AP: Palin Rigged Pipeline Bid

A new AP report reveals that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin--with apparent input from Vice President Cheney--helped to rig the bidding process on her much-touted natural gas pipeline in order to craft terms that favored the eventual contract winner, a company with ties to the Palin administration.

This, while a second Troopergate investigation continues, cannot be what the beleaguered McCain campaign was looking forward to hearing this afternoon. If there's good news for the campaign in any of this, it's that the AP released the story on a Saturday afternoon. Investigative reports don't get more buried than that, although the Sunday papers do have room to run the long items.

If the campaign's woes can actually get worse, it's that CNN, instead of leading this afternoon with the pipeline story, is flogging anonymous reports from McCain staffers on just what a "diva" Sarah Palin is, that she enjoys no trusting relationships with anybody on the campaign, and that aides fear she may be distancing herself from the ticket in order to position for 2012. Ouch.

Ah, well. All in a slow day's news watching, I suppose. Back to work.