Who ever did it should be prosecuted. It was wrong. It is informative, however, to see how the right has chosen this to play the victim. Glenn Greenwald points out:

"it's really a wondrous, and repugnant, sight to behold the Bush-following lynch mobs on the Right melodramatically defend the Virtues of Privacy and the Rule of Law. These, of course, are the same authoritarians who have cheered on every last expansion of the Lawless Surveillance State of the last eight years -- put their fists in the air with glee as the Federal Government seized the power to listen to innocent Americans' telephone calls; read our emails; obtain our banking, credit card, and library records; and create vast data bases of every call we make and receive and every prescription we fill and every instance of travel and other vast categories of information that remain largely unknown -- all without warrants or oversight of any kind and often in clear violation of the law.

The same political faction which today is prancing around in full-throated fits of melodramatic hysteria and Victim mode (their absolute favorite state of being) over the sanctity of Sarah Palin's privacy are the same ones who scoffed with indifference as it was revealed during the Bush era that the FBI systematically abused its Patriot Act powers to gather and store private information on thousands of innocent Americans; that Homeland Security officials illegally infiltrated and monitored peaceful, law-abiding left-wing groups devoted to peace activism, civil liberties and other political agendas disliked by the state; and that the telephone calls of journalists and lawyers have been illegally and repeatedly monitored.

Shouldn't these same people be standing up today and insisting that if Sarah Palin has done nothing wrong, then she should have nothing to hide? If Sarah Palin isn't committing crimes or consorting with The Terrorists, then why would she care if we can monitor her emails? And if private companies such as Yahoo can access her emails -- as they can -- then she doesn't really have any "privacy" anyway, so what's the big deal if others read through her communications, too? Isn't that the authoritarian idiocy that has been spewed since The Day That 9/11 Changed Everything -- beginning with the Constitution -- to justify vesting secret and unchecked surveillance powers in our Great and Good Leaders?"

Here's what I find important:

1) Palin has shown she's a perfect acolyte of Darth Cheney. Alaska requires it's elected officials to use Government (secure) e-mail and Palin uses Yahoo for Government business. Why? Because then an archive isn't kept on her coorespondence.

2) While Mayor of Wasilla, Palin was told she was acting against Alaska law she said "I'm the mayor, I can do whatever I want until the courts tell me I can't. '"

3) When Palin was confronted with illegally trying to pressure the Commander of the Alaska State Troopers to fire Palin's ex-brother-in-law, she pulls a bush43 move and declares neither she nor any state employees would honor the subpoenas issued by the Legislative investigative committee .

Conservatives try to act like they own "the rule of law" but in reality they are contemptuous of it and those that actually try to enforce conservatives to live by the rules they place upon all others.

What is the word for a group of people who compell others to live under rules that they themselves choose not to adhere to? Tyrants. Totalitarians. Royalists. Take your pick. None of them describe why our Founding Fathers fought a war with King George III over 200 years ago. Especially not to install a monarchy run by these fanatical right wing lunatics.

This is how you mock, people. In an article about Sarah Palin's (probably illicit) Yahoo account getting hacked, the CS monitor sticks this shiv in our beloved leader:

Translation? If the feds were to contact an individual named Gabriel Ramuglia they might be able to track down the, as President Bush and Aquaman would say, “evil-doers.”

Story

Not only does it point out the fundamental cartoonishness of Bush's rhetoric but it also compares him to a superhero who is widely and roundly mocked as impotent and dumb. Coming out of the blue makes it all the more effective.

GOP senator cites lack of foreign-policy chops.

How obnoxious can they get when Obama has exactly the same "foreign-policy chops" as Palin? Shameless.

I have to admit a certain sense of amusement that Redstate not only took money from their parent company (Eagle Publishing) but also held a big beg-for-cash even in order to get their RS 3.0 up and running and the things is a total POS that works about 1/10 as well as the free software SC is based off.

I just find that funny. Particularly when the software won't work worth a damn during the run up to a major election.

It's kind of like a microcosm of the republican party for the last decade- expensive, incompetent, self defeating.

" Sarah Palin likes to tell voters around the country about how she "put the government checkbook online" in Alaska. On Thursday, Palin suggested she would take that same proposal to Washington.

"We're going to do a few new things also," she said at a rally in Cedar Rapids. "For instance, as Alaska's governor, I put the government's checkbook online so that people can see where their money's going. We'll bring that kind of transparency, that responsibility, and accountability back. We're going to bring that back to D.C."

What a good idea. Why didn't someone think of that before?

Oh wait, someone did. His name is Barack Obama.

In 2006 and 2007, Obama teamed up with Republican Sen. Tom Coburn to pass the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, also known as "Google for Government." The act created a free, searchable web site -- USASpending.gov -- that discloses to the public all federal grants, contracts, loans and insurance payments.

In June of this year, Obama and Coburn introduced new Senate legislation to expand the information available online to include details on earmarks, competitive bidding, criminal activities, audit disputes and other government information.

According to Sarah Palin, one of Obama's ideas from 2006 qualifies as one of the "new things" she'll do in 2009."

Sarah is quick, I'll give her that. I hadn't realized she had such sticky fingers as well.

CNN .

Russia defied the United States yesterday by announcing plans to sell military hardware to Iran and Venezuela.

The head of Russia’s state arms exporter said that he was negotiating to sell antiaircraft systems to Iran despite American objections. Russia has already delivered 29 Tor-M1 missile systems under a $700 million (£386 million) deal with Iran in 2005.

“Contacts between our countries are continuing and we do not see any reason to suspend them,” Anatoli Isaikin, the general director of Rosoboronexport, told the RIA-Novosti news agency at an arms fair in South Africa.

Reports have circulated for some time that the Kremlin is preparing to sell its S-300 surface-to-air missile system to Iran, offering greater protection against a possible US or Israeli attack on the Islamic republic’s nuclear facilities. The missiles have a range of more than 90 miles (150km).

story

edit- apparently wonkette has dubbed Palin Bible Spice. That's also kinda funny.

This one just takes the cake!

The greater implication the ad makes, however, is that McCain is no friend to Latinos at all, beyond issues of funding the DREAM act or how NCLB money is distributed. By linking McCain to Limbaugh’s quotes, twisting Limbaugh’s quotes, and tying McCain to more extremist anti-immigration voices, the Obama campaign has crossed a line into misleading the viewers of its new TV ad. In Spanish, the word is erróneo.

Careful, Paul ...wouldn't want to look silly, now would we???

" Bob Barr Files Suit in Texas to Remove McCain, Obama from Ballot"

A 2006 Texas Supreme Court decision ruled that state laws "does not allow political parties or candidates to ignore statutory deadlines."

Can Bob get pigs to fly?