently there were a few Capitol Hill reporters waiting outside his office. He was asked by one whether he was a Rolling Stones or Beatles guy. “Stones,” Obama reponded to a CQ reporter, per Psaki. She said he also said that he would make some comments after the White House meeting about the bailout agreement.

Nice to know he had time to work something in about that bailout stuff.  Not to be outdone, The New York Times, on it’s blog, The Caucus had to share this “news” about David Letterman’s snit over McCain’s cancellation from his show in order to deal with that pesky bailout thing.

David Letterman was so unhappy that Mr. McCain canceled his scheduled appearance on his show Wednesday night that he spent much of the first segment assailing the senator’s decision and suggesting “something doesn’t smell right” about the Senator’s plan to go to Washington to work on the financial crisis.

Mr. Letterman told his audience that Senator McCain had called him directly on short notice Wednesday, to tell him he had to cancel his appearance. After expressing his admiration for Mr. McCain and his sacrifice as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, Mr. Letterman said, “When you call up at the last minute and cancel, that’s not the John McCain I know.” He repeated that “something smells right now” and he suggested “somebody must have put something in his Metamucil.”

If it wasn’t for that damned First Amendment, I’d say it was time for some government oversight into this question of who pays these “journalists,” how much, and why?

PUMA

Just Say No Deal