Political News : Mark Foley on sexually explicit computer messages to male teens...

Mark Adam Foley (born September 8, 1954) is an American politician who served as a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 until 2006, representing the 16th District of Florida.
Once known as a crusader against child abuse and exploitation, Foley resigned from Congress on September 29, 2006 after allegations surfaced that he had sent suggestive emails and sexually explicit instant messages to teenaged males who had formerly served and were at that time serving as Congressional pages.As a result of the disclosures, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement opened investigations of the messages to find possible criminal charges.The House Ethics Committee has also opened an investigation into the response of the House Republican leadership and their staff to earlier warnings of Foley's conduct

Even today, two years after Mark Foley's very public fall from grace, the former congressman can't explain why he sent lurid, sexually explicit computer messages to male teens who had worked as Capitol Hill pages.
Sitting in his room at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York this week, the Florida Republican, wearing a yellow tie with blue elephants, finally broke his silence.

"I'm trying to find my way back," Foley said in an interview with The Associated Press, his first public comments on the scandal since resigning from Congress on Sept. 29, 2006.

Foley insists he did nothing illegal and never had sexual contact with teens, just inappropriate Internet conversations. Investigations by the FBI and Florida authorities ended without criminal charges.

And while he concedes his behavior was "extraordinarily stupid," he remains somewhat unwilling to accept full public scorn.
These were 17-year-olds, just months from being men, he insists.
"There was never anywhere in those conversations where someone said, 'Stop,' or 'I'm not enjoying this,' or 'This is inappropriate' ... but again, I'm the adult here, I'm the congressman," Foley said. "The fact is I allowed it to happen. That's where my responsibility lies."
Foley had built a national reputation as an advocate for tougher penalties against child sexual predators. As co-chairman of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, he helped craft a law to protect children on the Internet.
Still, he said, there was no hypocrisy.
"The work I was doing was involving young children ... You know, you hear the term 'pedophile.' That is prepubescent," Foley said, noting a "huge difference" from lurid chats with teens on the brink of adulthood.
"At the end of the day, they were instant messages that were extraordinarily inappropriate," he added, breathing a heavy sigh, his eyes wandering toward the ceiling.
So why talk now? Sympathy? Forgiveness?

Just to free himself from the media clamoring for his first interview.
"I believed I owed my constituents an apology," Foley said. "I embarrassed them and I embarrassed my family and I wanted to have a chance in a public setting to lend my voice to what happened, not through an attorney, not through a spokesperson, but from myself."
Today, he's a pariah in Congress and the Republican Party. The affable man who reveled in the spotlight finds himself branded a pedophile, at best, a creep. Three former staffers refused comment because of their disgust with his behavior. He makes his living investing in real estate and other business.
"In public life, you dream of the day they'll name a hospital after you, or a bridge or a post office," Foley said, twisting a gold band on his ring finger identical to one his high-society dermatologist boyfriend wears.
"If I had a post office named after me today, they'd probably return to sender," he said. "It's not a pleasant place to be. It's not what I envisioned ... working this hard all my life to end up in an ash heap because of a momentary lapse of judgment."
But Foley carried on the computer conversations for months, asking about masturbation, sex, and other details.
Shortly after his resignation, his attorney announced that Foley was gay and an alcoholic and had been molested by a priest as a teenage altar boy in Florida. Foley then checked himself into a treatment facility.
"I loved my early life, and then along comes a priest ... who forces me into a sexual relationship at the age of 12. And right shortly thereafter, I fail eighth grade, I start drugs, I start drinking, I start smoking," he said. "My entire life ... implodes."
He was elected to the U.S. House in 1994 as a popular hometown boy who kept busy in glitzy Palm Beach, Fla., attending lavish parties and fundraisers with the likes of Donald Trump, Jay Leno, and actress Bo Derek.
While his homosexuality was said to be the worst-kept secret on the Hill and around Palm Beach, he cloaked himself in a false public persona, appearing at events with beautiful women.
He drank a lot and spiraled into darkness.
"Those demons that were inside me, by not addressing them, caused me to spin out of control," he said.
He doesn't feel fully responsible for Democrats taking over the House in 2006, but owns up to his role and calls his behavior "profoundly regrettable."
"They had the Republicans on a number of ethical scandals and, you know, I served up for them the moral dilemma," he said.
A Republican won back Foley's congressional district last week after the Democrat who replaced him was caught in an adultery scandal. It's become known as "The Curse of the Mark Foley Seat."
"It's not what I had hoped would be my lasting legacy," he said, pausing to brush away tears.
So what does the man who once was such a popular figure in politics and high-society do now?
"I don't know. I don't know," he said. "I'm just going to take it a day at a time."

Barack Obama came up a big winner in the presidential race in Dixville Notch and Hart's Location, N.H., where tradition of having the first Election Day ballots tallied lives on.

Democrat Obama defeated Republican John McCain by a count of 15 to 6 in Dixville Notch, where a loud whoop accompanied the announcement in Tuesday's first minutes. The town of Hart's Location reported 17 votes for Obama, 10 for McCain and two for write-in Ron Paul. Independent Ralph Nader was on both towns' ballots but got no votes.

"I'm not going to say I wasn't surprised," said Obama supporter Tanner Nelson Tillotson, whose name was drawn from a bowl to make him Dixville Notch's first voter.

With 115 residents between them, Dixville Notch and Hart's Location get every eligible voter to the polls beginning at midnight on Election Day. Between them, the towns have been enjoying their first-vote status since 1948.

Being first means something to residents of the Granite State, home of the nation's earliest presidential primary and the central focus — however briefly — of the vote-watching nation's attention every four years.

Town Clerk Rick Erwin said Dixville Notch is proud of its tradition, but added, "The most important thing is that we exemplify a 100 percent vote."

Dixville Notch resident Peter Johnson said the early bird electoral exercise "is fun." A former naval aviator, Johnson said he was voting for McCain, but added, "I think both candidates are excellent people."

Voting was carried out in a room in a local hotel festooned with political memorabilia from campaigns long past. Each voter gets an individual booth so there are no lines at the magic hour. The votes were quickly counted, announced and recorded on a posterboard that proclaims, "First in the Nation, Dixville Notch."

The tradition drew spectators, including Tim McKenna, who drove with his wife 16 miles from Cambridge, N.H., to witness the event.

"Living in New Hampshire, you hear so much about it in the news," said McKenna. "I think it's a very historic election this year."

Ed Butler, a Democratic state representative who runs the Notchland Inn in Hart's Location, said, "Being this small and being able to be first just makes it that much more special."

Although scores of states have voted early, the two villages are the first to officially announce the results on Election Day.

New Hampshire law requires polls to open at 11 a.m., but that doesn't stop towns from opening earlier. It also allows towns to close their polls once all registered and eligible voters have cast ballots.

Hart's Location started opening its polls early in 1948, the year Harry S. Truman beat Thomas Dewey, to accommodate railroad workers who had to get to work early. Hart's Location got out of the early voting business in 1964 after some residents grew weary of all the publicity, but brought it back in 1996.

