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More ethics claims

The Associated Press claims that outgoing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will be found guilty of violating her state’s ethics rules, citing a report leaked from the State Personnel Board on one of the 19 ethics complaints filed against her.

The governor may be counting down her final days in office, but she isn’t letting the accusations go unanswered. She’s even threatening to take some legal action of her own against the leakers.

According to the AP, the board will say she improperly used her public image to raise money for the legal defense fund created to fend off complaints made against her as an elected official. No punishment is expected for violating the rules; the board will only recommend that Mrs. Palin not take direct payments from the fund.

Mrs. Palin issued a lengthy statement late Tuesday saying the fund “was the hallmark of legal compliance and prudent conduct.”

“I find the notion that I have taken any action pertaining to the legal defense trust fund misguided and factually in error,” she said. “I am informed that this fund was created by experienced attorneys in D.C. and was modeled after other similar funds established for senators and others.”

Mrs. Palin’s private attorney Thomas Van Flein said it’s too early for the AP to judge the outcome of the investigation.

“Whatever you have seen was released in violation of law,” he said. “There has been no board finding of an ethics violation and there is a detailed legal process to follow before there is a final resolution.”

Mrs. Palin may turn the tables on the leakers in the future, too.

“All options are open in terms of legal remedies,” Mr. Van Flein said.

Foreign law

Although Judge Sonia Sotomayor promised during her confirmation hearings for her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court not to use foreign laws in her decision-making, she indicated in a follow-up to Republican questioning that they were permissible to use for intellectual inspiration

Judge Sotomayor returned a 49-page questionnaire to the Senate Judicial Committee to respond to written inquiries from Republican senators on the panel. Many of the questions asked her to elaborate on the proper uses of foreign laws in American courts.

“In limited circumstances, decisions of foreign courts can be sources of ideas, just as law review articles or treatises can be sources of ideas,” she said. “Reading the decisions of foreign courts for ideas, however, does not constitute ‘using’ those decisions to decide cases.”

In another response she mentioned the impact a refusal to consider foreign laws could have diplomatically.

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