Who's Who in Sarah Palin's e-mails? Lyda Green? -- UPDATED

The L.A. Times has an interesting, summary guide to who's who in Sarah Palin's e-mails: "Sarah Palin emails: The Alaska archive - who's who." There is only a picture associated with some of Palin's correspondents, but if the Times has articles about them, they link to the article(s).

The relationship between Sarah Palin and Lyda Green may be most interesting. "Kathleen," now at the blog Political Gates, once commented at palingates that Lyda Green had informed them -- them presumably being "Kathleen" and "Patrick" -- that Lyda Green had told them of one of Sarah Palin's miscarriages. That comment came in a post about Sarah Palin's book, Going Rogue, in which Palin described a miscarriage early in her life.

I was surprised, at the time, that they would blow away a "source" like that. And I am continually surprised that although they claim to have information from someone inside Alaska government that Palin faked a pregnancy, they will not even quote that source anonymously. Newspapers do it all the time: "A source who requested anonymity for some specified reason, told us, "Blah-blah." Readers are entitled to enough information to evaluate the veracity of the source.

Lyda Green's relationship with Sarah Palin, and her (Green's) motivation and veracity have become very interesting, now that the Washington Post's Rachel Weiner wrote, "Sarah Palin faced Trig rumors from start." An e-mail from Palin is quoted there, and it is clear that Palin blamed Lyda Green for the rumors that Bristol was the mother of Trig Palin.

A live blog about Palin's e-mails can be found at msnbc.com's "Live blog: All the released Palin emails are now back in their electronic form, online"


Update: Politico's "Palin emails show top Alaskan lawmaker blamed for Trig Palin rumors" has a statement from Green disclaiming involvement: '"I was never part of the network that thought that Sarah wasn't pregnant," Green said in an interview. "I said, 'That's a non-starter for me.'"'

Green has undercut an earlier statement she made, "It’s wonderful. She’s very well-disguised. When I was five months pregnant, there was absolutely no question that I was with child," which has been used by some to support an argument that Palin wasn't pregnant.

The Palin Network

The New York Times Magazine has published a lengthy article about Sarah Palin. The Washington Post's Rachel Weiner noticed that the Times' article contained an "interesting anecdote" about Palin's resignation:

One afternoon in June 2009, Gov. Sarah Palin was sitting in the Washington office of her friend Fred Malek, whom she met through McCain during the 2008 campaign. She was listening to the former White House aide to Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford map out logical next steps to her political career. Focus on amassing a good record as governor, he advised her. Run for a second term. Develop some policy expertise. Do some extensive overseas travel. Generate some good will by campaigning for fellow Republicans.

Malek told me that he could tell that this wasn't what Palin wanted to hear. Here's the problem, she replied impatiently: I've got a long commute from my house to my office. I don't have the funds to pay for my family to travel with me, and the state won't pay for it, either. I can't afford to have security at my home -- anybody can come up to my door, and they do. Under the laws of Alaska, anybody can file suit or an ethics charge against me, and I have to defend it on my own. I'm going into debt.

Weiner then cited an Anchorage Daily News article in which Palin complained about the debt that, she said, she incurred as a consequence of the ethics complaints against her.

But The Mudflats has some informative posts, on matters of ethics and expenses, which cut through Palin's feeble spin. On the idea that she resigned due to expenses associated with ethics complaints, see "Palin's Millions of Dollars," and "Palin's Millions - Take 2. A Closer Look." Those two articles, written in July of 2009, shortly after Palin quit her job, let the air out of the baloon that Palin tried to float about why she resigned. If she runs, her resignation will be a major issue, and she will try to claim, again, that she quit because the ethics complaints were costing the state of Alaska millions of dollars. They weren't. Sarah Palin quit because celebrity was more exciting (and more remunerative) than the hard work of trying to govern a state.

The complete NY Times article can be read by clicking the post's title. The Times' article is about much more than the ethics complaints' "expenses." For example, there is an amusing anecdote about how Sarah "Just Ask My Mom" Palin became testy when the article's author asked her about the books she had been reading. The article's author spoke with Palin for an hour, by telephone.