The Obama administration has their priorities exactly backwards; we should be working with our friend and democratic ally to stop Iran’s nuclear program, not throwing in the towel on sanctions while treating Israel like an enemy.

Typical misleading invective on the U.S.-Israel relationship is one thing, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton confronted at AIPAC last week. But “throwing in the towel” on Iran sanctions? Hours after Obama gave a schedule for Iran sanctions in a joint statement with Nicholas Sarzoky of France?

My hope is that we are going to get this done this spring. So I’m not interested in waiting months for a sanctions regime to be in place; I’m interested in seeing that regime in place in weeks. And we are working diligently with our international partners, emphasizing to them that, as Nicolas said, this is not simply an issue of trying to isolate Iran; it has enormous implications for the safety and the security of the entire region. We don’t want to see a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

That’s from the transcript of yesterday afternoon’s joint appearance at the White House, emailed to reporters about six hours before Palin’s Facebook post. The New York Times even has a piece headlined “Obama Expects Iran Sanctions Soon.” I suppose Palin can always argue that whatever set of sanctions is ultimately placed on Iran by the U.S. and its allies aren’t “real” sanctions, since that’s the luxury an governor who quits has. But it’s impossible to say Obama threw in the towel on sanctions when the timetable for those sanctions accelerates.

It’s tax time. Palin might want to check how many billable hours her foreign policy aide Randy Scheunemann is charging her for this stuff.

Scheunemann, confirming that his e-mail had been searched, accused Schmidt of “acting in a manner of Iranian secret police” in going to his account.

Fourteen paragraphs later — this is a war of inches! — comes this:

“So after that, they went nuclear with ‘diva’ the next day,” Scheunemann said, referring to the Palin-bashing done to CNN’s Dana Bash the day after the POLITICO story. “But did anybody search Mark or Nicolle Wallace’s e-mails for leaks to Dana Bash?”

I hope for Scheuemann’s sake that he’s actually complaining about a double standard, as the alternative explanation is too awful a crime against self-awareness, but in either case, I just don’t know how these guys lost the election.

Two West Wing stars, Martin Sheen and Brad Whitford, happened to be walking through the hotel as attendees rolled in. That got a few people at the registration table whispering, but not quite as much as the arrival, right before the panel, of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. He slowly made his way into the room, talking with well-wishers, getting updates on how their families were doing.