As election day comes ever nearer, Democrats and open-government advocates are pressing for the GOP vice presidential candidate to release her tax filings, a campaign tradition that extends at least to the post-Watergate era.

Instead, Palin has to date declined to share the documents, becoming part of an ever-more-select historical group of candidates who waited until this late in a campaign year to release their tax filings.

Since 1976, every major-party presidential and vice-presidential candidate has provided that information to the public, according to an analysis by ABC News. Until Palin, only three hopefuls have held onto their tax returns this late:

In 1984, George H.W. Bush, then the Republican presidential candidate, held onto his tax returns until Oct. 3. Bush said he had set up “the biggest blind trust possible” to prevent conflicts of interest, and said he was concerned releasing information on the trust’s holdings would violate its terms. He relented under pressure and after receiving assurances from government ethics experts.

In 2000, then-White House hopeful George W. Bush released his tax returns on Oct. 21. He had received two extensions from the IRS, and did not file his returns until Oct. 15.

Also in 2000, Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman waited until Sept. 22 to release his tax returns. When he did so, he released only summary information on income, assets and taxes that was characterized in news reports as “bare bones.”

“Voters deserve to know as much as they can about the candidates who are asking for their vote,” said Massie Ritsch of OpenSecrets.org, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog focused on politics and money.

Last week the Obama-Biden campaign released 10 years’ worth of tax returns for Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., in a move intended to pressure the McCain-Palin camp to do the same for Palin, currently governor of Alaska.

A spokesman for Palin Thursday reiterated the campaign’s stance on the matter. “We plan to release Governor Palin’s tax returns well before the election,” said Taylor Griffin.

For Ritsch, that’s not good enough. “A campaign that is touting what it will do to make government more transparent can take a first step by making the candidates transparent.” Nicholas Tucker contributed to this report.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5839282&page=1
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Team Obama must be getting desperate because here come the drumbeat for her income taxes since hacking into her private email account didn’t help them at all, in fact it’s backfiring.

They are running scared, that is why they are trying to wrap themselve in the meme that she deserve it because she can’t be all that honest and she must be like Team Obama is.

But, those IDIOTS hacked into a Rep. vp candidate private email account and no amount of flim-flam or this 20year old boy w/problems knew what they was doing is going to save them for doing prison time.

Good luck with that thought and thinking Obama won’t throw you under the bus…because he has and you are doomed to being somebody prison “bitch.”

Al

Could the hackers who infiltrated Republican vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin’s personal Yahoo account avoid prosecution thanks to a Department of Justice policy statement?

Though federal law prohibits the unauthorized access of someone’s e-mail account, the DOJ’s interpretation of one particular case might only hold the Palin hackers accountable for accessing unopened messages, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Hackers obtained access to the Alaska governor’s personal gov.palin@yahoo.com e-mail address this week after successfully navigating through Yahoo’s password reset process. They changed the governor’s password, took screen shots of the account’s contents, accessed personal photographs, and sent all the data to the Wikileaks Web site.

Under the Stored Communication Act (SCA), it is illegal to access without permission a wire or electronic communication while it is in electronic storage. A 2003 case, Theofel v. Farey-Jones, ruled that electronic storage refers to e-mails that have been read, as well as those that are unopened.

The DOJ, however, is not a huge fan of the Theofel decision.

The agency’s computer crimes and intellectual property division “continues to question whether Theofel was correctly decided, since little reason exists for treating old email differently than other material a user may choose to store on a network,” according to the DOJ’s Prosecuting Computer Crimes Manual.

“The term ‘electronic storage’ has a narrow, statutorily defined meaning. It does not simply mean storage of information by electronic means,” according to the DOJ. “If the communication has been received by a recipient’s service provider but has not yet been accessed by the recipient, it is in electronic storage. When the recipient retrieves the email or voice mail, however, the communication reaches its final destination. If the recipient chooses to retain a copy of the communication on the service provider’s system, the retained copy is no longer in electronic storage.”

