This is big. The Alaska Senate has voted to reject Sarah Palin's nominee for Attorney General, a knuckle-scraper named Wayne Anthony Ross. This is the first time in state history that a cabinet nominee has been rejected by the legislature.
Ross is an NRA board member, a guy who calls gays "degenerates," a guy who drives a red Hummer with WAR on its license plate, and a guy who would deny subsistence hunting and fishing rights to native Alaskans.
This is a huge embarrassment for Palin, who's speaking at an anti-abortion rally in Indiana today. Hooray!! My faith in Alaskans is redeemed. They're starting to understand that their governor really is an incompetent whack-job!!
Update:
Thanks for the rec's, everyone! We'll probably learn more about this in the coming days, but you have to wonder how much he was rejected on the merits (and there were a lot of them), and how much the AK senate just wanted to give a great, big finger to Palin. Relations between them have been frayed for a long time, and were really poisoned last fall by all her BS efforts to shut down the Troopergate investigation. (Remember that?)
Now they're in a battle over replacing a Democratic senator from Juneau, and Palin is messing around with the rules (surprise!), and really pissing senators from both parties off. To stay on top of this story, check in from time to time with the great Alaska political blog, http://www.themudflats.net. Suffice to say, Palin took a big hit today. Much too early to call her political career over, but if she gets a strong challenger in 2010, she might have a real race on her hands. And losing the governor's chair would be fatal. Also damaging would be more embarrassing revelations from the Palin family soap opera. What secrets might Levi be willing to spill? And, of course, Sarah's handling this all wrong too. Instead of working things out with Levi, she continues to diss him in public. Will he go nuclear? Stay tuned.