UPDATED: Anatomy of a potentially scandalous cover-up...

Yes, I was personally horrified that all links to Sarah Palin's vitriolic and targeted press releases to exact "fair play" or the threats of potential lawsuits against progressive Alaskan bloggers including Shannyn Moore and Linda Kellen-Biegel, seemed to have vanished entirely from the SOA (state of Alaska) website! Who wouldn't be? Keep in mind that those bloggers here in Alaska are merely expressing their first amendment rights in the form of "freedom of speech" by blogging about the alleged abuses of power and ethical complaints against Sarah Palin in her official capacity as Governor of the state of Alaska. With that principle in mind I went to the sites I like to check every day to read whatever new crazy thing is designed to attack us bloggers. I went to the official State of Alaska website and got a shock that I feel should rock us all to our very core.

I went to the SOA (state of Alaska) site because in some way I kind of expected the sort of underhandedness I discovered therein. Call me a cynic. I'll gladly wear that badge with pride. But at this point I can't help but get the feeling that my fears are being proven correct with each and every step along the way of my personal investigation. I feel that many, many important public records have seemed to have gone missing from the official governor's website today (7/27/09) and I think for good reason. Allow me to present the Google Cache and search evidence.

I'll explain why exactly these documents are important. First and foremost, since they were issued as press releases on a state owned website, they are supposed to be public records. As such they should be preserved in toto for the sake of history and full disclosure. Often times Sarah Palin's "official" press releases of the past took the tone of a "mean girl" high school rival, filled with vitriol and suggestions that "fair play" be exacted by Alaskan supporters of Sarah Palin against Alaskan bloggers, an ugly idea openly expressed by her chief of staff, Mike Nizich. Try browsing to the official SOA website here. Dumps you right into a blank page from the present S.P. v. 2.0 (Sean Parnell) page, doesn't it? Now click on the underlined press release link from this page at the "Palingates" website...

Hmmm. Not working anymore is it? All links to official documents are broken and dump you back at S. P. v. 2.0 's main site or essentially a blank page. Why do I feel this is an important development in what I feel is a possible cover-up? Because these documents could be the very basis of future lawsuits against her and certain members of her staff (Mike Nizich, Ivy Frye, &tc. et. al.) to prove both libel and slander on their part. Without them we have to rely upon anecdotal evidence or what is referred to within the legal community as either "dictum" or hearsay. I feel this is a sinister development and is nothing less than Palin and her minions still implanted deeply within the Parnell administration to prevent the prosecution of potential future rightful and justified lawsuits. Even if one were to enjoin a lawsuit against her or Parnell and declare that these documents are both important and ESSENTIAL to prove their case, one would come up "snake-eyes" or empty-handed even through a lawfully ordered judicial discovery process. Were your lawyer to demand through the discovery process that they "produce the documents", they won't and can't because they appear to have been scrubbed entirely from the records archive. They are virtually shredded without explanation or any justification whatsoever!

This is possibly best classified as "obstruction of justice" and would be frowned upon by just about any reasonable judge (again, in my opinion) as being a deliberate destruction of important public documents on the part of a plantiff (potential and future in this hypothetical instance as no one has yet to file a suit against her or members of her administration). It is wrong, wrong, oh so VERY wrong and is potentially deeply criminal. Lets look at the captured images from my search as I lay out the case.

We already know that the cynic in me prompted a visit to the official website. First I pulled up the main page, it's link and captured image is above. Hmmm. Everything looks like a smooth transition to the new administration thus far. Next I went to the governor's main page. Whups! Problem. which prompted me to dig deeper. Where are all the press releases from Palin? I can understand Parnell wanting a clean break and separation from the special brand of vindictive "crazy-sauce" often offered up by Palin in her not so recent past, so I "rubbed some dirt on it and walk[ed] it off" before digging deeper. Though as soon as I saw this page (at left), I knew I was going to need a much bigger shovel. Why? Because I immediately got a bad feeling that informed my senses "I betcha they buried the Palin press releases so deep that I may have to dig all the way to China to unearth the truth". I feel that I wasn't wrong. Thankfully the state of Alaska website has a built-in search tool powered by Google. Ahh, Google! Light of justice and all that is good and powerful on the web. Well, mostly. I expect that after this blog post they'll remove this tool, which by the way would be a travesty and further proof that the Parnell administration has no desire to conduct government business in an open and transparent manner... but I digress.

