Governors

West Coast governors urged the federal government Tuesday to keep new oil drilling rigs out of their waters and to spend more money on programs to restore the health of the Pacific Ocean. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, joined with Democratic Govs. Ted Kulongoski of Oregon and Chris Gregoire of Washington to reaffirm their opposition to opening undersea oil fields to new drilling, as part of an elaborate action plan for preserving coastal waters.

All year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has looked forward to treating Mexican and U.S. dignitaries to a one-of-a-kind California experience at a governors summit he is hosting in Los Angeles starting today. Schwarzenegger scheduled a 3D version of "Terminator 2" at Universal Studios. He organized a private dinner for the governors at his Brentwood mansion. He recruited his wife, Maria Shriver, to lead a seminar.

Soon after Sarah Palin was elected mayor of the foothill town of Wasilla, Alaska, she startled a local music teacher by insisting in casual conversation that men and dinosaurs coexisted on an Earth created 6,000 years ago -- about 65 million years after scientists say most dinosaurs became extinct -- the teacher said.

The patriotic bunting was waiting and the floors were scattered with star-shaped glitter when hundreds of Republicans filed into Elks Lodge No. 2517 here in the northern Ozarks. They came this month to give a boost to U.S. Rep. Kenny Hulshof, who is locked in a tight race to succeed Missouri's outgoing Republican governor, Matt Blunt. The stakes were big -- and about to get bigger.

Big business was granted wide access to Sarah Palin's office during her first 20 months as Alaska governor, but she rarely met with labor, environmental or other groups pressing alternative views, her official calendar shows. On at least three dozen occasions, Palin, now the Republican vice presidential nominee, spoke with executives and lobbyists working for an array of energy, mining and tourism firms with major investments in Alaska.

Barely two weeks after Sarah Palin had been sworn in as Alaska's governor, in December 2006, then-Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan's executive secretary got a confusing phone call from Palin's office: The first gentleman would like to schedule a meeting with her boss. "I was not familiar with the term 'first gentleman,' or didn't hear her correctly, so I kept asking her, 'Who?' " the secretary, Cassandra Byrne, testified recently. "And she eventually said, 'Todd Palin.'

Lawyers for Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin assailed a legislative report released Friday -- which found she had abused her authority in an effort to remove her former brother-in-law as a state trooper -- saying the report misconstrued the state ethics law in an attempt to "smear" the Republican vice presidential nominee.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, plucked from relative obscurity in part for her reform credentials, has been eager to tout them in her vice presidential campaign. "I took on the old politics as usual in Juneau when I stood up to the special interests and the lobbyists and the big oil companies and the good old boys," Palin told the Republican National Convention in her acceptance speech.

Please permit me some brief reveling in nostalgia and history. Then we'll move on to other things. Nearly half a century ago, my first vote for president was to elect the first Roman Catholic president, John F. Kennedy. It's hard to envision today how big a deal that was. A Catholic! Who would have thought? The electorate was hungry for change. The country seemed to be stagnating and perhaps even losing the Cold War.

Six years ago, Rod R. Blagojevich became the first Democrat to be elected governor of Illinois in 30 years, unseating what he called a Republican "legacy of corruption, mismanagement and lost opportunities." Until his arrest Tuesday on federal corruption charges, the self-proclaimed "always lawful" Blagojevich had built a political career, in part, on fighting corruption.