Dixville Notch, nestled in a mountain pass 1,800 feet up and about halfway between the White Mountain National Forest and the Canadian border, followed suit in 1960, when John F. Kennedy beat Richard M. Nixon. Nixon, the Republican, swept all nine votes cast in Dixville that year, and before Tuesday, the town had gone for a Democrat only once since then. That was in 1968, when the tally was Democrat Hubert Humphrey eight, Nixon four.

U.S. election :OBAMA Granma -Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham died?

Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham (October 26, 1922- November 2, 2008) and Stanley Armour Dunham (March 23, 1918 – February 8, 1992) were the maternal grandparents of Barack Obama, the junior United States Senator from Illinois and Democratic nominee in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. They raised Obama from age 10 in their Honolulu, Hawaii apartment, where the widowed Mrs. Dunham lived until her death on November 2, 2008,in the same city as Obama's half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng.

Barack Obama's grandmother, whose personality and bearing shaped much of the life of the Democratic presidential contender, has died, Obama announced Monday, one day before the election. Madelyn Payne Dunham was 86.
Obama announced the news from the campaign trail in Charlotte, N.C. The joint statement with his sister Maya Soetoro-Ng said Dunham died late Sunday at her Honolulu apartment after a battle with cancer.
"She's gone home," Obama said as tens of thousands of rowdy supporters at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte grew silent in an evening drizzle.
"And she died peacefully in her sleep with my sister at her side. And so there is great joy as well as tears. I'm not going to talk about it too long because it is hard for me to talk about."
But he said he wanted people to know a little about her — that she lived through the Great Depression and World War II, working the latter on a bomber assembly line with a baby at home and a husband serving his country. He said she was humble and plain spoken, one of the "quiet heroes that we have all across America" working hard and hoping to see their children and grandchildren thrive.
Obama learned of Dunham's death Monday morning while he was campaigning in Jacksonville, Fla. The family said a private ceremony would be held later.
"So many of us were hoping and praying that his grandmother would have the opportunity to witness her grandson become our next president," said Hawaii state Rep. Marcus Oshiro, an Obama supporter. "What a bittersweet victory it will be for him."
Republican John McCain issued condolences. "Our thoughts and prayers go out to them as they remember and celebrate the life of someone who had such a profound impact in their lives," the statement by John and Cindy McCain said.
Last month, Obama took a break from campaigning and flew to Hawaii to be with Dunham as her health declined. He told CBS that he "got there too late" when his mother died of ovarian cancer in 1995 at age 53 and wanted to avoid that mistake again.
Outside the apartment building where Dunham died, reporters and TV cameras lined the sidewalk as two police officers were posted near the elevator. Signs hanging in the apartment lobby warned the public to keep out.
The Kansas-born Dunham and her husband, Stanley, raised their grandson for several years in Honolulu while their daughter and her second husband lived overseas. Her influence on Obama's manner and the way he viewed the world was substantial, the candidate told millions watching him accept his party's nomination in Denver in August.
"She's the one who taught me about hard work," he said. "She's the one who put off buying a new car or a new dress for herself so that I could have a better life. She poured everything she had into me."
Madelyn and Stanley Dunham married in 1940, a few weeks before she graduated from high school. Their daughter, Stanley Ann, was born in 1942. After several moves to and from California, Texas, Washington and Kansas, Stanley Dunham's job landed the family in Hawaii.
It was there, in a Russian class at the University of Hawaii, that Stanley Ann met Obama's father, a Kenyan named Barack Hussein Obama. Their son was born in August 1961, but the marriage didn't last.
Stanley Ann later married an Indonesian, and Obama moved to that country with his mother and stepfather at age 6. But in 1971, her mother sent him back to Hawaii to live with her parents. He stayed with the Dunhams until he graduated from high school in 1979.
In his autobiography, Obama wrote fondly of playing basketball on a court below his grandparents' 10th-floor Honolulu apartment, and looking up to see his grandmother watching.
Madelyn Dunham, who took university classes but never earned a degree, nonetheless rose from a secretarial job at the Bank of Hawaii to become one of the state's first female bank vice presidents.
"Every morning, she woke up at 5 a.m. and changed from the frowsy muumuus she wore around the apartment into a tailored suit and high-heeled pumps," Obama wrote.
After her health took a turn for the worse, her brother said on Oct. 21 that she had already lived long enough to see her "Barry" achieve what she'd wanted for him.
"I doubt if it would occur to her that he would go this far this fast. But she's enjoyed watching it," Charles Payne, 83, said in a brief telephone interview from his Chicago home.
Stanley Dunham died in 1992; Obama's father is also deceased.
When Obama was young, he and his grandmother toured the United States by Greyhound bus, stopping at the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone Park, Disneyland and Chicago, where Obama would years later settle.
It was an incident during his teenage years that became one of Obama's most vivid memories of the woman he called "Toot" — a version of the Hawaiian word for grandmother, tutu.
She had been aggressively panhandled by a man and, for safety's sake, she wanted her husband to take her to work. When Obama asked why, his grandfather said Madelyn Dunham was bothered because the panhandler was black.
The words hit the biracial Obama "like a fist in my stomach," he wrote later. He was sure his grandparents loved him deeply. "And yet," he added, "I knew that men who might easily have been my brothers could still inspire their rawest fears."
Obama referred to the incident again when he addressed race in a speech in March during a controversy over his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. "I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother," he said.
Dunham was "a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world but who once confessed her fear of black men who passed her on the street."
Madelyn Lee Payne, the oldest of four children, was born in October 1922 in Peru, Kan., but lived much of her childhood in nearby Augusta.
From his grandmother, Obama "gets his pragmatism, his levelheadedness, his ability to stay centered in the eye of the storm," his sister told The Associated Press. "His sensible, no-nonsense (side) is inherited from her."

