Free Republic

Amid the vast volume of anti-Palin e-mails flying around at the moment, the one asserting that she once pled guilty to criminal negligence sort of sticks out, and seemed worth poking around. Alaska state records show that she was charged in June of 1993, and pled no contest, to the serious-sounding charge. Turns out that it's less a major felony, more an only-in-Alaska moment, and that — like so many of these things — it's surfaced in Palin's earlier races, notably in 2002. The details of the weighty charge: Using a drift gillnet to harvest salmon from the Bristol Bay...

There’s an old saying that the only thing wrong with tainted money is that there “taint” enough of it. That might work for universities and other institutions that grace their halls with the names of robber barons, but it’s trouble for political campaigns. The McCain camp recognized that fact of life anew this week. The Washington Post reports that the campaign was stung by its ties to Oregon venture capitalist and political donor Craig Berkman, who was sued by former investors in a fraud case and ordered to pay $28 million in civil damages. Berkman and his wife, the Post...