Back when Bill Clinton was running for President, the political right expressed a great concern over the potential role of Hillary Clinton in her husband's Administration.  Much was made of the point that the First Lady has no role in policy discussions, and that we weren't electing her to do anything in government.  That clamor intensified when she was given the portfolio for the Clinton Administration's healthcare reform activities.  So, one would think that GOPers would have no reasons to bring their spouses inside the bubble, right?

Well, it seems that at least one leading conservative has no qualms about involving their spouse in the inner working of government.  From MSNBC:

Officially he was the first gentleman of Alaska. More people called him the "first dude." But newly released e-mails show that Todd Palin was busy doing more than snow machine driving and salmon fishing during Sarah Palin's two and a half years as governor and vice presidential candidate.

Nearly 3,000 pages of e-mails that Todd Palin exchanged with state officials, which were released to msnbc.com and NBC News by the state of Alaska under its public records law, draw a picture of a Palin administration where the governor's husband got involved in a judicial appointment, monitored contract negotiations with public employee unions, received background checks on a corporate CEO, added his approval or disapproval to state board appointments and passed financial information marked "confidential" from his oil company employer to a state attorney.

Um...wow.  I had no idea that Todd was so broadly qualified.  Oh, wait, there's more:

While 1,200 separate e-mails were released this week, 243 others were withheld by the state under a claim that executive privilege extends to Todd Palin as an unpaid adviser to the government.

Executive privilege?  "Unpaid adviser?"  How can executive privilege extend to something you weren't supposed to be doing in the first place?

The still-secret e-mails between Todd Palin and senior officials reach into countless areas of state government and politics: potential board appointees, constituent complaints, use of the state jet, oil and gas production,  marine regulation, gas pipeline bids, postsecondary education, wildfires, native Alaskan issues, the state effort to save the Matanuska Maid dairy, budget planning, potential budget vetoes, oil shale leasing, "strategy for responding to media allegations," staffing at the mansion, pier diem payments to the governor for travel, "strategy for responding to questions about pregnancy," potential cuts to the governor's staff, "confidentiality issues," Bureau of Land Management land transfers and trespass issues and requests to the U.S. transportation secretary.

Amazing, isn't it?  Most egregious of all is that a significant amount of work was done directly between Todd Palin and government staff, without the Governor's involvement.  Of course, they did their best to keep this out of the public eye, even though they now claim that he was a "unpaid adviser:"

Many of the e-mails on public policy issues that msnbc.com reviewed were written using private e-mail accounts on Yahoo and other services. The governor and her top aides set up accounts outside the state system, supposedly outside the reach of the public records laws. Outside accounts also helped avoid any violation of the state law against using public resources for campaigning.

I'm sure that all those who berated the notion of Hillary Clinton participating in her husband's Administration will be lining up to criticize this as well - but I'm not holding my breath.