U.S. election : 6(McCain) of 8(Obama) key states

Democrat Barack Obama leads Republican John McCain in six of eight key battleground states one day before the U.S. election, including the big prizes of Florida and Ohio, according to a series of Reuters/Zogby polls released on Monday.
Obama holds a 7-point edge over McCain among likely U.S. voters in a separate Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby national tracking poll, up 1 percentage point from Sunday. The telephone poll has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.
Obama heads into Tuesday's voting in a comfortable position, with McCain struggling to overtake Obama's lead in every national opinion poll and to hold off his challenge in about a dozen states won by President George W. Bush in 2004.
The new state polls showed Obama with a 1-point lead in Missouri and 2-point lead in Florida, within the margin of error of 4.1 percentage points. But Obama also holds leads in Ohio, Virginia and Nevada -- all states won by Bush in 2004.
The five states where Obama is ahead have a combined 76 electoral votes. Along with states won by Democrat John Kerry in 2004, they would give Obama 328 electoral votes -- far more than the 270 needed to win the White House.
Obama also leads by 11 percentage points in Pennsylvania, which McCain has targeted as his best chance to steal a state won by Kerry in 2004.
McCain leads Obama by 5 points in Indiana and by 1 point in North Carolina -- both states won by Bush in 2004.
"Obama's lead is very steady. He could be looking at a big day on Tuesday," said pollster John Zogby. "These are all Republican states except Pennsylvania, and that does not look like it's going to turn for him."
In Florida, the biggest prize being fought over on Tuesday with 27 electoral votes, Obama leads McCain by 48 percent to 46 percent. The two were running dead even at 47 percent one week ago.
OBAMA LEADS IN OHIO
In Ohio, the state that decided the 2004 election with a narrow win for Bush, Obama has opened a 6-point edge. He also has a 6-point lead on McCain in Virginia and an 8-point advantage in fast-growing Nevada.
Obama leads McCain by a statistically insignificant 1 point, 47 percent to 46 percent, in Missouri. McCain has the same 1-point edge in traditionally Republican North Carolina.
McCain has a solid 5-point lead in Indiana, which has not supported a Democrat for president since 1964. Obama has worked to put Indiana in the Democratic column, and plans a visit there on Election Day to try to help turn out the vote.
In the national poll, Obama leads by 15 points among independents and by 13 points among women, two crucial voting blocs in Tuesday's election. He leads by 1 point among men and among all age groups except those between the ages of 55 and 69, who favor McCain by 1 point.
McCain leads among whites by 13 percentage points but is only attracting about 25 percent of Hispanics. In 2004, Bush won more than 40 percent of Hispanics.
Both independent Ralph Nader and Libertarian Bob Barr were at 1 percent in the survey, with about 2 percent of voters still undecided.
The rolling tracking poll, taken Thursday through Saturday, surveyed 1,205 likely voters in the presidential election. In a tracking poll, the most recent day's results are added, while the oldest day's results are dropped to monitor changing momentum.
The state surveys also were taken Thursday through Saturday with a sample in each state of between 600 and 605 likely voters. The margin of error in all eight states was 4.1 percentage points.

World News : Sarah Palin's Myth of America???

Sarah Palin has arrived in our midst with the force of a rocket-propelled grenade. She has boosted John McCain's candidacy and overwhelmed the presidential process in a way that no vice-presidential pick has since Thomas Eagleton did the precise opposite — sinking his sponsor, George McGovern, in 1972. Obviously, something beyond politics is happening here. We don't really know Palin as a politician yet, whether she is wise or foolhardy, substantive or empty. Our fascination with her — and it is a nonpartisan phenomenon — is driven by something more primal. The Palin surge illuminates the mythic power of the Republican Party's message since the advent of Ronald Reagan.

To start with the obvious, she's attractive. Her husband ("And two decades and five children later, he's still my guy...") is a hunk. They have a gorgeous family, made more touching and credible by the challenges their children face. Her voice is more distinctive than her looks: that flat, northern twang that screams, I'm just like you! Actually, the real message is: I'm just like you want to be, a brilliantly spectacular...average American. The Palins win elections and snowmobile races in a state that represents the last, lingering hint of that most basic Huckleberry Finn fantasy — lighting out for the territories. She quoted Westbrook Pegler, the F.D.R.-era conservative columnist, in her acceptance speech: "We grow good people in our small towns..." And then added, "I grew up with those people. They're the ones who do some of the hardest work in America, who grow our food and run our factories and fight our wars. They love their country in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America."

Except that's not really true. We haven't been a nation of small towns for nearly a century. It is the suburbanites and city dwellers who do the fighting and hourly-wage work now, and the corporations who grow our food. But Palin's embrace of small-town values is where her hold on the national imagination begins. She embodies the most basic American myth — Jefferson's yeoman farmer, the fantasia of rural righteousness — updated in a crucial way: now Mom works too. Palin's story stands with one foot squarely in the nostalgia for small-town America and the other in the new middle-class reality. She brings home the bacon, raises the kids — with a significant assist from Mr. Mom — hunts moose and looks great in the process. I can't imagine a more powerful, or current, American Dream.

Nearly 50 years ago, in The Burden of Southern History, the historian C. Vann Woodward argued that the South was profoundly different from the rest of America because it was the only part of the country that had lost a war: "Southern history, unlike American...includes not only an overwhelming military defeat but long decades of defeat in the provinces of economic, social and political life." Woodward believed that this heritage led Southerners to be more obsessed with the past than other Americans were — at its worst, in popular works like Gone With the Wind, there was a gagging nostalgia for a courtly antebellum South that never really existed.

During the past 50 years, the rest of the country has caught up to the South in the nostalgia department. We lost a war in Vietnam; Iraq hasn't gone so well either. And there are two other developments that have cut into the sense of American perfection. The middle class has begun to lose altitude — there isn't the certainty anymore that our children will live better than we do. More important, the patina of cultural homogeneity that camouflaged 1950s suburbia has vanished. We have become more obviously multiracial. There are lifestyle choices that were nearly unimaginable in 1960 — the widespread use of the birth control pill, the legalization of abortion, the feminist and gay-rights revolutions, the breakdown of the two-parent family. With the advent of television, these changes became inescapable. They intruded upon the most traditional families in the smallest towns. The political impact was a conservative reaction of enormous vehemence.

Enter Reagan. His vision of the future was the past. He offered the temporal pleasures of tax cuts and an unambiguous anticommunism, but his real tug was on the heartstrings — it was "Morning in America." The Republican Party of Wall Street faded before the power of nostalgia for Main Street...at least a Main Street that existed before America began losing wars, became ostentatiously sexy and casually interracial. In his presidential debate with Jimmy Carter, Reagan talked about an America that existed "when I was young and when this country didn't even know it had a racial problem." The blinding whiteness and fervent religiosity of the party he created are an enduring testament to the power of the myth of an America that existed before we had all these problems. The power of Sarah Palin is that she is the latest, freshest iteration of that myth.

The Republican Party's subliminal message seems stronger than ever this year because of the nature of the Democratic nominee for President. Barack Obama could not exist in the small-town America that Reagan fantasized. He's the product of what used to be called miscegenation, a scenario that may still be more terrifying than a teen daughter's pregnancy in many American households. Furthermore, he has thrived in the culture and economy that displaced Main Street America — an economy where people no longer work in factories or make things with their hands, but where lawyers and traders prosper unduly. (Of course, this is the economy the Republican Party has promoted — but facts are powerless in the face of a potent mythology.) Obama is the precise opposite of Mountain Man Todd Palin: an entirely urban creature. He lives within the hilarious conundrum of being both too "cosmopolitan" and intellectual for Republican tastes — at least as Rudy Giuliani described it — while also being the sort of fellow suspected of getting ahead by affirmative action.

