According to the Troopergate probe report released on Friday by the Alaska legislature, investigator Steve Branchflower has found Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be “in violation of a state ethics law that prohibits public officials from using their office for personal gain.” It’s not exactly good news for Palin, though she has criticized the report for not interviewing her, because she refused to to be interviewed. The almost 300-page report did not recommend a criminal investigation, but its findings on Todd Palin’s place in the Troopergate scandal might have some repercussions if Todd Palin becomes First Dude in late January.\
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Bowing to pressure from Republicans urging McCain to talk more about the economy and focus less on the negative attacks (attacks that have led 59% of registered voters to say that John McCain is more focused on attacking his opponent than addressing the issues, versus more than 60% who say the opposite about Obama), McCain delivered a speech this morning about the economy. If you’d like to see what he was slated to say, click here. It looks like he’s hitting Obama hard on the economy, and good for him. That’s exactly what he should be doing.\
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Meanwhile Obama has responded by promising to deliver a speech on the economy as well (how will it be different from his stump speech?).\
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Bush gave a speech today, too. Did anyone listen?\
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Over at HuffPo, Ari Melber’s got a piece on Obama’s voter registration initiative that’s pretty revealing. Speaking of voter registration, I hit on ACORN pretty hard the other day, asking why it’s so hard not to submit falsified voter registrations. Well, apparently, it’s pretty hard. They HAVE to submit every registration they get. Josh Marshall wrote a nice post about ACORN that changed my mind about them (but I haven’t changed my mind about the problems with paying people desperate for cash to register voters, and setting quotas).\
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The question on The National Review’s blog is whether or not Obama wrote his own memoir, and if Ayers ghost-wrote his books. You stay classy, wing-nuts.\
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Along the way, ALModerate has a revealing post that points out McCain’s own ties to Ayers:\

You may have heard a lot about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.\’a0 Sean Hannity recently invoked it in one of his Fox News specials, and the McCain campaign talked about it in an attack ad on Obama.\’a0 This is a group where Ayers and Obama \’93worked together.\’94\’a0 Well, one must wonder how exactly the McCain campaign knows so much about this organization.\’a0 Well, as it turns out, John McCain has his own ties to this group.\’a0 The founder is a heavy McCain supporter\’96 a supporter McCain considers to be important enough to brag about.\
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First of, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge is touted as a \’93radical\’94 group, but this group isn\’92t nearly as radical as they\’92d have you believe.\’a0 It was backed by various educators (one of which happened to be Ayers), several conservative Republicans, and Governor Jim Edgar (also a Republican).

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In polls, Obama’s held on to his lead, RCP has him at +6.8 over McCain. New polls have Obama up more in Pennsylvania and Ohio, as well.\
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Until tomorrow!\
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Update: Talking Points Memo points to a North Dakota poll that has things all tied up.