Worth quoting in full

From Salon.com's War Room:

More Palin expenses: $40,000 for the First Dude

With the election over, it's time for the full cost of Sarah Palin's shopping sprees to be revealed. The latest news? Todd Palin wasn't exactly left out; Alaska's "First Dude" reaped the benefits of the Republican National Committee's money too. The Washington Post's Reliable Sources column says:

On top of the $150,000 first outlined in Federal Election Commission filings, Palin spent "tens of thousands of dollars" on additional clothing, makeup and jewelry for herself and her family, including $40,000 in luxury goods for her husband, Todd, our colleague Michael Shear reports. The campaign was charged for silk boxer shorts, spray tanners and 13 suitcases to carry all the designer clothes, according to two GOP insiders.

The defense for the spending, when the campaign was still going on, was that Sarah Palin's new clothes were just loaned to her. So who wants a couple pairs of Todd Palin's silk boxers, slightly used?

I wish I could say that it was a shock that Palin responded to her vice-presidential nomination by going on a shopping spree (on someone else's tab), but this is actually something of a pattern. When elected mayor of Wasilla she spent $50,000 of city money (without authorization) redecorating her office (keep in mind that her entire salary was $68,000 per year), and when elected governor of Alaska Palin installed a tanning bed in the governor's mansion (although she claims to have paid for that one herself).

She claims per diems for nights spent in her home, and she claims reimbursement for taking her children on state travel, whether or not they were invited or welcome. And, as Andrew Sullivan has observed, Palin just lies reflexively. (There are actually twenty documented "Odd Lies of Sarah Palin" and this and this from Sullivan are also of interest.) There are no boundaries for Palin between the state and her family. There's no necessary truth content to anything she says. This is why she and Kwame Kilpatrick have a great deal in common, and why she should be the subject of a Joyce Carol Oates story.

Thank you, Rush Limbaugh, for making sure that she simply will not fade away. As long as she's a national figure, the truth will continue to come out.