The Democrats have no myth to counter this powerful Republican fantasy. They had to spend their convention on the biographical defensive: Barack Obama really is "one of us," speaker after speaker insisted. Really. Democrats do have the facts in their favor. Polls show that Americans agree with them on the issues. The Bush Administration has been a disaster on many fronts. The McCain campaign has provided only the sketchiest policy proposals; it has spent most of its time trying to divert the national conversation away from matters of substance. But Americans like stories more than issues. Policy proposals are useful in the theater of presidential politics only inasmuch as they illuminate character: far more people are aware of the fact that Palin put the state jet on eBay than know that she imposed a windfall-profits tax on oil companies as governor and was a porkaholic as mayor of Wasilla.

So Obama faces an uphill struggle between now and Nov. 4. He has no personal anecdotes to match Palin's mooseburgers. His story of a boy whose father came from Kenya and mother from Kansas takes place in an America not yet mythologized, a country that is struggling to be born — a multiracial country whose greatest cultural and economic strength is its diversity. It is the country where our children already live and that our parents will never really know, a country with a much greater potential for justice and creativity — and perhaps even prosperity — than the sepia-tinted version of Main Street America. But that vision is not sellable right now to a critical mass of Americans. They live in a place, not unlike C. Vann Woodward's South, where myths are more potent than the hope of getting past the dour realities they face each day.

World News : Sarah Palin's Myth of America???

World News : Mark Foley cought on Republican SXX Scandal ??

The Mark Foley scandal, which broke in late September 2006, centers on soliciting e-mails and sexually explicit instant messages sent by Mark Foley, a Republican Congressman from Florida, to teenaged boys who had formerly served as congressional pages.The scandal has grown to encompass the response of Republican congressional leaders to previous complaints about Foley's contacts with the pages and inconsistencies in the leaders' public statements.There are also allegations that a second Republican Congressman, Jim Kolbe, had improper conduct with at least two youths, a 16-year old page and a recently graduated page.

The scandal led to Foley's resignation from Congress on September 29, 2006. It is believed to have contributed to the Republican Party's loss of control over Congress in the November 7, 2006 election, as well as the end of House Speaker Dennis Hastert's leadership of the House Republicans. Kirk Fordham, chief of staff to Rep. Tom Reynolds and former chief of staff for Foley, also resigned as a result of the scandal.

The questionable conversations, which took place between 1995 and 2005, are under investigation by the FBI and Florida officials for possible criminal violations. The House Ethics Committee is investigating the response of the House Republican leadership and their staff to earlier warnings of Foley's conduct.In early October 2006, two news organizations quoted anonymous former pages saying they had sexual liaisons with Foley after turning 18 and 21.

Foley was chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, which introduced legislation targeting sexual predators and created stricter guidelines for tracking them.

Mark Foley, Republican Representative, Florida Sixteenth Congressional District. Resigned after trying to solicit sex from male congressional pages via an instant messenger program.

The conversations included his asking a sixteen-year-old “stud” whether his penis was erect and requesting that he take out and measure his penis. The cover-up involved Republican House Majority Leader John Boehner (how appropriate), Ohio Eighth Congressional District and Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Illinois Fourteenth District.

World News : Mark Foley cought on Republican SXX Scandal ??

World News : Obama To Palin - Don't Mock The Constitution??

FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. -- Sen. Barack Obama delivered an impassioned defense of the Constitution and the rights of terrorism suspects tonight, striking back at one of the biggest applause lines in Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's speech to the GOP convention.

It was in St. Paul last week that Palin drew raucous cheers when she delivered this put-down of Obama: "Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America and he's worried that someone won't read them their rights."

Obama had a few problems with that.

"First of all, you don't even get to read them their rights until you catch 'em," Obama said here, drawing laughs from 1,500 supporters in a high school gymnasium. "They should spend more time trying to catch Osama bin Laden and we can worry about the next steps later."

If the plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks are in the government's sights, Obama went on, they should be targeted and killed.

"My position has always been clear: If you've got a terrorist, take him out," Obama said. "Anybody who was involved in 9/11, take 'em out."

But Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago for more than a decade, said captured suspects deserve to file writs of habeus corpus.

Calling it "the foundation of Anglo-American law," he said the principle "says very simply: If the government grabs you, then you have the right to at least ask, 'Why was I grabbed?' And say, 'Maybe you've got the wrong person.'"

The safeguard is essential, Obama continued, "because we don't always have the right person."

"We don't always catch the right person," he said. "We may think it's Mohammed the terrorist, but it might be Mohammed the cab driver. You might think it's Barack the bomb-thrower, but it might be Barack the guy running for president."

Obama turned back to Palin's comment, although he said he was not sure whether Palin or Rudy Giuliani said it.

"The reason that you have this principle is not to be soft on terrorism. It's because that's who we are. That's what we're protecting," Obama said, his voice growing louder and the crowd rising to its feet to cheer. "Don't mock the Constitution. Don't make fun of it. Don't suggest that it's not American to abide by what the founding fathers set up. It's worked pretty well for over 200 years."

He finished with a dismissive comment about his opponents.

"These people."

World News : Obama To Palin - Don't Mock The Constitution??

World News : Earmarks is hot topics for McCain, Palin criticize Obama ??
LEE'S SUMMIT, Mo. - John McCain and Sarah Palin criticized Democrat Barack Obama over the amount of money he has requested for his home state of Illinois, even though Alaska under Palin's leadership has asked Washington for 10 times more money per citizen for pet projects.

At a rally in swing state Missouri, the Republican presidential nominee and his running mate accused Obama of requesting nearly $1 billion in earmarks for his state during his time as a senator. The new line of attack came after Obama made his first direct criticism of Palin over the weekend, using the topic of earmarks, which are special projects that lawmakers try to get for their districts and constituents.

"Just the other day our opponent brought up earmarks — and frankly I was surprised that he would even raise the subject at all," Palin said. "I thought he wouldn't want to go there."

Obama hasn't asked for any earmarks this year. Last year, he asked for $311 million worth, about $25 for every Illinois resident. Alaska asked this year for earmarks totaling $198 million, about $295 for every Alaska citizen.

Palin has cut back on pork project requests, but under her administration, Alaska is still and by far the largest per-capita consumer of federal pet-project spending.

The governor did reject plans to build the notorious "Bridge to Nowhere" after Congress had cut off its financing.

McCain and Palin were presented as a maverick team in a campaign ad released Monday that played up their reputation for taking on entrenched interests. The ad credits Palin with stopping the bridge without mentioning she once appeared to support it.

President Bush, who came to Washington as a former Texas governor without national legislative experience, called the Alaska governor "an inspired pick" by McCain.

"She's had executive experience, and that's what it takes to be a capable person in here in Washington, D.C., in the executive branch," he said in a Fox News interview to be shown Tuesday. In Rome, Vice President Dick Cheney also sought to deflect Democratic criticism that Palin, a former small-town mayor with less than two years in the governor's office, lacks the gravity to be vice president.

"Each administration is different," he said. "And there's no reason why Sarah Palin can't be a successful vice president in a McCain administration." He said her convention speech was superb.

