The inevitable drama, here it comes: Dakota Meyer files custody suit against Bristol Palin and wants joint custody for daughter Sailor Grace as well as child support - UPDATE: Dakota Meyer's lawyer clarifies that he does not seek child support at this point

That will teach Sarah Palin not to wag her finger in Dakota Meyers face...

By Patrick

Drama, here we come! Did we predict it, or did we not?

"TMZ" has the scoop and reports that Dakota Meyer filed a lawsuit against Bristol Palin, demanding  joint custody for their daughter Sailor Grace, and Dakota Meyer is asking for child support as well!

Unfortunately, "TMZ" did not make the legal documents available to the public, but from the Alaska Court Records we can see Dakota Meyer filed the custody case yesterday, on January 4, 2016 (click on "Search Cases" and then search for Dakota Meyer's name, but be aware that there is actually another "Dakota Meyer" living in Alaska).

Click on screenshot to enlarge:

This is now already the third custody case for Bristol Palin. She fought two heated custody battles against Levi Johnston, and the second custody case finally ended in a confidential settlement, apparently to the satisfaction of both parties.

See our extensive reporting about the second custody case against Levi Johnston here, here, here, here and here, with many original documents from the trial exclusively published here at Politicalgates. Levi Johnston had to endure relentless attacks coming from Bristol Palin's lawyer against him.

However, Dakota Meyer is not just anybody. He is a Medal of Honor recipient, a public figure as well as a military hero for many conservatives, and he surely is not taking any garbage coming from the Palin-clan. So it will be interesting what will happen during the custody trial, as well as in public, because the tabloids will now surely be all over this matter.

I could not find the original court documents, although "TMZ" claimed that they obtained the documents. If you find a link to the documents, please post it in the comments.

Yes, Sarah Palin should have thought twice before she wagged her finger in Dakota Meyer's face!

This is a "lose-lose situation" for the Palins, but we are not surprised about this development at all.

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UPDATE:

Dakota Meyer's lawyer released a statement and said that the inital reports about Dakota seeking child support were false (this now disputed fact was originally reported by "TMZ", who broke the story about the custody suit).

AP reports:

Dakota Meyer filed a lawsuit against Bristol Palin in Alaska Superior Court on Monday seeking joint custody of their child, Sailor Grace Palin. The child was born Dec. 23.

"Dakota couldn't be more excited to be a new father and the best dad that he can be," his lawyer, Kimberlee Colbo, said in an email to The Associated Press.

"To him, that means being a big part of his daughter's life. Beyond that, he'd really appreciate and thank his friends, supporters and the news media for respecting the privacy of each family in this very personal matter," Colbo said.

Attempts to reach a spokesman for Bristol Palin, who competed twice on "Dancing with the Stars" and had her own reality show on cable, weren't immediately successful. The Palin family lawyer declined to comment.

Meyer, a former Marine living in Greensburg, Kentucky, was engaged to Palin, but the wedding was abruptly called off a week before it was to take place last May.

Meyer is seeking joint custody and shared physical custody of the child, and the court could decide child support.

"At this point, no one is seeking child support," Colbo said.

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NEW POST:

The custody-drama between Bristol Palin and Dakota Meyer continues: The "Daily Mail" reports that Dakota also filed for custody in Kentucky, and that the Kentucky court decided to establish paternity for baby Sailor Grace - Meanwhile, Bristol Palin slams Dakota Meyer on Instagram!

Sarah Palin and SarahPAC are being sued for using iconic 9/11 photo without permission - Will Sarah Palin now play the victim again? - UPDATE: Read the full filed complaint!

"I’m the mayor, I can do whatever I want until the courts tell me I can’t."

Sarah Palin during her time as mayor of Wasilla, quoted by "Salon"

By Patrick

It does not happen very often that Sarah Palin is sued, but maybe people are not as afraid of her as they used to be. Or not even afraid at all.

Sarah Palin's political action committee SarahPAC recently started placing its logo on all sorts of photographs, often with some text added under the photos, in order to "strengthen" the Pac's political message. These "enhanced" photos were then usually published on Sarah Palin's facebook page as well as the SarahPAC website.

