Track Palin: On the ice rink, he was an animal. The New York Times reports today how much hockey figures into the lives of Alaska children, and takes a close up of two players who've recently left the sport - Track Palin to the Army, and Levi Johnston, just not playing anymore.

Track's temper apparently sometimes got him benched during Wasilla games and at least once in Michigan where he trained before injuring his shoulder.

"Track has a temper so sometimes you'd only see him half the game," family friend Curt Menard said. "Get there late and he'd already be out."

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UPDATED: Foreign policy questions loom large in Palin's interview tonight. The Boston Globe's Political Intelligence blog reminds readers of the first session with ABC's Charles Gibson at 6:30 p.m. ET (5:30 p.m. AT) and the producer's promise that no topic is off-limits.

Excerpts of the Gibson interview are already online. Check the Alaska Politics blog for ABC News excerpts and a link through to a 1 minute 18 second video excerpt.

E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post suggests that motherhood not be a topic.

The one and only issue that matters to our country right now is: Could Sarah Palin be a good president of the United States if called upon?

Politico.com reports that GOP foreign policy experts are "cool" on Palin.

In a CNN interview over the weekend, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declined to defend Palin's foreign policy credentials when asked whether Palin has "enough experience to handle the kinds of things that you need to handle?"

Rice replied: "These are decisions that Sen. McCain has made. I have great confidence in him. I'm not going to get involved in this political campaign. As secretary of state, I don't do that. But I thought her speech was wonderful."

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Troopergate: State lawyers may "move to quash subpoenas." Bloomberg.com is reporting this morning on a seven-page letter sent Tuesday from senior Assistant Attorney General Michael Barnhill to legislators involved in investigating Gov. Sarah Palin's firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan.

Barnhill said the move by legislators to issue subpoenas went against a clause in the state's constitution written to protect people's reputations from being smeared by McCarthy-like hearings. Alaska became a state in 1959, a few years after hearings led by Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy ruined the careers of many government employees who were accused of having ties with the Communist Party.

Jay Ramras, R-Fairbanks, calls the administration/legislature loggerhead "a little mini-constitutional crisis." "It's a shame because Alaska is going to air its dirty laundry in front of the national public in a politically charged environment."

The Washington Post this morning also reports on this investigation, citing letters from Governor Palin's attorney, Thomas Van Flein that claim the investigation is "unlawful and unconstitutional, and that the investigator hired by legislators is a friend of the ousted public safety commissioner.

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Comedians and campaigns struggle to get a fix on Palin. You've seen the list of running gags from Conan, Jay and David. At the Chicago Tribune, writer Eric Zorn lists some of the jabs (actually, a lot of them) but also analyzes what their content tells us about how a candidate is perceived. Jokesters usually settle on one or two qualities and hammer away at those. Not so, yet, with Palin. Among the choices he sees so far:

We don't yet know what Palin will be.

> The "Ya, sure, you betcha!" small-town mom?

> The compulsive exaggerator whose reform credentials are actually slight?

> The blinking Washington neophyte?

> The Church Lady?

> The conservative attack dog who dominates McCain?

Fox News says Alaska has become a new kind of "battleground" state. Republican, Democratic and media teams have descended here (and don't we know it) to try and get a fix on Palin and Alaska. Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia says, the same thing happened during the Geraldine Ferraro and Dan Quayle candidacies. "Politics is just one big game of tit for tat," he said.

The Hartford Courant, noting that coverage of Palin has been "torrential," decided to profile Wasilla, what it calls an "outpost built on a broken dream."

The Confluence, a blog written by supporters of Hillary Clinton, asks "Why does Time magazine hate Alaska so much?"

The San Francisco Chronicle offers a quick profile of the state's finances, showing them tightly linked to Washington and suggesting that "Alaska is no model for federal government."

Salon.com profiles the church where Sarah Palin was saved, the Wasilla Assembly of God, closing with a quote from Palin speaking there: "I grew up in Wasilla Assembly of God. Nothing freaks me out!"

The New York Times editorial writers ask VP candidate Palin to "fill in for the voting public the gaping blanks about her record and qualifications to be president."

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The bridge to nowhere that keeps leading to trouble. NPR this morning takes yet another look at the Palin campaign's continued use of the line, "I told Congress, 'Thanks, but no thanks, on that bridge to nowhere. If our state wanted to build a bridge, we were going to build it ourselves."