Next, I type in what you see in the picture at right in the address bar of Firefox. I searched for "Palin press release" + "bloggers". This is a very powerful way to narrow your search to specific quoted items found within pages on the web. The quotes allow Google to look for exact matches to the terminology you input, instead of stupid crap like "Moms who wear jeans like their daughter's jeans" as the Microsoft ad promoting their search engine suggests. From my past experience as a corporate buyer of bulk computer parts for upgrades, I can narrow a search like a shark mounted with a "frikken' laser" on its head. You don't get the cheapest and most available parts as a reseller by typing generic search terms into a powerful search engine like Google by using inexact terminology. You want the exact info for which you search, most especially if you're doing it on the boss' dime and looking to turn a profit from your opportune online discoveries. But again, I digress -- enough with my search engine skill bona fides. Let's look closely at the last image as I break it down a bit. In the blue highlighted line that says "Search" you can clearly see my search items, now scan down and look at the actual URL, the line in green that gives the actual address to the documents for which I actually was searching. Make a mental note of the "&ersand;type=1" at the very end of that line. It's important. Why? Well it is a classification for the internal SOA (state of Alaska) website as to the specific type of classification assigned to a document by their webmaster. While I am certainly not privy as to how they classify their documents I can tell from the image at left that if it is "=1" it means "State of Alaska>Governor>News>News Archive as shown in the image at left under the large "Press Archive" heading highlighted in blue. Lest I say cornflower blue, even? Also note how the address bar (to the right of the little "house" home page icon -- it's Firefox with Ad Block Plus and No (java) Script enabled for you Firefox wonks out there...) indicates the same. How is this significant? It only shows that the results of following the link to SPECIFIC documents listed and shown in the last image resulted in SQUAT. NOTHING. Not because my search terminology was bunk and bullshit, but rather and perhaps more importantly because, in my opinion, they have flagged ALL documents that the former Palin administration deems as potentially damaging to them in a court of law by precisely that tag designation if the search criteria is also "Palin". Anything that meets that criteria of "type=1" brings up the empty page you see here. Don't believe me? Follow the links yourself and report back to me! I insist.

[added 09/28/09: Note also that I love to tweak URLs in the address bar by deleting part of it (for instance the "&ersand;type=1") and reloading the page. Normal HTML behavior would either do nothing, leaving the page as it is, or in most cases default back to an index. This did not happen in my search. They all basically redirected to the blank page shown in this post. People may argue that my search terms were flawed and I can counter by saying that these documents were available the day before, using the exact same search terms... thus another indicator that someone at the state website is burying them on purpose.]

Other documents that show Palin in a favorable light ARE NOT TAGGED in such a manner and display normally when clicking upon the listed green link. Those they wish to suppress and apparently hide from public view and public disclosure refuse to display. You get a variation of the same theme as shown in the image above. A mostly blank page of void and nothingness as presented by the Parnell administration. Way to go, Governor Empty Suit! Sad to see you have yet to "grow a pair" enough to truly distinguish yourself as being something other than Sarah Palin version 2.0 (aka S. P. v. 2.0)!

One commenter on this blog made a statement about Frank Murkowski and his documents being available on the press release archive page, as if to say that it's normal to get rid of the old governor's public documents and to answer that, I present the following captured image. Look closely in the cornflower blue "Press Releases" line... that's 452 hits for that search. Yes my search was more generic and yes it could be "a statistical anomaly", but I highly doubt it. It's not like Murkowski was more prolific at issuing press releases, nor was he, as a single term governor, in office much longer than Sarah Palin herself. Yet look at all those available documents! See many of them with the new tag "&ersand;type=1"? Nope. Were you to go to that search page, I can assure you that each and every damn document will display as is and NOT take you to a blank Governor Sean Parnell page as do the displays of Palin related press releases do. So who's zooming who here? Me or the state of Alaska? Demand further proof? Here's a screen capture of a "positive" Palin press release, one of only a limited few I was able to pull up in my browser.

At this point I am nothing less than spent. I literally pay $600 a year for my internet connection (because I like the high speed connection) and am NOT being paid by "partisan political operatives" as Sarah Palin herself continues to claim. She may be lying to Alaska and Alaskans even as she continues to attempt to suppress OUR FREEDOM OF SPEECH RIGHTS while she illegitimately and disgustingly wraps herself in the flag and the illusion of being a "patriot" and a rabid, fervent "supporter of our troops who have fought and died for rights". Unfortunately it appears that freedom of speech only applies to HER freedom of speech and not that of ALL Alaskans and ALL Americans. If anything she is the worst offender in this particular cultural battle -- one who continues to "make stuff up".

As far as I know NONE of my progressive Alaskan blogging peers are paid a dime and yet we continue to allow Palin and her small army of minions and operatives to frame the debate with outright LIES. Meanwhile, the main stream media, most especially outlets like the Anchorage Daily News, continue to fawn over her like she's a godess incarnate. I say that their medium and their way of exposing the truth about most things is purely "phoning it in" at this point, with no offense meant to Brendan or Sean whose day jobs depend upon them being "journalists", punching the clock for the "man". And in this case, the "man" is a corporation owned by out of state interests.

Main stream media is dead. Stick a fork in it and with this post I continue to present to you the brave new world that IS blogging and bloggers with all the ascendant abilities to use and utilize this new medium of the internet for the greater good of all Americans. I say, get used to it, people. As I'm sure many of you already are. We are underpaid (or as is my case, not paid at all) and overworked but we (and by we I mean, in this instance, Alaskan progressive bloggers) have a passion to dig up the truth and present it in a manner that is both meaningful and significant to all of us as citizens, using the tools of this new medium in ways that the mainstream media couldn't even imagine. It is my hope that all Alaskans and all Americans wake up to the new paradigm, the one where we all can report and participate in news events as they happen. Like the narrative presented above.

I encourage you to follow the bread crumbs, as it were, for yourself if you are so motivated. I almost insist that your participation is vital. That's how it is on the internet. It's your universe and my only purpose is to perhaps point you in the right direction and to expose things that make me and hopefully YOU righteously indignant about the way the world is presently run by corporate overlords. It is up to all of as as individuals to remain vigilant lest we be lulled into a hypnotic state by those who seek to control public opinion by manipulating the OLD paradigms of a stone cold dead fourth estate. Are you with me?

-Laz