More signs McCain campaign blew Palin vetting

The McCain campaign has come under increasing fire for what many claim was a hasty, ill-researched, last-minute vice-presidential choice. A number of veteran Alaskan politicians -- both Democrat and Republican -- have expressed shock and outright skepticism about Palin's readiness to lead.

Now, it turns out that -- despite claims of background vetting that McCain campaign manager claimed -- falsely -- included an FBI background check (such a check would violate Bureau rules and federal law) -- the vetting process appears to have been haphazard and hurried.

According to Sam Stein, writing in the Huffington Post:

The McCain campaign has gone to great lengths to present the selection of Sarah Palin as one made after a careful, meticulous vetting process. But evidence continues to suggest that the Arizona Republican made his VP choice with surprising haste.

On Saturday, a Democrat tasked with opposition research contacted the Huffington Post with this piece of information: as of this weekend, the McCain campaign had not gone through old newspaper articles from the Valley Frontiersman, Palin's hometown newspaper.

The opposition researchers were dumbfounded:

"No one else had requested access before," said the source. "It's unbelievable. We were the only people to do that, which means the McCain camp didn't."

The hometown paper, The Frontiersman, was withholding comment -- but the claims have since been confirmed by another source

If true, the failure of the Arizona Republican to access the newspaper clippings becomes another in a growing list of revelations that calls into question just how and why he made his decision to choose Palin. A rudimentary clip search, such as this, is presidential politics 101 as campaigns not only look for the majority of background information on any high-level appointee, but also try to prepare themselves from future attacks.

It has been previously reported that the McCain campaign did not contact Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, who Palin pushed to have fired after he refused to remove her sister's former husband from the state's police force. That controversy, an investigation of which will be made public in late October, could cause major headaches for Palin in the days leading up to the election.

A late update to the article concluded:

More evidence is emerging suggest a less-than-thorough vetting of Palin. Marc Ambinder reported on Monday that, contrary to prior claim, the McCain campaign did not conduct an FBI background check on the governor. Such a check would be against bureau policy. And as NBC's Andrea Mitchell reported, that Republican lawyers are just now (i.e. currently) doing a vet of Palin up in Alaska