Sarah Palin And The Damned Flag

It's time that we discuss Sarah Palin's associations.

What would Sean Hannity say if Michelle Obama was a member of a political party, for seven years, that advocated separating Illinois from the United States of America and whose founder talked about once professed his "hatred for the American government" and cursed the American flag as a "damn flag"?

Don't you think he'd be on that subject night after night after night?

And what would Bill O'Reilly shout (he never just talks) if Barack Obama had attended a number of meetings of this hypothetical political party while being an elected official?

O'Reilly's head would explode and cover our TV screens is gooey red mush.

But not so for the woman who will be a better VP than Thomas Jefferson AND John Adams (or so it seems).

The founder of the Alaska Independence Party -- a group that has been courted over the years by Sarah Palin, and one her husband was a member of for roughly seven years -- once professed his "hatred for the American government" and cursed the American flag as a "damn flag."

The AIP founder, Joe Vogler, made the comments in 1991, in an interview that's now housed at the Oral History Program in the Rasmuson Library at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

"The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government," Vogler said in the interview, in which he talked extensively about his desire for Alaskan secession, the key goal of the AIP.

"And I won't be buried under their damn flag," Vogler continued in the interview, which also touched on his disappointment with the American judicial system. "I'll be buried in Dawson. And when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home."

Pretty strong language -- rather "inflammatory" I would call it.

So, why did Sarah and Todd Palin, at the beginning of her political career, decide to have these associations and why did he become a member for seven years?

Palin has courted the group over the years.

Three years after the controversial interview, in 1994, Palin attended the group's annual convention, according to witnesses who spoke to ABC News' Jake Tapper. The McCain campaign is disputing her presence there, but Tapper found two people to attest to it.

The McCain campaign today produced Palin's voting registration records, and said they proved she was never a member of the party.

But she has repeatedly reached out to the group. The McCain campaign has confirmed she visited the group's 2000 convention, and she addressed its convention this year, as an incumbent governor whose oath of office includes upholding the Constitution of the United States.

Palin's husband, Todd Palin, was a member of the party from 1995-2002 with a brief exception in 2000.

I look forward to hearing Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and their dopplegangers up and down the AM dial spend the next 62 days railing against the Palin's associations with this unrepentant separatist and successionist.

After all, the Republican Party was founded to keep the union together and Abraham Lincoln wouldn't want his legacy sullied in this manner.