Here's two takes:

>St. Petersburg Times and Politifact.org: "Even in Alaska, there were a lot of people who were opposed to it. So it's not like she boldly stood up against it," says Bill Adair of the St. Petersburg Times. "What she did was, seeing the political reality, she ended it."

"It's not that she really killed it, but she did perform the last rites," Adair says.

> Jack Nelson, the retired Washington bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times, has a tarter term for it: "It is a lie," he says.

"Most of the time in past campaigns, when major news organizations have come out and said that something is totally false, the candidate will drop it," says Nelson, who was a reporter for more than five decades. "In this case, they are repeating it over and over and over."

The Anchorage Daily News today reminds readers that Palin still supports spending millions on a second "Bridge to Nowhere," the Knik Arm Crossing.

NPR has posted two video clips of Palin, thanking Alaska's delegation for their hard work bringing federal money home to Alaska when she was running for governor in 2006.

"And our congressional delegation, God bless 'em. They do a great job for us," she said at the forum hosted by the Alaska Professional Design Council. "Representative Don Young, especially God bless him, with transportation -- Alaska did so well under the very basic provisions of the transportation act that he wrote just a couple of years ago. We had a nice bump there. We're very, very fortunate to receive the largesse that Don Young was able to put together for Alaska."

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What shade is your lipstick? Phew, this storm blew up faster than Hurricane Ike. USA Today catalogues the back and forth from both camps yesterday that followed Barack Obama's remark: "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." The GOP says it was a sexist jab at Sarah Palin after her convention speech in which she said the only difference between pitbulls and hockey moms like her was lipstick. The Obama camp promptly located a 2007 Chicago Tribune article in which John McCain characterized Hillary Clinton's health care policies the same way. And last night, David Letterman asked Obama if he'd ever actually put lipstick on a pig. Is this over yet?

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US Weekly makes it up to unhappy readers. According to Brit Hume's blog at Fox News, the Sept. 2 "Babies, lies and scandals" headline incensed readers to the degree that those who complain get a return e-mail and a free gift.

"We're sorry you are upset over the Governor Palin cover. We do not want to lose you as a subscriber over one article in one issue. In an effort to keep you as a subscriber, we will add five free issues to your subscription."

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Palin's pledge to be a "friend and advocate" in the White House for special needs children draws local scrutiny. The Anchorage Press reports on the governor's record in Alaska on funding programs for children with disabilities. Sen. Bill Wielechowski and Rep. Les Gara point out the existing developmental disabilities waiting list with more than 900 on it.

Jim Beck, the executive director of Access Alaska, a non-profit organization that advocates for people with disabilities and provides them with independent living services, isn't as harsh on the governor, but says, "she's never elucidated a health care plan or vision or any kind of connection to the disability community."

"We're really suffering from not having a big plan," Beck says. "It's not as though we're stagnant, we just don't have the big vision."

Abbe Hensley, executive director of a public-private partnership that grew out of a task force looking at these issues, is less critical and points to progress.

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Would Todd Palin be happy moving to Washington and living as the "second dude?" Cool glasses seem to figure in the Palin family. He was stumping this week, not for his wife but for Arctic Cat snowmobiles at Hay Days Grass Drags in Forest Lake, Minn. And this is probably the first time ever that a snowmachine promotional event made it into The New York Times politics blog, the Caucus.

Joel Hallstrom, a snowmobile product manager for Arctic Cat, was quoted as saying that he hopes Mr. Palin remains on the racing circuit, no matter the election result..

"We don't want them to quit racing 'cause he and Scott are a pretty good team for us,'' Mr. Hallstrom said.

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Under Palin, Wasilla charged rape victims for evidence kits. This report has been batting around the Internet for several days and surfaced in the media today. The Anchorage Daily News and USA Today report on this piece of police forensics history in Wasilla during Sarah Palin's tenure as mayor there.

You can read the original story in the Frontiersman from May 23, 2000 that documents that the state Legislature passed a bill and then-governor Tony Knowles sign it, banning the practice statewide. It was designed to stop the city of Wasilla from passing the costs of medical exams onto the victims.

The story says Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon "does not agree with the new legislation, saying the law will require the city and communities to come up with more funds to cover the costs of forensic exams." He said the new law would cost their department between $5,000 and $14,000 a year to collect the evidence.

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