In attacking Obama on Monday, McCain said the Illinois senator's earmark total over the years amounts to "almost a million dollars for every single day he was in the United States Senate."

For his part, McCain doesn't seek pork projects and vows to do away with them as president.

While speaking to voters in Indiana over the weekend, Obama ridiculed the idea of McCain and Palin presenting themselves as reformers, and suggested Palin was distorting her own record on earmarks.

"I know the governor of Alaska has been saying she's change, and that's great," Obama said Saturday. "She's a skillful politician. But, you know, when you've been taking all these earmarks when it's convenient, and then suddenly you're the champion anti-earmark person, that's not change. Come on! I mean, words mean something, you can't just make stuff up."

In a conference call with reporters, Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania questioned McCain's assertions that Palin has the necessary experience and record.

"I think she has tremendous potential, but she in no way shape or form is ready to be president of the United States," said Rendell, who knows Palin through the National Governors Association. "And that's something we've got to get across to the American people."

World News : Earmarks is hot topics for McCain, Palin criticize Obama ??

World news: Cindy McCain or Michelle Obama for the White House?

Cindy Lou Hensley McCain (born May 20, 1954) is an American businessperson and philanthropist, who is the wife of United States Senator and 2000 and 2008 presidential candidate John McCain of Arizona. She is chair of Hensley & Co.,one of the largest Anheuser-Busch beer distributors in the United States.

She founded and ran a non-profit organization, the American Voluntary Medical Team, from 1988 to 1995 that organized trips by medical personnel to disaster-struck or war-torn third-world areas. She continues to be an active philanthropist and serves on the boards of several charitable organizations.

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (born January 17, 1964) is an American lawyer and the wife of Illinois senator Barack Obama, the 2008 Democratic nominee for President. She was born and grew up on the South Side of Chicago and graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School. After completing her formal education, she returned to Chicago and went to work for the law firm Sidley Austin, on the staff of the Mayor of Chicago Richard M. Daley, and for the University of Chicago and the University of Chicago Hospitals. She is the sister of Craig Robinson, men's basketball coach at Oregon State University.

She met Barack when he went to work for Sidley Austin. The Obamas live on Chicago's South Side, choosing to remain there rather than moving to Washington, D.C.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Cindy McCain or Michelle Obama for the White House?
Among fashionistas, the wives of the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama are drawing the kind of enthusiasm that Nancy Reagan and Jacqueline Kennedy once attracted.

As might be expected, style mavens' critiques focus less on what the potential first ladies say or do than on what they wear.

While Obama won fans for wearing a relatively affordable $150 dress on talk show "The View," McCain drew attention for her expensive tastes. Vanity Fair magazine estimated one outfit she wore at the Republican National Convention this week was worth $300,000.

The choice a week ago of John McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who took part in beauty pageants in her youth, also has caused a buzz. But Mickey Blum, director of survey research at Baruch College, said her style could not be compared to McCain and Obama.

"That's a different look because you have to look a little bit more serious and professional," Blum said.

The consensus at New York Fashion Week is that both potential first ladies have style but most designers in the traditionally Democratic-leaning industry would much rather have the chance to dress Obama over McCain.

"I am in the fashion industry, I live in New York -- I'm probably not going to go for McCain to dress," designer Rebecca Taylor told Reuters.

"Michelle is really fresh and she could sort of go where Jackie O went given the right sort of tools and grooming," she said. "I think it could be nice for America to have somebody who's a little bit more stylish as their first lady."

Obama, 44, is a Princeton and Harvard educated lawyer who has appeared in Vogue and was named on Vanity Fair's 2008 International Best Dressed List for the second time.

PURPLE DRESS DREW PRAISE

Obama has won particular praise for a purple sheath dress and black belt she wore at a rally in June when her husband clinched the Democratic nomination as candidate for the Nov. 4 election.

"She has a kind of style which is accessible and also spans generations, it appeals to young girls and their grandmothers, it translates across class lines (and) racial lines," said Amy Fine Collins, special correspondent with Vanity Fair.

"Cindy McCain's look is one we are familiar with, she's absolutely right and absolutely appropriate for the role she's in, but it doesn't feel new," she said. "She has expensive tastes and less of a grab-it-and-go approach to clothes."

McCain, 54, chairs her family's business, beer distributor Hensley and Co., and has worked for international charities. Imogen Fox wrote in Britain's The Guardian newspaper that McCain is "always immaculate, with never a hair out of place."

"But this striving for perfection is also her un-doing: she doesn't know how to have fun with fashion," she said.

Designers and commentators note McCain favors tailored jackets and skirts, while Obama tends to wear dresses.

Designer Michael Angel said he would prefer to dress Obama and would create "the ultimate little shift dress" for her in a print silk twill. For McCain he could contribute a printed silk blouse for her to wear under one of her suits.

Raul Melgoza, creative director at Luca Luca, said he would be happy dressing either woman.

"Although they are different personalities -- McCain being more western and Obama being compared to Kennedy -- I feel like the common thread between them both is that they have a classic sensibility to their clothing," Melgoza told Reuters.

If the style of Obama and McCain has fashionistas buzzing, does it have any influence in the campaign?

"I don't think anyone's going to win or lose based on what the wives are wearing," Blum said. "What it does is give a general impression of what the wife is like and maybe family."

"Cindy McCain may have a look that's almost a little too polished and put together and her clothes might look a bit too expensive and out of reach for the average person," Blum said. "Michelle Obama dresses in clothes that seem much more accessible to ordinary women and working moms."

For Tim Gunn, style guru and mentor to the fledgling fashion designers on the television reality show "Project Runway," there is no contest.

"Michelle really epitomizes American style and she's not afraid to show her shape," he told New York Magazine.

"She's just an alluring woman. And Cindy with her suits, and she's all buttoned up, she's just soooo -- she just looks like she's duct-taped!"

(Additional reporting by Jan Paschal)

Copyright © 2008 Reuters

World news: Cindy McCain or Michelle Obama for the White House?

Rachida Dati is the first woman from a non-European immigrant background, to occupy a key ministerial position in the French Cabinet.

She was elected mayor of the 7th arrondissement of Paris on 29 March 2008.

Rachida Dati : Sarkozy's former 'girlfriend' Justice Minister Rachida Dati reveals she is pregnant??

A senior French minister linked romantically with President Nicolas Sarkozy during his bachelor days today confirmed she was pregnant through an unnamed lover.

Rachida Dati, 42, admitted she led a "complicated private life" and that "I want to be careful because I'm still at a risky stage."

It was only at the end of last year, following Mr Sarkozy's divorce from his second wife, that the Justice Minister was said to have been a girlfriend.

At a New Year's Eve party Carla Bruni - also competing for the president's affections at the time - is said to have pointed at a double bed in the Elysée Palace and - turning to Miss Dati - said: "You’d have loved to occupy it, wouldn't you?"

