Sarah Palin’s attorney came out swinging this weekend , threatening legal action against bloggers and various media outlets for publishing fraudulent claims about the governor, who announced her intention to resign as governor last Friday.

Almost immediately afterwards [announced resignation], several unscrupulous people have asserted false and defamatory allegations that the “real” reasons for Governor Palin’s resignation stem from an alleged criminal investigation pertaining to the construction of the Wasilla Sports Complex. This canard was first floated by Democrat operatives in September 2008 during the national campaign and followed up by sympathetic Democratic writers.1 It was easily rebutted then as one of many fabrications about Sarah Palin. Just as power abhors a vacuum, modern journalism apparently abhors any type of due diligence and fact checking before scurrilous allegations are repeated as fact.

…

To the extent several websites, most notably liberal Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore, are now claiming as “fact” that Governor Palin resigned because she is “under federal investigation” for embezzlement or other criminal wrongdoing, we will be exploring legal options this week to address such defamation. This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who re-publish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law. The Alaska Constitution protects the right of free speech, while simultaneously holding those “responsible for the abuse of that right.” Alaska Constitution Art. I, Sec. 5. “These falsehoods abuse the right to free speech; continuing to publish these falsehoods of criminal activity is reckless, done without any regard for the truth, and is actionable.”

Palin also went out on the offensive over the 4th of July weekend, decrying her critics through Facebook:

The response in the main stream media has been most predictable, ironic, and as always, detached from the lives of ordinary Americans who are sick of the “politics of personal destruction”. How sad that Washington and the media will never understand; it’s about country. And though it’s honorable for countless others to leave their positions for a higher calling and without finishing a term, of course we know by now, for some reason a different standard applies for the decisions I make. But every American understands what it takes to make a decision because it’s right for all, including your family.

and Twitter (during the Sunday AM news shows)

Critics are spinning, so hang in there as they feed false info on the right decision made as I enter last yr in office to not run again….

so I’ll make attempt to keep up w/attaching corrected info. I head 2 West AK villages today, look forward to their busy comm fish activity!

Trying to keep up w/getting truth to u, like proof there’s no “FBI scandal”, here’s link http://tinyurl.com/nzlae8 Thanks, AK!

Palin’s news conference announcing her resignation is presented in all  its rambling, uncomfortable entirety below. It’s a struggle but worth the scenic and family cutaways…

Despite the growing turmoil in Iran over recent elections, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took time out from suppressing the will of the Iranian people by giving a shout out not only to gays, but to thieves and scumbags as well. From UK Gay News:

In his latest broadside against the pro-democracy protesters in Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accused his political opponents of ‘officially recognising thieves, homosexuals and scumbags’ in order to win their votes.

The remarks were made in a televised victory speech – the speech was quickly given the “dirt and dust” tag.

“The old tyrant has let the cat of the bag,” the human rights activist Peter Tatchell told UK Gay News this morning. “Gay people exist in Iran and they voted against him.”

Almost two years ago, President Ahmadinejad insisted in a now-famous speech, at Columbia University in New York, that there were “no gays” in Iran.

On a more serious note, things are likely to get uglier, and stay ugly, as the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has now endorsed the victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called an end to the protests, and for the deaths of the U.S. and the U.K. Britain’s Channel 4 below:

While I have not posted on the recent Iranian elections and their aftermath, I, like many of you, have watched the events unfold over the past several days, with a growing sense of both dread and hope. These brave Iranians are struggling for the soul for their nation, which at first glance, may make our fight for civil rights and LGBT equality seem less significant. Be we are both fighting for the same things. For the freedom to be heard. For the freedom to be who we are. Without repercussion. Without judgement.

Nico Pitney at the Huffington Post has been doing an incredible  job of covering the events as they develop, which is made infinitely more difficult by the media crackdown now in force in Iran. In this moving passage from Pitney’s updates which nearly brought me to tears, an Iranian woman wonders if she will survive the days ahead.

4:16 PM ET — “Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed.” A blog post in Persian, translated by the NIAC.

“I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It’s worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again. All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I’m two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children…”

I hope she lives, so that she will know freedom.

