I agree that she was foolish to use a private email account for government work. Unfortunately, that's a common practice in a lot of government agencies, large and small. More often than not there's nothing nefarious about it, just a result of the average person's (including average politician's) misunderstanding of email laws and/or inability to access work email from home or similar.

For example, a year or so ago, there was a study in NY about Tompkins County, home to Cornell University and several other colleges. Despite the fact that the government employees there tended to be better educated than average (because of the universities), there was a big problem with public officials conducting personal business on private email accounts. Not because of an intent to deceive, but because of convenience.

Similarly, the New York Secretary of State's Committee on Open Government, which 'governs' the public access to local and state records, has recognized that its a common practice for politicians to use personal email accounts for convenience.

In any event, in Palin's case, from what I've read, the stuff in the account was primarily family stuff and other innoculous material.

Also, MEM, maybe I'm missing something but if the government material in the hacked email account was of interest to you or any other democrat don't you think the hackers would have put that up first?