The scene is recounted in the highly authoritative book "Carla and Nicolas - The True Story", which charts the couple's 80-day romance which culminated in marriage in February.

Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy, whose past lovers include Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, resented Miss Dati's friendship with the president, the book claims.

The book says the women "who were just getting to know each other, were also learning how to detest each other". Miss Bruni finally married the President in February.
Miss Dati, who has never been married and is famous for her sexy choice of designer clothes, has been championed by Mr Sarkozy for many years, with constant rumours that they were having an affair before he met the then Miss Bruni.

Opponents have attacked her for being too frivolous for a senior office of state - giving her the cruel nickname “Rachida Barbie”, as in Barbie Doll.

Miss Dati is a close friend of Mr Sarkozy's ex-wife, Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz, who called her "my little sister" - making the new Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy dislike her even more.

Miss Dati confirmed rumours to reporters in Paris, adding: "I will say nothing more for the moment about the father."

Today media reports named former Spanish premier Jose Aznar as the father - a charge he vehemently denied, threatening legal action.

The minister's swelling figure, photographed outside a cabinet meeting last month as the government returned from its summer break, fuelled a storm of media rumours about her pregnancy.

Miss Dati said it was "fundamental" for her to have a child, adding: "I will be happy and feel as if I have completed the circle. If not I will be deeply sad, but I will put a coat of lipstick on it, and carry the burden on my own."

As the only woman from an ethnic minority - and the only French Arab - to reach the cabinet, Miss Dati often says she feels she is perfectly entitled to enjoy herself.

Questioned by Paris Match about her love for Prada, Chanel and Dior earlier this year she said:

“Ever since I was little I had a taste for being well dressed. It’s a question of showing respect towards others.”

The latest controversy is likely to be like water off a duck’s back for the tough Miss Dati, one of twelve children of a Moroccan bricklayer and an illiterate Algerian housewife.

She suffered far worse abuse last month when her younger brothers Omar Dati and Jamal Dati were given prison sentences for drug dealing.

Both had previous convictions for trafficking illegal substances including heroin and cannabis.

The fact that a Justice Minister’s family were doing time in the prisons she was responsible for running did not create positive headlines.

Miss Dait, who left school at 16 but studied at night to gain degrees in economic and law before become a magistrate, rejected the notion that she should be a role model. She said: “My life is not a beautiful story."

In 1997, she was admitted to the École nationale de la magistrature, a public educational institution which offers courses necessary to become a magistrate. Upon leaving in 1999, she became a legal auditor at the Bobigny tribunal de grande instance (high court).

She went on to become judge for collective procedures^[3] at the tribunal de grande instance in Péronne and eventually an assistant to the attorney general of the Évry tribunal.

In 2002, she became Nicolas Sarkozy's advisor, working for him on an anti-delinquancy project). In 2006, she joined the UMP party. On January 14 2007, she was named spokeswoman for Sarkozy on the day he was chosen as UMP candidate for the presidential elections of April 2007 .

After Nicolas Sarkozy's victory on May 6 2007, she was appointed Minister of Justice. Her first changes were received coldly by professionals,with public demonstrations.

Dati has been criticized by the satirical weekly Le Canard enchaîné for her methods (perceived as rushed and uninsightful) and her demeanour (seen as excessively authoritarian), and for her alleged tendency to show off in costly clothes, mostly Christian Dior.

Rachida Dati : Sarkozy's former 'girlfriend' Justice Minister Rachida Dati reveals she is pregnant??

Born to a Moroccan father, a bricklayer, and an Algerian mother, Rachida Dati is the second child of a family of 12. She spent her childhood in Chalon-sur-Saône in Burgundy.
After attending Catholic school, she began work at 16 as a paramedical assistant. She then worked for three years as an accountant at Elf Aquitaine while continuing her studies in economics and business management.

After meeting Jean-Luc Lagardère in 1990, she entered the audit management team of Matra Nortel communication. She later spent a year in London at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, in the records management and archiving department. In 1994, she was an auditing supervisor and secretary-general of the bureau of urban development studies at Suez (then Lyonnaise des Eaux). From 1995 to 1997, she worked as a technical advisor at the legal management division of the Ministry of Education.

Rachida Dati: Courts trouble in a little Dior dress??
By posing in a Dior dress and high-heeled boots, President Sarkozy’s glamorous Justice Minister has fuelled a revolt by judges and lawyers who are accusing her of destroying the fabric of the French justice system.

As Rachida Dati, 42, defended herself yesterday over supposedly frivolous pictures for Paris Match magazine, 37 lawyers chained themselves to a courthouse in the southern town of Bourgoin in protest against her decision to close 300 tribunals across France.

Ms Dati, who is Mr Sarkozy’s closest protégée and Cabinet icon of racial diversity, has drawn the wrath of the legal profession since she began to prune the sprawling court system this autumn. Judges’ unions, court staff and lawyers are staging marches, hunger strikes and working to rule in order to reverse her reforms.

For many judges and lawyers, Ms Dati’s decision to flaunt her looks in Paris Match was a provocation by a woman who has shown contempt towards the hardship that she is imposing. Bruno Thouzellier, president of the Syndical Union of Judges (USM), lamented “the contrast between her show of riches, dresses by grand couturiers and grand hotels and the difficult reality that justice personnel are living through”.

he trade unions are also unhappy that Ms Dati spends time accompanying Mr Sarkozy on most of his foreign trips.

The minister came under fire yesterday from Élisabeth Guigou, a former Socialist Justice Minister, for cultivating a sexy image that conflicted with her solemn function.

“This ministry occupies a special role in the State, dealing with serious subjects such as prisons,” Ms Guigou told Ms Dati in an interview for VSD magazine in the minister’s office. “You have to be careful about glamour images . . . Since your nomination, people are a little too interested in the anecdotal side of your personality.”

Ironically, Ms Guigou, a former protégée of the late President Mitterrand, suffered in the 1990s from the same nickname that is now Ms Dati’s — the Barbie Doll minister.

Ms Dati, a one-time magistrate with no political experience, is unrepentant over her glossy image despite a drop of a dozen points in her approval rating over the past month as she has faced the judicial rebellion.

Questioned about her love for Prada, Chanel and Dior, she said: “Ever since I was little I had a taste for being well dressed. It’s a question of showing respect towards others,” she told Paris Match.

As the child of poor immigrants from Algeria and Morocco, Ms Dati argues that she has earned the right to enjoy fine clothes. Her view springs straight from Mr Sarkozy’s doctrine that there is nothing wrong with flaunting the fruits of hard-earned success.

In her interview, Ms Dati also said that she loved parties and was not neglecting her romantic life. The minister is said by French media to be in a close relationship with one of Mr Sarkozy’s industrialist friends.

The President has been defending her fiercely, admiring the way that she stands out from the traditional justice world, “those grey-haired men all ranked together like peas in a pod”, as he put it on television last month.

Rachida Dati: Courts trouble in a little Dior dress??

