Scroll down for updates…1:29am Eastern Palin holds press conference in Anchorage after arriving late on her flight from Arizona…refuses to comment on gossip spread by unnamed sources and “small, bitter” people saying “foolish things”…on relationship with McCain: No tension. “I love him…I honor him”…jokes that charges that she was “going rogue” referred to her sneaking in return phone calls to reporters…(vid at Hot Air)

Photoshop: David Lunde

The anonymous trashing of Sarah Palin by blabbermouth McCain aides who are leaking to Fox News is disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.

Allah’s got the vid clip of a report citing unnamed McCain staffers accusing Palin of lacking, in Carl Cameron’s words, “knowledgeability.” More slime here. And here.

At least all the Hollywood and Manhattan Palin-haters were willing to sign their names and put their faces on their attacks.

Let’s assume the rumor-mongers are telling the truth for a moment. Who does it damn more: Sarah Palin or McCain and his vetters who green-lighted her for the vice presidential nomination? Don’t need an Ivy League degree to figure that one out.

Sarah Palin worked her heart out. She energized tens of thousands to come out who would have otherwise stayed home. She touched countless families. I didn’t agree with everything she said on the campaign trail. But two fundamental conservative stands she took mattered greatly to me: She vigorously defended the Second Amendment and the sanctity of life more eloquently in practice than any of the educated conservative aristocracy.

And she did it all with a tirelessness and infectious optimism that defied the shameless, bottomless attempts by elites in both parties to bring her and her family down.

Shame on the smearers who don’t have the balls to show their faces.

Thank you, Sarah Palin. Thank you for stepping up the plate and serving your country.

***

More: Ace of Spades is %^&* spitting mad.

Here’s a story these staffers tell: Sent to collect Palin from a hotel, she greeted them, straight from the shower (running late, I guess ) dressed (scandal!) only in a bathrobe (presumably a very thick hotel bathrobe).

These staffers called that “uncommon” — Cameron delighted in the word to give it the sound of “whorish, unprofessional.”

Heh, assholes? She had to open the door and had just gotten out of the shower. Did you want her to use her magical powers of telekinesis to open the door for you?

So is RedState, which announces an accountability project.

I wonder if the delicate McCain staffers upset at seeing Palin in bathrobe/towel were as aghast at the photos on Meghan McCain’s blog of Cindy McCain in her – gasp! – bathrobe.

***

And now, this:

Randy Scheunemann, a senior foreign policy adviser to John McCain, was fired from the Arizona senator’s campaign last week for what one aide called “trashing” the campaign staff, three senior McCain advisers tell CNN.

One of the aides tells CNN that campaign manager Rick Davis fired Scheunemann after determining that he had been in direct contact with journalists spreading “disinformation” about campaign aides, including Nicolle Wallace and other officials.

“He was positioning himself with Palin at the expense of John McCain’s campaign message,” said one of the aides.

***

ORDER IT NOW

Update: 1:34am Eastern. Palin arrives in Anchorage after a long trip home from Alaska. She holds a press conference. Refuses to comment on gossip spread by unnamed sources and “small, bitter” people saying “foolish things”…on relationship with McCain: No tension. “I love him…I honor him.”

Responding to a question on whether she has any “hurt feelings,” Palin laughs cheerfully. “This is politics! Of course not. It’s rough and tumble and you’ve got to have a thick skin just like I’ve got.”

Palin expresses “disappointment in the media — don’t take it personally.”