her administration is rocked by revelations that she and her family used the governor's office to carry out a vendetta against a policeman who was a former brother in-law, up to firing the public safety commissioner because he wouldn't fire the trooper. The top wingnut radio host in the state, a huge fan, has turned on the governor big-time, declaring her a one-term governor. The Republican-dominated state legislature is talking investigations. For a state party rocked by scandal, who had seen Palin as a savior -- clean and new, this abuse of power scandal has to be crushing.

In an interview just a month ago, she dissed the job, saying it didn’t seem “productive.”

In fact, she said she doesn’t know what the vice president does.

Larry Kudlow of CNBC’s “Kudlow & Co.” asked her about the possibility of becoming McCain ticket mate.

Palin replied: “[A]s for that V.P. talk all the time, I’ll tell you, I still can’t answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the V.P. does every day? I’m used to being very productive and working real hard in an administration. We want to make sure that that V.P .slot would be a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans and for the things that we’re trying to accomplish up here for the rest of the U.S., before I can even start addressing that question.”

This month, the Bush administration rolled out a new strategy to solve illegal immigration and just as quickly rolled it back in. It was called Operation Scheduled Departure, and it was simply this: It asked people to turn themselves in.

Those who showed up would have 90 days to get their affairs in order — to find foster parents for their citizen children; to settle mortgages and car loans; to prepare themselves for new lives in the old country. Of the 457,000 people facing deportation orders, eight took the bait. The program was scrapped after three weeks.

It is tempting to mock the administration for naïve conception and even worse execution, but that would give it too much credit for sincerity. Immigration and Customs Enforcement could never have expected to reap a big crop of undocumented people this way.

We suspect what it really wanted was to lend cover to its continuing campaign of raids and arrests. That is the real strategy. It is brutal, simplistic and also ineffective, but it is the one the country is sticking with.

By capturing almost nobody, the report-to-deport program has bolstered the talking points pushed by the immigration agency and the restrictionist hard-core: illegal immigrants are a vast class of criminal fugitives, and only more enforcement can solve this problem.

One in 20 workers is undocumented. Federal raids are seizing undocumented workers only a dozen or a hundred at a time, a rate that will leave millions in the shadows for decades to come. The raids are also sweeping up and terrorizing citizens. Mass deportation is an impossible mission, and a recipe for family and economic upheaval on a colossal scale: more than three million young Americans, native-born children, live in households where one or both parents are undocumented.

There is a better way. It is to build a system for immigrant workers and family members that more closely matches demand and supply — a system that people will go through, not around. It is to deal sanely with the hidden, hard-working undocumented by requiring them to legalize and assimilate, and using enforcement power to catch and deport the criminals.

That is the path toward a controlled border and a less vulnerable America — not quick fixes that sound good and solve nothing.

* I'll offer my take on the Film Festival ad-hoc committee meeting.

* President Joe Cavo and City Clerk Jean Natale have some serious explaining to do but for now, I'm keeping my mouth shut until the appropriate time.

* Xenophobic, well known racists volunteering for Cappiello?

* The fall of the Big(o)T: one year later. You don't want to miss this...

* Holding them accountable: The smear job against the Hispanic Center. From the repeated slander from Lynn Waller and Joel Urice, to the spread of misinformation from Elise "deer in headlights" Marcaino and her band of morons, I'm going to lay out a compelling case where the Hispanic Center for Greater Danbury could (and should) file a defamation lawsuit against these anti-immigrant extremists.

* Why does the News-Times hate veterans?

Tick-tock...weeks away from teh Galante state trial on charges of illegal bundled campaign contributions to Mayor Boughton, David Cappiello, and former State Senator Lou DeLuca. I'll take you by the hand and take a look back at Boughton's dirty hands in this case.