Rachida Dati (born 27 November 1965 in Saint-Rémy, Burgundy) is a French politician. She holds two nationalities, French and Moroccan (French by jus soli and Moroccan by jus sanguinis) – although she calls herself "a French woman of French origins". A spokesperson for French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy in the election of 2007, he appointed her Minister of Justice on 18 May 2007.
Dati is the first woman from a non-European immigrant background, to occupy a key ministerial position in the French Cabinet.
She was elected mayor of the 7th arrondissement of Paris on 29 March 2008.

In September 2008, Dati announced her pregnancy and the fact she would be a single mother. She revealed her pregnancy to a small group of reporters who questioned her about the mounting rumours. "I want to remain careful, because . . . I am still in the risky stage. I am 42," she was quoted as saying

Rachida Dati : Rachida Dati seduce of Nicolas Sarkozy??

The 40-year-old model and singer pointed at a double bed in the Elysée Palace and - turning to justice minister Rachida Dati, who is 42 and single - said: "You’d have loved to occupy it, wouldn't you?"

The scene is reounted in Carla and Nicolas - The True Story, which charts the couple's 80-day romance which culminated in marriage in February.

What makes the book, by respected journalists Yves Azéroual and Valérie Benaïm, so remarkable is that Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy is quoted throughout.

It is the first time that a French first lady has discussed her life with the president in intimate detail - something likely to shock many in France, a conservative country which has some of the strictest privacy laws in the world.

Twice-divorced Mr Sarkozy, 53, met his latest wife at a Paris dinner party last November.

It was frequently rumoured that he enjoyed a close relationship with Miss Dati.

Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy, whose past lovers include Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, resented Miss Dati's friendship with the president, the book claims.

Following a New Year's Eve dinner at the Elysée, Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy and Miss Dati were walking in the palace's private apartments when the then Miss Bruni is said to have pointed at Mr Sarkozy's bed and said: "You'd have loved to occupy it, wouldn't you?"

The book says the women "who were just getting to know each other, were also learning how to detest each other".

Miss Dati was a close friend of Mr Sarkozy's ex-wife, Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz, who called her "my little sister" - making the new Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy dislike her even more.

Miss Ciganer-Albéniz, who has since married Richard Attias, an events planner, has made some claims of her own about the women in her former husband's life.

In Cécilia, a book by the French journalist Anna Biton, Miss Ciganer-Albéniz called the president's female friends a "bunch of slappers" and young female government ministers "boring wallflowers".

She also branded Mr Sarkozy a "stingy philanderer" with a "behavioural problem" who is an "unworthy president" of France.

Recalling her first meeting with Mr Sarkozy - who is some almost five inches smaller than his statuesque first lady - Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy says: "I didn't expect him to be that funny, and so lively."

The dinner party was the home of public relations Jacques Séguéla, with Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy saying: "When I arrived, I realised that it was a blind date.

"There were three couples and the two of us, two single people. It was love at first sight."

She adds: "His physique, his charm, and his intelligence have all seduced me. He has five or six brains and is remarkably clever.

"I've never dated a half-wit before, it's not my style. But him; he's very, very quick. And he's got an incredible memory."

In words which will also infuriate many in France, Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy underplays her official role - saying she would much rather concentrate on her musical career.

She says: "I have no intention of changing my job. I have a function, but it's not a job. A function like mine is not a job, I inherited it with my marriage."

Commenting on the president's workload, Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy says: "I'm often scared for him. It's unimaginable how much work he does so I try to help him to look after himself."

Referring to the ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus, a king punished by being cursed to roll a huge boulder up a hill for eternity only to watch it roll down again, Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy said Mr Sarkozy is: "Like all of us, a bit like Sisyphus, he likes to push the rock. But he's made of stern stuff. Three rays of sunshine and he finds life magnificent."

On Wednesday both the Elysée Palace and Ministry of Justice in Paris said they had no comment to make about the love lives of senior ministers, let alone the president.

But government sources pointed to extracts in the book in which the frosty relationship between Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy and Miss Dati is played down.

It points out that Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy, a multi-millionaire in her own right, helped Miss Dati during her campaign to become mayor of Paris's VIIth arrondissement.

Referring to Miss Dati, Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy says: "I see her frequently, she makes me smile a lot. The rumours must come from claims that she's a friend of the ex-wife of my husband.

"But there's no hostility between us.

"I sent her the two addresses of friends so she could have meetings in their apartments during the municipal campaign."

Making it clear that her official role has made concerts impossible, Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy said: "All that has changed is that I can't tour. At least not while my husband is president of the Republic. It's something I'll have to get used to."

Rachida Dati : Rachida Dati seduce of Nicolas Sarkozy??

In 2006, running on a clean-government platform, Palin defeated then-Governor Murkowski in the Republican gubernatorial primary. Her running mate was State Senator Sean Parnell. Senator Stevens made a last-moment endorsement and filmed a TV commercial together with Palin for the gubernatorial campaign.

In August, she declared that education, public safety, and transportation would be the three cornerstones of her administration. Despite spending less than her Democratic opponent, she won the gubernatorial election in November, defeating former Governor Tony Knowles 48.3% to 40.9%.

Palin became Alaska's first female governor and, at 42, the youngest in Alaskan history. She is the first Alaskan governor born after Alaska achieved U.S. statehood and the first governor not inaugurated in Juneau; she chose to have the ceremony in Fairbanks instead. She took office on December 4, 2006, and has maintained a high approval rating throughout her term.

She sometimes broke with the state Republican establishment. For example, she endorsed Parnell's bid to unseat the state's longtime at-large U.S. Representative, Don Young. Palin also publicly challenged Senator Ted Stevens to come clean about the ongoing federal investigation into his financial dealings. Shortly before his July 2008 indictment, she held a joint news conference with Stevens, described by The Washington Post as being "to make clear she had not abandoned him politically."

Sarah Palin : She sent e-mails complaining of trooper??
Gov. Sarah Palin sent e-mails to the state's top police official, criticizing Alaska State Troopers for their investigation of an officer who went through a bitter divorce with her sister, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

Former Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan showed copies of the e-mails to The Washington Post. He didn't provide copies to the newspaper, but said he has turned copies over to an investigator probing the firing for the Legislature.

Monegan has said he felt pressured by Palin family members and her administration to fire Trooper Mike Wooten, whom they say threatened to kill Palin's father, among other accusations, all taking place before she became governor. Monegan was fired by Palin in July.

The Post reported on its Web site that the e-mails were sent from Palin's personal Yahoo account. In one, dated Feb. 7, 2007, it says of the investigation of Wooten: "This trooper is still out on the street, in fact he's been promoted."

"It was a joke, the whole long 'investigation' of him," says the e-mail, sent giving Monegan permission to speak before a bill being heard by the Legislature. "This is the same trooper who's out there today telling people the new administration is going to destroy the trooper organization, and that he'd 'never work for that b '," Palin'.)"

The second e-mail was sent July 17, 2007, discussing a bill before lawmakers that would prevent the mentally ill from having guns.

