Sarah Palin has conceded that a major factor in her decision to quit her job as Alaska's governor was because of the mounting legal bills she and the state have had to incur to fight ethics charges:

"We keep proving that every time we win an ethics violation lawsuit, and we've won every one of them. But it has been costing our state millions of dollars..."

Palin said there was a difference between the White House and what she had experienced in Alaska. If she were in the White House, she said, the "department of law" would protect her from baseless ethical allegations.

"I think on a national level, your department of law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we've been charged with and automatically throw them out," she said.

Really? Learn something new every day!

"For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth. For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn."

Though he placed most of the responsibility for remaking America squarely on all of our shoulders, the weight on my shoulders felt instantly lighter. Why? Because our leader knows that our neighbors and our friends are in pain. We now have a president that believes in fairness and kindness. Obama brought the message that he agrees with us that it's not the size of government that matters - what's important is how effective government is.

We've yearned in these desolate years for a leader that knew we were not proud of what we had become.

A doctor's office or hospital room is supposed to be a place of comfort and healing. However, for quite a few unfortunate people who become victims of medical malpractice or medical mistakes, these places can turn into places of horror. Some don't survive. For many who do, their medical nightmares never end.

How unfortunate that individuals going to hospitals for necessary health care must worry about contracting a new illness during their stay. This is simply unacceptable, and perhaps greater transparency of hospital infection rates would, literally, incentivize hospitals to clean up their act. (Sen. Barack Obama in letter to someone that contracted disease from a hospital stay, 2005)

Medical malpractice law traces its roots back to 19th Century English common law. The law that developed concerning medical malpractice is part of the more general body of law dealing with injuries to people or property, known as “tort law.” Medical malpractice cases are an example of one particular type of tort, the tort known as “negligence.”

The concept of negligence is that people should be reasonably careful in what they do, and, if they are not, they should be held responsible for the injuries that can be reasonably foreseen as resulting from their negligent conduct.

I was working up to doing a blog post about Social Security and Medicare because Tom Brokaw's slanted and biased comments made me so mad the other night during the debates. While doing some research on the net, I ran across a blog post that Elizabeth did. Since she says it better than me, I'll just direct you to hers. I encourage you to read her whole blog and experience outrage towards Brokaw and McCain for their wrongheaded comments about these essential programs.

Shame on Tom Brokaw for saying, during the recent presidential debate, that Social Security is broken, and that it forms (along with Medicare) “a big ticking time bomb that will eat us up maybe even more than the mortgage crisis.” The widespread claim that Social Security is broken, often-repeated by the media and by politicians in both parties, is complete nonsense.

Read this sentence several times, to counteract the wrongness of the last several hundred news stories you’ve read on the topic: Social Security is running a surplus and has all the savings it needs to pay all promised benefits until 2046, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. (Read the entire post here!)

"If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter." - George Washington

"The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments." - George Washington

Has John McCain lied again? John McCain is trying to sell himself to us as a "maverick" and a "straight talker" who will "tell the truth" no matter the consequences. I'm starting to see through it. Lucy wrote a blog last week about how McCain lied to unemployed workers about only "buying American." She showed us that the "straight talker" can't get his stories straight. I agree with Lucy that lying to unemployed workers is irksome and insulting.

But, now, in my opinion, he's upping his game. In so many ways, I'm finding that he twists and obfuscates the truth. I've discovered that John McCain is also lying about money - our money - our hard earned taxpayer money. It scares me during these unpredictable economic times that John McCain - or any elected official, for that matter - would lie to us about our money.

Asked about his popularity, George W. Bush offers this explanation: "Popularity is fleeting. And I want it to be said about George W. Bush that when he finished his presidency, he looked in the mirror at a man who did not compromise his core principles for the sake of politics, or the Gallup poll, or the latest, you know, whatever. And you can't lead in this world if you're chasing something as temporary as a popularity poll."

Unbelievably, the man seems to still really believe he's on some sort of moral high road. Since core principles, by definition, are neither good nor bad, it won't be Bush's mirror that decides if his adherence to his principles was good for our weakened nation. For some time now, Americans have seemed to agree that deliberate deception doesn't qualify as principled or honorable behavior. Nor does a violent and deadly attack on a sovereign nation that posed no threat to U.S. citizens. His upsurging of our national debt (and the resulting plunge in the value of our U.S. dollar) was so fundamentally unprincipled that it's caused skyrocketing inflation, widespread hunger, rising unemployment, millions of home foreclosures, and loss of healthcare for millions of trusting Americans. It's true that any man can stand firm on dishonorable principles. Unfortunately for all of us, it appears this has been the case with George Bush. Those principles from which he did not waver may be comprised of ingredients like greed, meanness, deceit or selfishness. Certainly standing firm on such principles is nothing to be proud of. Mercifully for George Bush, his mirror is unlikely to speak this truth to him.

George Bush is absolutely right about his popularity - it was extremely fleeting. His unpopularity, on the other hand, has hung heavily around us all for many years. Like the hottest muggiest August day in Crawford, Texas. Stifling and hard to bear, his awful reputation has been anything but short-lived.

More convention delegates can be won today than on any other single day in 2008. Twenty-four states are holding primaries or caucuses, with 52 percent of all pledged Democratic Party delegates and 41 percent of the total Republican Party delegates still up for grabs.

This is the very first year that Super Tuesday in February has had this much influence in the selection of presidential nominees. In the past, New Hampshire and Iowa had more influence and other states mainly weighed in in March. This year, twenty-four states with over half the delegates to the national conventions moved to change their primary dates to February 5, 2008, creating the largest "Super Tuesday" to date.

The biggest day in U.S. presidential nominating contests is now underway with Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton struggling for an edge while Republican John McCain hopes to knock Mitt Romney out of the race - even though we just heard that Mike Huckabee just won West Virginia! Stay tuned! Somebody here is bound to weigh in later! How about you?

John Edwards said moments ago:

"Don't worry about me. This son of a millworker is going to be fine. Our job now is to make sure that America is going to be fine...

"Our work goes on... Do not give up. Do not give up on the causes we have fought for... It's time for all of us to make the two Americas one. Thank you. And, let's get to work."

John's full speech today was wonderful. For John's complete farewell address, follow me to the next page. It's a good one...

"I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil." - Robert Kennedy

Like Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and President John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy was assassinated in 1960s. He was right in the middle of a successful campaign for the presidency in 1968 when his life was cut short. Bobby Kennedy spoke loudly and consistently about ending the Vietnam War and ending poverty. These days, Kennedy is often compared with John Edwards - for good and solid reasons. Perhaps Obama is compared to MLK and Clinton compared to LBJ - but, for me, what we need this day is Bobby Kennedy.

"Restoring our moral authority means leading by example and making clear that the hard challenges don't frighten us. There is no better opportunity than the challenge of poverty – the great moral issue of our time." -- John Edwards