This is just too rich.  McCain was tasked with choosing somebody who has a very real chance of leading the free world should he win...

...and he didn't even vet her properly.

Andrew Halcro, a man who ran against Palin as an Independent for Governor (and received about 10% of the vote), says that McCain's staff has just arrived in Wasilla to vet Palin post-announcement:

The campaign of John McCain has sent a staff of eight people into Alaska to conduct background checks and vetting on Governor Sarah Palin.

Word is they have have eight rooms reserved at a Wasilla hotel.

And just as crazily, they didn't even read through the local newspaper's archives:

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.

How does he know? The paper's (massive) archives are not online. And when he went to research past content, he was told he was the first to inquire.

There have already been grumblings about McCain's notorious hotheadedness showing itself in his choice of Palin.  She's obviously a choice borne of a political reaction -- McCain needed to shore up support among women (and try to take advantage of the PUMAs out there) while maintaining his cred with social conservatives.  And even though his decision could be brilliant, it is certainly dangerous.

And now we know it goes well beyond dangerous.  He was reckless.

Now that Clinton's full disclosure form has been released, it raises some interesting questions.  Here's the source:

Daily contribution totals

Now for some quotes from the Clinton camp and the respective realities:

The Clinton camp claims:

From the AP

Her campaign said she was on track for raising $10 million in the first 24 hours after her victory.

Also from the AP

By midday Wednesday, the campaign estimated the total haul at $10 million raised online in the 24 hours since Pennsylvania's polls closed, and claimed it was her best fundraising day ever.

The report, however, shows:

April 23, 2008         1,738,154.61

The Clinton camp claims:

From ABC

As of 11:30 p.m. Tuesday, the Clinton campaign claimed it had raised nearly $2.5 million since the state was called for the New York senator. Eighty percent of that money came from new donors to the campaign, it said, calling it their "best night ever."

The report, however, shows:

April 22, 2008         226,294.60

...note that this number plus the April 23rd number doesn't come close to the much-vaunted $10 million figure.

However...

This isn't quite an open and shut "she lied," since there's a very curious entry on the last day:

April 30, 2008         9,504,619.08

...anybody have any idea what that's all about?  Is this some weird delay in the reporting date?  Did she lend herself some cash?

Update [2008-5-21 1:54:31 by randomscientist]: According to lizardbox,

Campaigns usually bundle all non-itemized donations (basically, all donations of those who did not meet the itemization requirement of $200, are bundled together and listed on one line with the date set to the last day of the month).

Some simple math shows that if we round to $2 million for the 24 hours post-PA (a generous rounding) for itemized donations, she'd have needed $8 million in small-dollar donations for that same time frame to get to the $10 million number. Let's call it $7 million to grant her some leeway from $9 million to $10 million. That means that 74% of her small-dollar donations would have had to occur on one single day last month for her to even be close to the $10 million figure. I'm fairly skeptical that that is possible...