The e-mail says the first thought "went to my ex-brother-in-law, the trooper, who threatened to kill my dad yet was not even reprimanded by his bosses and still to this day carried a gun, of course."

Palin has strongly denied that Monegan's dismissal had anything to do with her former brother-in-law. She said she never pressured the commissioner to fire her sister's ex-husband and no one from her office had complained about Wooten.

Monegan has said he was never told directly to fire Wooten but felt pressured by members of the governor's family and administration.

There was no answer at Monegan's rural Anchorage home on Wednesday afternoon, and his phone rang unanswered.

Messages left by The Associated Press with the McCain campaign and with her office were not immediately returned.

The content of the e-mails surfaced as an aide to Palin refused to give a deposition to a legislative investigator reviewing Palin's firing of Monegan.

An attorney for Palin aide Frank Bailey questions whether the Legislature has jurisdiction to investigate Monegan's dismissal. The position taken by attorney Greg Grebe on Bailey's behalf echoes the argument by a lawyer hired by the state to defend Palin and her office in the investigation.

When the investigation was launched, Palin said she and her staff would cooperate fully with the investigation.

On Wednesday, Palin's lawyer, Thomas Van Flein, released a letter sent the previous day, asking the state to suspend the investigation until the question of jurisdiction is resolved.

If granted, it could delay announcing whether the investigator found that Palin abused her power in dismissing the commissioner. The results were expected Oct. 31, a week before the November election.

Van Flein on Tuesday also asked the state's personnel board to investigate the firing, trying to pre-empt the legislative investigation.

In 2005, before Palin ran for office, the Palin family accused trooper Mike Wooten of drinking beer in his patrol car, illegally shooting a moose and firing a Taser at his 11-year-old stepson. Palin and her husband, Todd, also claimed Wooten threatened to kill Sarah Palin's father. Wooten, who hasn't returned numerous phone calls left by The Associated Press this week, was suspended over the allegations for five days in 2006 but still has his job.

Palin was elected governor in 2006.

In July, the legislature launched a $100,000 investigation into whether Palin abused her power in firing Monegan.

Monegan has said no one told him directly to fire Wooten, but has said he felt pressure from Palin's family members, including her husband Todd, and administration to do so.

At the time Palin fired him, the governor said she wanted the department to move in a new direction. But later, after Monegan said he felt pressured to fire Wooten, Palin at a news conference said Monegan wasn't a team player, didn't do enough to fill trooper vacancies and battle alcohol abuse issues in rural Alaska.

Grebe said he expects Palin's attorney to file a court challenge to determine which agency has jurisdiction, perhaps as early as Thursday.

When he learned this, Grebe said he told Bailey not to keep his Tuesday evening appointment until jurisdiction could be determined by a judge or agreed upon by Van Flein and the Legislature's investigator, Stephen Branchflower.

"I can't choose one side or the other," Grebe said. "That's not our place to decide that. Normally courts decide disputes like that, so I'll wait to hear from them first."

Neither Van Flein nor Bailey, the director of boards and commissioners who is on paid administrative leave, could be reached Wednesday for comment.

Sen. Hollis French, an Anchorage Democrat overseeing the investigation, said Bailey is the first person who refused to testify.

"It slows down the work that Mr. Branchflower is doing," French said. "Steve went through a lot of trouble to set up this date.

"It's still premature to say the governor is not cooperating because Bailey has his own lawyer doing this."

Bailey was caught on tape questioning an Alaska State Trooper official why an officer who went through a bitter divorce with Palin's sister was still employed.

In the recorded conversation, Bailey said: "Todd and Sarah are scratching their heads, why on earth hasn't, why is this guy still representing the department? He's a horrible recruiting tool. ... You know, I mean from their perspective, everyone's protecting him."

Palin called the conversation "most disturbing" and "problematic."

At the time Bailey, a mid-level administrator, told The Associated Press that he was worried for the governor's safety and acted on his own without telling Palin or her family.

Grebe said Bailey plans to maintain his stance on what happened, but won't do so until a judge has ruled on the jurisdiction.

"He's going to say the same thing all along, that he overstepped his bounds and the mistake was made by him," Grebe said. "I'm hoping for one shot at this but only when somebody can show me they have jurisdiction for what they are doing."

Sarah Palin : She sent e-mails complaining of trooper??

Palin was born Sarah Louise Heath in Sandpoint, Idaho, the third of four children of Sarah Heath (née Sheeran), a school secretary, and Charles R. Heath, a science teacher and track coach. Her family moved to Alaska when she was an infant. As a child, she would sometimes go moose hunting with her father before school, and the family regularly ran 5K and 10K races.

Palin attended Wasilla High School in Wasilla, Alaska, where she was the head of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter at the school, and the point guard and captain of the school's basketball team.She helped the team win the Alaska small-school basketball championship in 1982, hitting a critical free throw in the last seconds of the game, despite having an ankle stress fracture. She earned the nickname "Sarah Barracuda" because of her intense play and was the leader of the team prayer before games.

In 1984, Palin won the Miss Wasilla Pageant, then finished second in the Miss Alaska pageant, at which she won a college scholarship and the "Miss Congeniality" award.Palin admits to smoking marijuana as a youth, during the time when possession was legal in Alaska, though she says she did not enjoy it.

Palin attended Hawaii Pacific in Honolulu for a semester in 1982, majoring in Business Administration. She transferred in 1983 to North Idaho College.In 1987,Palin received a Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism from the University of Idaho, where she also minored in political science.

In 1988, she worked as a sports reporter for KTUU-TV in Anchorage, Alaska.She also helped in her husband’s family commercial fishing business.Palin also had a 20% ownership in an Anchorage car wash business, according to state corporation records filed in 2004. Palin failed to report her stake in the company when running for governor in 2006; in April 2007, the state issued a "certificate of involuntary dissolution" because of the company's failure to file its biennial report and pay state licensing fees.

Sarah Palin : McCain Nominated, Palin Slaps At Obama??

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) -- Republicans have nominated Senator John McCain for president, handing the senator the prize that eluded him eight years ago. By a roll call vote, the Arizona senator clinched his party's nod. The late-night vote was conducted after vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin addressed the Republican National Convention.

The self-described "hockey mom" has come out slashing. Alaska Governor Sarah Palin told delegates at the Republican National Convention that she's an outsider ready to join John McCain in helping to bring real change fo Washington. But Palin also unleashed a smiling attack on Barack Obama. She accused Obama of wanting to forfeit the victory in Iraq that "is finally in sight."

Palin said that "Al-Qaida terrorists" want to cause "catastrophic harm on America" and that Obama is "worried that someone won't read them their rights."

Palin was joined after the speech by her family and John McCain. He asked roaring delegates "Don't you think we made the right choice" for vice president? It was an apparent reference to the convention-week controversy that has greeted Palin, including the dislocusre that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter is pregnant.

Sarah Palin : McCain Nominated, Palin Slaps At Obama??