Palin Report Due Out Today
McCain launches harshest ad yet as report from Alaska is due out.
Oct. 10, 2008— -- Sen. John McCain unleashed his harshest attack ad yet today, charging that Sen. Barack Obama "lied" about his relationship to 1960s anti-war terrorist Bill Ayers.
Despite the GOP's televised attack, it was the Republican team of McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin who braced for bad news today.
The Alaska legislature is scheduled to release its conclusions later this afternoon on whether Palin abused her authority as governor and fired the state's top cop because he refused to dismiss Palin's former brother-in-law from his job as a state trooper.
The McCain campaign tried to pre-empt the official report by releasing its own review of "troopergate," which concluded that Palin did nothing wrong and did not break any laws. It found that Palin dismissed former public safety commissioner Walt Monegan for insubordination and budgetary differences, not as part of a Palin family squabble.
At their meeting today, Alaska lawmakers plan to vote to release the estimated 300-page report and some of the 1,000 or more pages of supporting documents. The 14-member legislative panel could recommend that the case be closed, that another committee continue to investigate or that the matter be referred to criminal investigators.
Palin is in Ohio today attending several fundraisers but has no public appearances scheduled.
Obama is also in Ohio, blitzing the state where McCain is trailing in the polls and where losing would likely sound a death knell for his presidential hopes.
"Obama has a small but solid lead of a few points in the state of Ohio," ABC News' senior Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos told "Good Morning America" today. "He's outspending John McCain there by about $500,000 a week.… He wants to lock in the lead. If he locks up Ohio, he's a long way to locking up the race."
McCain, whose standing in the polls has been hurt by the economic crisis, has staked his hopes for a comeback victory by attacking Obama's character and truthfulness, particularly his relationship to Ayers, the co-founder of the radical Vietnam era Weather Underground.
