Palling with extremists, indeed

-- by Dave

So Sarah Palin wants to call out Barack Obama for supposedly playing footsie with a former Weather Underground leader named William Ayers. OK, fair enough -- other than the fact that nothing Obama did either empowered or enabled Ayers in his extremism.

But what about Sarah's own dalliances with extremists?

Notably, she nominated one of her local militiamen/John Birch Society types in Wasilla to serve on the city's planning board. This is a big deal to "Patriot" folks, who consider local planning and zoning ordinances to be among the chief signs of creeping socialism, and fight them tooth and nail. Had the Wasilla Council not balked at her nomination, the man no doubt would have wreaked havoc with the city's planning laws and their enforcement.

She also fired the city's museum director at the behest of this character.

And then there were Palin's notable and extended dalliances with the radical secessionist Alaskan Independence Party. In 1992, its members largely supported former militiaman James "Bo" Gritz for president. It has over the years been associated with promoting paranoid "New World Order" conspiracy theories.

And just this year, Palin sent a video address to the AIP at its convention, telling them to "keep up the good work," even though she is ostensibly a Republican. Why do that?

Well, in the video, she tells the AIP that “Your party plays an important role in our state’s politics ... I’ve always thought competition is so good, and that applies to political parties as well.

Notably, however, she did not record a similar message for the state’s Democrats at their convention.

That glass house she's standing in is not the ideal site for throwing rocks at Barack Obama.