I wouldn’t normally post something like this as it falls outside the range of topics we normally cover but thought it was worth sharing. Filmmaker Max Blumenthal—whose work I’ve linked to before—shot the video below in Jerusalem on the eve of President Obama’s trip to Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The video which documents the views of young Israelis and Jewish Americans on President Obama, was yanked from the Huffington Post site with the following statement “I don’t see that it has any real news value … For me it only proves that one can find drunk people willing to say just about anything. Especially drunk, moronic people.” Inebriated or not, the video is very disturbing and NSFW. Watch:

Blumenthal addressed the censoring of the video on Mondoweiss:

The criticism of my video raised an interesting journalistic issue: Is reporting any less credible when interview subjects are drinking alcohol? Of course not. Journalists interview people at bars all the time, especially in broadcast packages. Beer does not, to my knowledge, contain a special drug that immediately infects drinkers with white supremacist sentiments, violent rhetoric, and anti-democratic tendencies. I get drunk as much as any social drinker and I have never called for “white power” or declared, “fuck the niggers!” as one of my interviewees did. No amount of alcohol could make me express opinions that were not authentically mine. If anything, alcohol is a crude form of truth serum that lubricates the release of closely held opinions and encourages confessional talk.

The notion that the racist diatribes in my video emerged spontaneously from a beery void is a delusion, but for some, it is a necessary one. It allows them to erect a psychological barrier against acknowledging the painful consequences of prolonged Zionist indoctrination. And it enables them to dismiss the disturbing spectacle of young Jews behaving like fascist soccer hooligans in the heart of the capitol of Israel and the spiritual home of the Jewish people.

The people in my video were not white trash, nor were they the “extreme right-wing fringe” as some bloggers have called them. They were the college-educated sons and daughters of middle and upper class American Jews from cosmopolitan metropolises and genteel suburbs. Some had come to Israel on vacation, some had made aliyah, and some told me they were planning to move to Israel in the near future. Many were dual citizens of America and Israel. They may have behaved in a moronic way, but they will not grow up to toil in the custodial arts. Many of these kids will move into white-collar jobs and use their influence to advance Israeli initiatives. Programs like Birthright Israel  — a few of those in my video were on Birthright tours — exist for the exclusive purpose of indoctrinating American Jews into unyielding, unthinking supporters of Israel. Thus the kids in my video represent at least one aspect of the Zionist project’s future base of political sustenance.

Whatever side you come down on, it’s hard to believe there will ever be peace in this region of the world, so long as religion dominates the lives of those who call it home.

I will close with the same Obama quote Blumenthal used at the end of his post as it sums things up better than anything I could ever write myself…

“Any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners of it.”

The idea that Barack Obama has failed the gay community is catching fire in the media. The NY Times, Rachel Maddow, CNN, and the Huffington Post, are just a few of the outlets who have recently covered the story. Conservatives must be grinning like Cheshire cats as one of Obama’s own constituencies throws him under the proverbial bus.

If you have been following my blog recently, you know that I’ve been growing increasingly frustrated by the Me-Me-Me-Now-Now-Now coming from the gay community. I get it. I’m gay. It’s part of the genetic code. But it’s barely been a 100 days and there is nothing but whining and complaining, nothing remotely resembling patience. Can Obama do better? Sure. Has he written off the gay community as many have suggested? Hardly. Keep in mind the state of the union that Obama inherited was the worst of any President EVER. Yet many in the gay community seem reluctant to cut him any slack. I hate drawing moral equivalencies but how can you compare the hurt caused by the denial of marriage to a same-sex couple, to the the hurt experienced by a woman who can no longer receive chemo because she has been denied coverage by a greedy insurance provider? And this comes from someone who married his partner of 9 years last September and lives with the threat of Prop 8 taking it all away.

If Obama comes out in full support of the marriage equality decisions that have already taken place in a number of states what do you think will happen? His support will serve as a lightening rod to the anti-marriage movement growing their numbers. Do we really want this when the states seem to be making progress on their own? Are we that insecure that we need a pat on the back from the Obama administration? I find it frankly a little embarrassing and I am sure social conservatives are relishing it. I also find it interesting that the anti-Obama sentiment spreading through the gay community is strangely similar to that exhibited by gay Hillary Clinton supporters during the primaries, and some of the same blogs that carried that water then are carrying it now.

The Republicans are falling apart and the last thing I want is for the Obama administration to provide the glue to put them back together again. I think in the short term Obama could make progress on DADT without it becoming a lightning rod. Polls show that most of the electorate approve of gays serving in the military. I think Obama could set a wonderful first example by reinstating Lt. Dan Choi and letting that serve as the ice breaker for moving things forward.

I wonder if the gay community will give Obama any credit when he signs hate crimes legislation in a few weeks. If the first 100 days is any measure, probably not.

Let the onslaught of those accusing me of being an Obama apologist begin…