Sarah Palin was elected governor of Alaska by touting her experience as an ethics reformer. Yesterday, however, a panel composed of eight Republican and four Democratic Alaska legislators voted unanimously to approve a finding citing Palin for abuse of power:
Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda,

[Palin] abused her power in pushing for the firing of a state trooper once married to her sister and by allowing her husband to use the governor’s office in a crusade against the officer, a legislative investigation found.

“Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired,” concluded investigator Steve Branchflower in his report made public Friday.

The governor let her husband, Todd, use the governor’s office and its resources, “including access to state employees, to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired,” Branchflower wrote.

“She had the authority and power to require Mr. Palin to cease contacting subordinates, but she failed to act,” he wrote.

This created conflicts of interests for the state employees Todd Palin was contacting. “They must choose to either please a superior or run the risk of facing that superior’s displeasure and the possible consequences of such displeasure. This was one of the very reasons the Ethics Act was promulgated by the Legislature,” Branchflower wrote.

Palin also made several inquiries herself about why Wooten remained on the job shortly after she became governor, Branchflower said.

Republicans on the panel gave Palin cover in two ways. Although the report clearly states Palin abused power, it also says she legally had the right to Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan, despite the fact that she improperly failed to stop her cronies from illegally pressuring Monegan to fire Wooten. This contradiction gives the McCain campaign cover to say that Palin was exonerrated by the panel, even though the report says her actions were improper.

Secondly, the panel delayed approving the report until late Friday evening, well past the East Coast news cycle. The delay was apparently an attempt to tamp down news coverage of the story.

The delay has apparently worked. While most daily newspapers reported the results of the investigation on their front pages, the story was not leading the news cycles on CNN or MSNBC early Saturday morning, and there has been scant mention of it, if any, on Fox News.

Thanks to whoever posted this on Jabberwonk — every American needs to see exactly who these nutcase, America-hating, Alaskan fruitcakes are before listening to even one more word from Sarah Palin or John McCain.

Joe Vogler, the founder of the Alaskan Independence Party, whose conventions Palin attended throughout the ’90s and ’00s:

The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred of the United States government…You renounce allegiance and you pledge your efforts, your effects, your honor, your life, to Alaska. That’s how I do. I am an Alaskan, you see.”

Where is Palin’s denouncement, her condemnation of these statements? She needs to start explaining or better yet, just go back to Alaska and stay there.

Did anyone else notice how, once Barack Obama began really getting under John McCain’s skin during the first presidential debate, McCain started calling upon the ghost of Ronald Reagan as part of every response? McCain channeled the spirit of the Teflon Communicator four times during the last third of the debate.

• Back in 1983, when I was a brand-new United States congressman, the one — the person I admired the most and still admire the most, Ronald Reagan, wanted to send Marines into Lebanon.
• The point is that throughout history, whether it be Ronald Reagan, who wouldn’t sit down with Brezhnev, Andropov or Chernenko until Gorbachev was ready with glasnost and perestroika.
• And we ought to go back to a little bit of Ronald Reagan’s “trust, but verify,” and certainly not sit down across the table from — without precondition, as Senator Obama said he did twice, I mean, it’s just dangerous.
• But in the case of missile defense, Senator Obama said it had to be, quote, “proven.” That wasn’t proven when Ronald Reagan said we would do SDI, which is missile defense.

But even Ronald Reagan can only take old school Republicans so far. What you really need to seal the deal is a reference to your prisoner of war status. Except McCain left out the “of war” part and made it sound like he had been released from the state pen.

Jim, when I came home from prison, I saw our veterans being very badly treated, and it made me sad.

So we have a potential drinking game for the last two debates: a swig every time McCain mentions Ray-gun, and a shot every time he says he was a POW. Who’s the designated driver?

Sarah Palin refused to cooperate with a Republican-dominated legislative panel investigating her allegedly improper firing of the Public Safety commissioner — even after it was revealed that she lied on the record about the matter — but now says she will meet with the Personnel Board, all of whom report to her:

Less than a week after balking at the Alaska Legislature’s investigation into her alleged abuse of power, Gov. Sarah Palin on Monday indicated she will cooperate with a separate probe run by people she can fire.

The State Personnel Board is “a three-member panel appointed by the governor. Panel members can be fired by the governor for cause. Two members are holdovers from the previous [Republican] governor and Palin reappointed the third.”

You can sure tell that Bush operatives are running Palin’s campaign.

Monnegan interviewed by Rachel Maddow on Sept. 15,

Now that Sarah Palin’s husband, First Dude Todd, has failed to appear at a hearing on Sarah’s allegedly improper firing of Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan, it can be said that the Palins are officially stonewalling the Troopergate investigation.
Gov. Sarah Palin’s chief of staff authorized former Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan to travel to Washington, although the governor has cited that trip as a primary example of the insubordination that led to his firing.
Todd ignored the subpoena because the Palins claim that the motivations of the Republican-dominated investigative committee are “partisan.” Ignoring subpoenas has become a hallmark of the GOP in the Bush years, and Todd Palin’s failure to testify is a clear signal that this brazen disrespect for the law will continue under the next Republican regime if John McCain and Palin are elected.

Now a document has been produced that proves that Sarah Palin has, in fact, lied about at least one aspect of her story about Monegan’s dismissal:

Gov. Sarah Palin’s chief of staff authorized former Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan to travel to Washington, although the governor has cited that trip as a primary example of the insubordination that led to his firing.

Monegan is the central figure in the investigation into whether Palin abused her power when she fired him. Monegan alleges he was fired because he refused to terminate a state trooper who was involved in a bitter divorce with the governor’s sister. Palin says he was fired because of insubordination on budget issues.

Even before the document was produced, Palin’s version of events was hard to believe. Her principle beef against Monegan, she says, was that he spent too much money fighting sex crimes:

[…]

California Republicans get no respect. Their numbers have dwindled to the point that no one from the hard core right can get elected to statewide office, and the Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has revealed himself to be more liberal than a lot Democrats in the state.
Palin may have “electrified” California Republicans, but her presence on the ticket has done diddley squat for the GOP ticket in the state.
Now even their rock star candidate, vice presidential wannabe Sarah Palin, has dissed them. She has canceled a major trip to the state next week:

The change is a shocker, because Palin’s presence had electrified the GOP base in California. Party insiders were distributing 15,000 tickets to her Sept. 26 rally in Orange County — and fundraisers reported an almost instantaneous sell-out of her two $1,000-a-head Sept. 25 fundraising events in Orange County and Santa Clara.

Both fundraisers had generated such high ticket sales that the OC Lincoln Club event was moved to the Orange County Performing Arts Center, and the Bay Area event was moved from the Woodside home of Tom Siebel to the huge Santa Clara Convention Center.

Palin may have “electrified” California Republicans, but her presence on the ticket has done diddley squat for the GOP ticket in the state. A new Field Poll shows that Obama-Biden is leading McCain-Palin by a whopping 16 points hereabouts.

Still, it’s odd that she would cancel a fundraiser. Obama collected $9 million in a quick, one-day visit to Beverly Hills earlier this week.