Is Sarah "Casual With the Truth" or LYING?

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Could it be that Sarah Palin really IS "casual with the truth" as an unnamed McCain campaign spokesperson had allegedly said according to the recent Vanity Fair article about her? Below is a link for an interesting article and an excerpt from that article: http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/republican-party/key-reason-palin-gave-for-quitting-appears-to-be-false/ During her resignation speech last week, Palin presented herself as a heroic defender of the taxpayer. She said that money being spent on government lawyers to defend against these “frivolous ethics violations” could be “going to things that are very important, like troopers and roads and teachers and fish research.” Palin repeated exactly the same point this week. But David Murrow, a spokesperson for the Governor, said in an interview that much of this money was budgeted to the lawyers in advance and would have gone to them anyway, even if state lawyers hadn’t been defending against these ethics complaints. In response to our questions, the Governor’s office provided us with a detailed breakdown of the millions Palin has claimed has gone to defending against ethics complaints. It does list roughly $1.9 million in expenditures. But Murrow, the spokesperson, acknowledged to our reporter, Amanda Erickson, that this total was arrived at by adding up attorney hours spent on fending off complaints — based on the fixed salaries of lawyers in the governor’s office and the Department of Law. The money would have gone to the lawyers no matter what they were doing. The complaints are “just distracting them from other duties,” Murrow said. In other words, while these lawyers might have been free to do other legal work for the state, the ethics complaints have apparently not had the real world impact Palin has claimed, and didn’t drain money away from cops, teachers, roads and other things. Similarly, TPM reports that there are only three ethics complaints outstanding against the Palin administration in any case — which, combined with the above, casts serious doubts on one of her chief stated reasons for quitting. Murrow has not responded to folllow-up questions asking him to explain how this squares with Palin’s claims. We’ll update you if he does. (End of excerpt) Below are more links which you may find interesting. The first one is what Palin told the Anchorage Daily News on July 6, three days after she announced her resignation as Governor of Alaska. She repeated her claim that her resignation was for the sake of the Alaskan taxpayers and to save them millions. http://www.adn.com/palin/story/855907.html http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/political-media/alaska-paper-digs-deeper-into-our-story-about-palins-dissembling/ http://www.adn.com/palin/story/858523.html One thing is quite clear - this money would have been spent anyway so it didn't take away from teachers or police officers. This is kind of like the "Thanks but no thanks for the Bridge to Nowhere" which actually came AFTER she said, "Thanks, show me the money" (I'm paraphrasing) and actually took the money and used it elsewhere. If anyone dared say she was lying they'd be accused of viciously attackig her. Maybe "casual with the truth" is more acceptable? Any thoughts? Annie