However, many people started to wonder whether SarahPAC actually had permission to use the photos and put the SarahPAC logo on them. Just several days ago, Sarah Palin on her facebook for example used an iconic image of Martin Luther King, taken during the March on Washington in 1963, and had no hesitation to prominently display the SarahPAC logo on the picture.

It appears that this question has now been answered, at least for some of the photos in question, as the use of another iconic image by SarahPAC today promptly led to a lawsuit against Sarah Palin and SarahPAC.

A few days ago, on September 11, Sarah Palin posted the following photo on her facebook, an iconic image from 9/11, again with the SarahPAC logo attached on the photo:

Photo Copyright 2001, The Record (Bergen County, NJ)  "as altered by SarahPAC"

The rights to this photo belong to North Jersey Media Group Inc., and they are not amused!

Bloomberg reports:

Sarah Palin and her political action committee SarahPAC were sued by a newspaper publisher over the use of a photo of firefighters raising the U.S. flag at the World Trade Center site after the Sept. 11 attacks.

North Jersey Media Group Inc., publisher of The Record and Herald News daily newspapers, accused the 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate and her political action committee of using the photograph without permission in a complaint filed today in federal court in Manhattan.

The picture is of three firefighters, covered in soot, hoisting the flag while standing amid the ruins of the World Trade Center the day of the attacks and taken by a photographer working for North Jersey Media Group, according to the lawsuit. Copies of the image are posted on Palin’s Facebook page and her political action committee page, www.sarahpac.com, according to the complaint.

The publisher, which alleges copyright infringement, seeks a court order barring Palin and SarahPAC from using the image.

SarahPAC representatives didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment on the lawsuit.

The photo was taken by Record photographer Thomas E. Franklin. The U.S. Postal Service in 2002 issued a stamp called “Heroes” with the image.

This is an interesting development because Sarah Palin is in this case not being handled with "kid gloves", as has so often happened in the past.

Sarah Palin today removed the famous 9/11-photo from her facebook page in an apparent response to the lawsuit.

The iconic photo of MLK which I mentioned above is another particularly shameless exploitation by Sarah Palin, the SarahPAC logo is an insult:

Our reader maelewis also pointed out that in another photo used by Sarah Palin, the "composition" which was created afterwards distorts the real facts:

Sarah is really hitting that Union stuff. At least her logo is on her own trademarked self. Now for the hypocrisy. I'm amazed that Google images can find a photo if I ask the right question. Sarah wants people to thing that her FB photo shows her addressing her union brothers and sisters. Nothing could be further from the truth. That photo comes from a rally in Madison, Wisconsin where Scott Walker was dismantling unions - teachers unions. Sarah was not on the side of unions. She was for Scott Walker cutting his budget any way that he could. First photo: Sarah's FB, second photo, the anti-union rally. And, just to drive home the point that Sarah was anti-union in that photo, click here.

By the way, Sarah is speaking as part of the Tea Party, and the sign on the podium is "Americans for Prosperity," a Koch Brothers enterprise. They are anti-union, anti-workers' rights. Funny that the FB people covered up the AFP logo, and tried to imply that Palin was addressing some union members. Ain't so.

Sarah Palin's "composition" on facebook, created for propaganda purposes:

There, the logo for "Americans For Prosperity" had been cut off, so as not to disturb Sarah Palin's message to her "union brothers and sisters."

An "uncropped" photo from this event in Madison, Wisconsin reveals that she was speaking for the Koch-funded "Americans for Prosperity":

It truly was a terrible "screech" by Sarah Palin, in which she was acting as a paid shill for the Koch Brothers and their infamous fake-grassroots organization "Americans for Prosperity" - watch the speech:

A friend of unions or union-members she is definitely not, our crafty Sarah. She only likes the folks with big pockets like the Koch-brothers who will happily pay her gigantic speaking fees.

Our reader JCos had some suggestions for the future use of the SarahPAC logo:

I think Sarah Palin should seriously consider the last proposal...just think about the headlines!

Good night, everyone!

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UPDATE:

The defenders of Sarah Palin, as well as Sarah Palin herself, don't have a leg to stand on in this controversy. One look at the website of SarahPAC reveals that the primary goal of her political action committee is fundraising:

Using iconic images without permission primarily for fundraising purposes therefore constitutes a particularly serious violation of copyright rules, and any other organization would have been sued for such a violation as well.

Even worse: More than 90 percent of the money that SarahPAC raised over the years was not used for the official purpose of SarahPAC - supporting other candidates. The money was used for Sarah Palin herself, in order to pay for her numerous and expensive consultants, for her travels, and even her long-time personal lawyers are being retained by SarahPAC. It's her own personal slush fund, ensuring that Sarah Palin can avoid what she hates most: Actual work.

Her PAC ensures that for example speeches, facebook posts and press articles are being written for her, just like it was the case with speeches, press articles and other items when she was Governor of Alaska. There is only one person, apart from her highly paid staff, who hugely profits from SarahPAC: Sarah Palin herself.

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UPDATE 2:

Because we are having so much fun today - Kathleen found an excellent Palin-joke in the comments of Huffington Post:

When they were prepairing SP for VP, they had a security audit checking the passwords on her computer accounts. During the audit, it was discovered that Sarah was using the following password:

“MickeyMinniePlutoHueyLouieDeweyDonaldGoofySacramento”

When asked why she had such a long password, she said she was told that it had to be at least 8 characters long and include at least one capital.

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UPDATE 3:

It turns out that it was Sarah Palin's own fault that the was slapped with this lawsuit - from NorthJersey.com (h/t NJfan):

Jennifer A. Borg, vice president, corporate secretary and general counsel for North Jersey Media Group, said the lawsuit was filed when neither Palin nor the PAC responded to a letter.

“It is important to enforce our copyright on this iconic photo,” Borg said. “When neither Ms. Palin nor representatives from her PAC responded to our demand letter to remove the photograph, we were left with no choice but to seek redress in court.”

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UPDATE 4:

We got a link to our story at "CNN Trends!"

Surely Palinbot-heads will explode when they see that! :-)

Screenshot:

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UPDATE 5:

The full original complaint by North Jersey Media Group Inc. has now been published. They specifically mention in the complaint that the photo was used for fundraising purposes by SarahPAC. They also demand a jury trial.

DOWNLOAD LINK HERE.

Screenshot from the complaint:

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UPDATE 6:

The controversy about the use of the picture by Sarah Palin and SarahPAC is now already a few days old, and still no word from Sarah Palin! No apology, no word to her supporters not to reproduce the SarahPAC-graphic any more. Talk about "mitigating the damage"...it isn't happening.

We know from history that Sarah Palin cannot take it if she is challenged for alleged "misconduct", because...how dare anyone to challenge her! How dare they! After all, isn't Sarah Palin an iconic item herself? Way more important than a silly photo, right...?

But "joking" aside:

Many thanks to BanditBasheert for pointing out that this iconic photo, taken by photographer Tom Franklin on 9/11, has been used multiple times very successfully for raising funds for good causes, for example for supporting 9/11 victims. The firemen who are depicted in the photo were also involved in the successful attempts to raise funds for good causes, as well as the photographer Tom Franklin himself.

The news website "Patch" provides more details:

It's one thing when a picture you've taken earns you celebrity status. But not everybody's work gets turned into a stamp. That happened in 2002 when the U.S. Postal Service introduced the "Heroes" stamp, featuring the flag-raising photo.

Proceeds from the stamp have raised more than $10 million to help families and rescue workers of 9/11.

Also that year, an autographed original print signed by Tom and the three firemen sold for $89,625 at Christie's Auction House, with proceeds benefiting two 9/11 charities. The photo has also been instrumental in raising money for other charitable causes, including Juvenile Diabetes, autism, cerebral palsy.

In addition, photographer Tom Franklin explained the following in an interview (which, by the way, is worth reading and contains great images) from 2011:

"The North Jersey Media Group, which owns the Bergen Record, owns the copyright of the photo. They have used the image in many ways to raise money, which then has been allocated to aid certain NJ families affected by 9/11. The "Heroes" stamp, which is a semi-postal US Postage stamp (semi-postal stamps are stamps where proceeds are used for charity, like the Breast Cancer stamp) features the image, and has raised over ten million dollars by itself. Those funds I believe were controlled by FEMA and allocated to 9/11-related victims. I believe that some of the funds leftover were used to aid Katrina victims."

Therefore it has to be noted, in order to understand the full context, that we are not talking about an ordinary photo - it is not just an "iconic" photo, but also a photo which has been used multiple times for fundraising purposes for various good causes. It is this context which makes the use of the photo by SarahPAC for their own fundraising particularly reprehensible.

In any case, Sarah Palin and her highly paid staffers messed it up. The photo is also displayed at Wikipedia, but at the same time, Wikipedia provides a precise warning to anyone who wants to use the photo for free, and accurately explains the limits of "fair use." Hint: Fundraising for your own for-profit PAC is never "fair use." Anyone would understand this and immediately offer a swift and sweeping apology, but we betcha that Sarah Palin feels that she was singled out unfairly. After all, she is the victim here, isn't she?

Wikipedia explains:

This image is a faithful digitisation of a unique historic image, and the copyright for it is most likely held by the person who created the image or the agency employing the person. It is believed that the use of this image may qualify as fair use under United States copyright law. Other use of this image, on Wikipedia or elsewhere, may be copyright infringement. See Wikipedia:Fair use for more information. Please remember that the non-free content criteria require that non-free images on Wikipedia must not "[be] used in a manner that is likely to replace the original market role of the original copyrighted media." Use of historic images from press agencies must only be used in a transformative nature, when the image itself is the subject of commentary rather than the event it depicts (which is the original market role, and is not allowed per policy).

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UPDATE 7:

Many thanks to our readers Maelewis and Sleuth for pointing out that this photo even has its own website, on which the rules for using the photo are explained in greater detail.

Quote from the website:

The Record (Bergen County, NJ), owns the copyright to the photograph. The following copyright notice must appear with the photo at all times: (c) 2001 The Record, (Bergen County, NJ).

• For personal, non-commercial use, visit NorthJerseyImages.com. Prints are available framed or unframed.

• For editorial use, please visit Getty Images.

• For nonprofit reuse, please call (973) 569-7014 or email groundzerospirit@northjersey.com.

• For licensed products, please use officially licensed vendors.

At the bottom of this website, there is a clear warning:

Please contact us if you find people who may be using our photo without permission.

We seek to ensure that the photograph is not used for personal gain and that it is used in a dignified and proper manner.

Therefore the rules are clear. Non-commercial use is possible with permission. For editorial use, the usual licence fee would apply, but the photograph is not to be used for personal gain. Then there are the "fair use" rules which apply to any photo, as mentioned above.

Nothing here speaks in favor of Sarah Palin or SarahPAC, who used the photo commercially without permission, for their own fundraising purposes. Exactly the opposite is the case: From the rules stated on the website, it is apparent immediately that this type of usage by Sarah Palin and SarahPAC would have never been allowed.

Amazingly, the world is still waiting for a statement from Sarah Palin. What's the problem, Sarah?

"LA heckler" Stephen Hanks sues Bristol Palin, highlighting a lie by Bristol Palin which Politicalgates revealed in January 2012 - and which the media chose to ignore

By Patrick 

The path of the Palin-family is littered with victims who fall prey to their vindictiveness. This unfortunate fact is not often reported by the media, whose members still love to dwell in the many myths that the Palin-family created about themselves - especially the myth about "hockey mom" Sarah and her "happy" family.

These myths are lies. The media developed their own narrative whenever the Palins appeared in the news. One of these narratives is the assertion that Bristol Palin is a single mom who deserves our pity, and that Levi Johnston in contrast is a deadbeat dad. The Palin-propaganda worked pretty well in this respect, but the truth is far, far more complex. For example, the details we got to know over the years from sources in Alaska about Bristol Palin's "life as a teenager" showed a girl living a dysfunctional life within an even more dysfunctional family. That's not something which you will find in Bristol Palin's autobiography or in mainstream publications. The Palins re-write their own stories, and they do it pretty successfully.