Under DOJ’s interpretation, the Palin hackers might only be prosecuted for accessing e-mails the Alaska governor had not yet opened. Based on the data leaked by the hackers, it is not clear if they opened any unread messages.

“What happened to Gov. Palin shows why Theofel is good for privacy,” EFF senior staff attorney Kurt Opsahl wrote in a Thursday blog post. “As more and more people use Web mail like Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, and others, they also will naturally leave opened e-mail on the server. People should not have to sacrifice their privacy protections under the law when they do so.”

Andrew Grossman, a senior legal policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, suggested that simply accessing Palin’s account is enough of a violation to warrant some jail time.

“Federal law prohibits virtual trespassing for the purposes of stealing information,” Grossman wrote in a Thursday blog post. “So cracking the password to a governor’s e-mail account and perusing her messages is a clear violation. The punishment: criminal fines and imprisonment of up to 5 years.”

The McCain campaign condemned the hacking as “a shocking invasion of the governor’s privacy and a violation of law.” The FBI and Secret Service are reportedly investigating.

The Yahoo account has since been deleted.

Palin has made headlines for allegedly using her Yahoo account to conduct state business, a move that could run afoul of transparency laws. The e-mails published by the hackers display conversations Palin had with two administration officials, but they do not appear to discuss official state business.

The use of this account, however, made its way into an information request from Andree McLeod, former vice chair of the Alaska Republican party.

McLeod asked Palin’s office on September 8 to release e-mails the governor sent from her state account – without any of the information redacted – as well as constituent e-mails to Palin, and e-mails that Frank Bailey, the director of Boards of Commission, and Ivy Frye, Palin’s assistant, sent to Palin’s Yahoo account.

In July, McLeod requested that Palin’s office provide her with copies of all land-line and cell phone, text message, e-mail and leave request records that pertained to Bailey and Frye because McLeod suspected that Bailey and Frye were conducting campaign business on state time.

Palin’s office handed over the documents, but information the governor’s office considered to be sensitive was blacked out, while 1,100 additional messages were withheld. By law, only members of the state’s executive branch were privy to that information, according to her office.

McLeod noticed, however, that 40 of the withheld e-mails were sent to Palin’s husband Todd, who is not a member of the state’s executive branch.

McLeod reasoned in her September 8 letter that she should have access to anything to which Todd Palin had access since they are both private citizens.

The Yahoo account is also fair game because “almost all of [Palin's] e-mails have been sent by or to [Palin] at gov.palin@yahoo.com, [her] unprotected private citizen e-mail account outside the state server and the server’s security system, rather than to or from [her] official office of the governor e-mail address,” according to the letter, which was published by Mother Jones magazine.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2330802,00.asp

great!

Rassmussen new polls tonight, say McCain is within 4 of Obama in Maine and Obama within 2 of McCain in Indiana.

So either Rassmussen is fucking up his polls or i just don’t know because both of those are unbelievable.

Media Mogul, Rupert Murdoch, Says Obama’s (Economic) Policies are Naive and Date Back to the 1960s

In a live interview on Your World with Neil Cavuto on FOXNews, Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp. (Wallstreet Journal, New York Post) said that Obama’s policies are naive and outdated as they applied to the state of the U.S. economy of the 1960s. Murdoch stated that if allowed to unfold, Obama’s economic policies would prevent job creation in America, shrink the American economy, and slow many economies around the world.

http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/News/PressReleases/6ad4a193-94c8-413c-94a4-3fb6d72a14ee.htm

The McCain-Palin presidential campaign today announced the endorsement of Miguel D. Lausell, Senior Political Advisor to Hillary Clinton, and Clinton Delegate-at-Large Luchy Secaira. “Although I supported Hillary during the primaries, I now support John McCain and Governor Palin because I am putting my country first,” said Secaira, former Hillary Clinton Florida Delegate-at-Large. “They have the experience and judgment to lead America through these difficult times, and I trust them to work with Democrats to do the right thing for our country.” Lausell, who advised Senator Clinton on a variety of issues including international trade, telecommunications and Latino…

It’s just how it is.