A childhood love of cows is worth $95,000 per year (according to Sarah Palin)

In her campaigns, Sarah Palin promised openness and honesty ... but her administration has not been characterized by the transparency she promised.

* She has invoked executive privilege in refusing to disclose information about one ethics case, and recently attempted to take a whack with a baseball bat at the knees of legislative inquiry into her role in the firing of a state public safety official.

* Add to that recent revelations that she conducted state business over two private e-mail accounts (in violation of Alaska law), and the image of an open and honest leader fails to appear. Dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether using these private accounts could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.

* She has also used her office as a personal reward system for friends. When there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate (one of five she has hired), Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. Ms. Havemeister's qualifications? Her childhood love of cows.

* Palin runs an administration that appears to place a premium on loyalty and secrecy. Does that sound familiar to you? University of Alaska professor Rick Steiner sought the e-mail messages of state scientists who had examined the effect of global warming on polar bears. A Palin administration official told Steiner that his request would cost $468,784 to process, and when he finally managed to obtain the e-mail messages via a federal records request, he discovered that state scientists had in fact agreed that the bears were in danger. Palin, however, said the scientists had found just the opposite, and she has sued the federal government to block the listing of the bears as endangered.

* As mayor of Wasilla, she fired the town’s museum director, John Cooper. She later sent an aide to the museum to talk to the three remaining employees. The aide told them that the mayor's office only wanted two employees at the museum and that they had to pick who was going to be laid off. In an admirable move, all three quit.

* In 1997, Palin fired the city attorney, Richard Deuser, after he issued a stop-work order on a home being built by one of her campaign's supporters.

* She hired lobbyists to secure her town a disproportionate share of earmarks ($1,000 per resident in 2002 -- 20 times the per capita average in other states).

* Like George W. Bush, Palin simply adores vacations. Both Democrats and Republicans describe her as often missing in action. Since taking office in 2007, records show that Palin has spent 312 nights at her Wasilla home, some 600 miles to the north of the governor’s mansion in Juneau. During the last legislative session, some lawmakers became so frustrated with her absences that they began wearing “Where’s Sarah?” pins.

* She didn't say “no thanks” to the “Bridge to Nowhere” until after Congress had already abandoned it -- but she kept the blank check for $223 million in taxpayers’ money anyway.

* Palin has said many times that she sold her predecessor's state jet in an auction on eBay, but that's not exactly accurate. The jet failed to draw sufficient bids on eBay and later was sold at a loss through an ordinary aircraft brokerage firm.

* Though John McCain has claimed “she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities,” Palin has never issued a single command as head of the Alaska National Guard.

* In 1996, Palin told her hometown paper in Wasilla, “It’s not rocket science. It’s $6 million and 53 employees.” Now she makes much of her experience in Wasilla. Which is it, Sarah?

* Recently, Palin sat in the pews at the Wasilla Bible Church, where she and her family are members, and listened to a sermon by David Brickner, who heads Jews for Jesus, a group cited by the Anti-Defamation League for its "aggressive and deceptive" proselytizing of Jews. After Brickner concluded his remarks, a special collection was taken up to support his organization's activities.

* Wasilla Bible Church is hosting an upcoming conference that promises to change gays and lesbians into heterosexuals through the power of prayer. That conference, by the way, is being put on by James Dobson's Focus on the Family, one of the national evangelical organizations that discovered a sudden enthusiasm for the GOP ticket when Palin joined.

Then there is her family. She traveled to Texas just weeks before her latest child's due date to participate in an energy conference, flew home while in labor and with leaking amniotic fluid, then drove to a hospital without a neonatal intensive care unit instead of the nearest hospital.

She returned to work less than a week after giving birth, and is now pursuing a national political career with a 5-month-old special needs child. All of that, plus her callous thrusting of her pregnant teenage daughter into the often unkind public eye, indicates that this woman exercises poor judgment and has an appalling lack of regard for her children.

Then there are the names of her children. Good grief -- what were she and Todd thinking (or were they thinking at all?) when they named these kids?! As someone recently asked on Facebook, "Track, Trig, Bristol, Piper and Willow. Are these children’s names or the lineup for the Country Bear Jamboree?"