Over the years, we had numerous contacts with people in Alaska who know the Palin-family incredibly well - including people who were actually very, very close to the Palins. These contacts resulted in scoops like this one, which I published at Palingates in July 2010. After I hit the publish button of this post, I was actually quite nervous, because I knew very well how "close to the bone" the information was which I had published there. But later I realized that I shouldn't have worried: The information we published did not "fit in the picture", and I could not present hard proof, so it was a given right from the beginning that our story would be ignored.

But what is even more disturbing, even when confronted with hard proof, the media is now used to turning a blind eye as far as the Palins are concerned. Bristol Palin for example had no hesitation to lie in court during the David Kernell trial about the existence of a landline in their house in Wasilla, in order to make her "suffering" even more dramatic, as I reported at Palingates. Nobody chose to follow up. Another example, well known to our readers, but hardly known to anyone else, due to the fact that the mainstream remained silent: Sarah Palin and her team of enforcers in the Alaska Governor's office had no hesitation to bully and threaten the Anchorage Daily News repeatedly in order to cover up Sarah Palin's faked pregnancy with Trig. As so often, only Andrew Sullivan was interested in reporting this important story, which is extremely well documented.

The mainstream stubbornly defends the pre-conceived ideas which the Palins quite successfully manage to create about themselves. A faked pregnancy, threats, lies, distortions and vicious propaganda do not fit into the picture. Anybody who gets in their way is a target, but that is not newsworthy. After all, Sarah Palin is still a "Republican super star", is she not. The sad stories of Palin-victims like Mike Wooten, Walt Monegan or John Bitney are therefore virtually forgotten.

In January 2012, we published another story, presenting hard facts, which was ignored because it apparently did not fit into the picture: That Bristol Palin blatantly lied when she explained to "In Touch" magazine that the encounter with heckler Stephen Hanks was the reason why she returned to Alaska. We revealed that Bristol Palin bought her new fancy $ 400,000 house in Alaska two months before she met Stephen Hanks in a bar in Los Angeles. But Bristol herself claimed in "In Touch" that only the encounter with Stephen Hanks prompted her to leave Los Angeles - an obvious lie in order to inflict as much damage on Stephen Hanks as possible:

When I published the story, I basically already knew that hardly anyone would be interested in reporting it - despite the fact that we unearthed extensive documentation and published hard proof for all our claims. It just did not fit the picture - again. Could Bristol Palin really be a liar? The media absolutely  refuses to believe this notion. It would also completely destroy their narrative.

Therefore I was very happy to see that Stephen Hanks, another victim of Palin-rage, actually chose to defend himself with a lawsuit (which rarely happens after people have been left behind as "collateral Palin-damage"). Yes, he is a victim, because despite the fact that he started the argument with Bristol and was abusive, he was just an ordinary citizen in a bar who did not deserve to be featured against his will in Bristol's reality show and have his livelihood threatened as a result. But past events prove that the Palins want only one thing when somebody else crosses them: Destruction - with lies and dirty tricks as standard procedure.

I will be forever thankful to Stephen Hanks that he had the courage to point out in the lawsuit the fact which we had exclusively reported in January 2012 - that Bristol's new house in Alaska was bought long before Stephen Hanks met Bristol Palin, and that Bristol's claim that the encounter with Hanks was the reason for her to leave Los Angeles was a typical "dirty trick" in order to inflict as much damage on a person who dared to cross the Palin-family.

From the filed by Stephen Hanks:

You can read and download the complete lawsuit against Bristol Palin and her television company here:

 

Stephen Hanks, who apologized for his behaviour shortly after the incident, is a brave man.

It remains to be seen what the outcome of the lawsuit will be. But one thing is already certain: Bristol Palin has been caught in a nasty lie - and thanks to Stephen Hanks (and no thanks to a previously silent media), the world finally gets to know about it. If you want something done, do it yourself, especially if the media is sleeping deep and fast.