Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:
Color Coded?
New York Governor David Paterson says Sarah Palin's criticism of Barack Obama's time as a community organizer is racially charged. Paterson said Tuesday, "There are overtones of potential racial coding in this campaign. I think the Republican Party is too smart to call Barack Obama 'black'... but you can take something about his life... a community organizer. They kept saying it, they kept laughing."
He said such language is "designed to inhibit other people's progress with a subtle reference to their race."
The McCain camp says Palin's criticism of Obama's community organizer days was not racist but was in response to Obama's belittling of her executive experience.
Book Review
Despite criticisms that Palin wanted to ban certain books as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, back in 1996, the city says there is no record of any books being yanked from library shelves. A bogus list of Palin-banned books has been widely circulated on the Internet.
But USA Today reports the city of Wasilla says on its Web site only four books have been challenged there over the past two decades, and that none was ever banned.
The Anchorage Daily News reports Wasilla's librarian at the time, Mary Ellen Emmons, claims Palin asked her if she would be comfortable banning certain books, but that she never mentioned specific titles. Palin says the questions were hypothetical and that she wanted to understand the city's policy regarding book bans.
But Emmons says after she told Palin she would not support a ban she received a letter of termination. Palin says it had nothing to do with books, but that she did not feel supported by Emmons. Palin later allowed Emmons to keep her job, which she did for another three years until resigning in 2000.
Cover Story
Us Weekly magazine is frantically trying to curb subscription losses in the wake of the Palin cover controversy. Reports suggest the magazine has been inundated by requests from angry readers demanding their subscriptions be canceled after the cover of its September 2 issue read, "Sarah Palin — Babies, Lies and Scandal."
Internet columnist Michelle Malkin reports on her Web blog that the magazine is responding to those requests with an e-mail reading, "We are sorry you are upset over the Governor Palin cover. We do not want to lose you as a subscriber over one article in one issue. In an effort to keep you as a subscriber, we will add five free issues to your subscription."
Left Turn
If the selection of Sarah Palin sent the American left around the bend, the effect seems to have been even stronger on the Canadian left. Columnist and author Heather Mallick, a regular contributor to the notoriously liberal Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, writes that Palin "added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right."
In an earlier column Mallick referred to McCain as a "tiny old hateful man" who "named the political equivalent of his local school crossing guard as his vice presidential candidate."
— FOX News Channel's Zachary Kenworthy contributed to this report.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox