Say Anything Blog

You’d think those two things would be mutually exclusive, but apparently they’re not.  At least according to the results of a Democrat-run investigation into the “Troopergate” non-scandal:

Sarah Palin violated the trust Alaskans placed in her as their governor when she fired a state official who had refused to dismiss her ex-brother-in-law from his job as a state trooper, according a legislative report released Friday night.

The long-awaited report into a scandal that’s become known as “Troopergate” found that Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, fired the state’s public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, partly because he refused to fire Palin’s ex-brother-in-law, Mike Wooten, who was locked in a bitter custody battle with Palin’s sister, Molly McCann.

But the report – commissioned by the Legislature and carried out by an independent investigator – also found that Palin was within her “constitutional and statutory authority” to dismiss Monegan.

So here’s a summary:

Wooten was a bad cop.  Palin knew he was a bad cop from personal experience (his treatment of her sister, his threatening her father’s life, etc.).  When she became Governor she decided to remove this bad cop from the taxpayer’s payroll.  Walter Monegan, the Palin administration’s public safety commissioner, wouldn’t do as she asked.  So she fired him, which was completely within her authority to do so.

Why trying to get a bad cop fired, and firing members of her administration who won’t go along with what she wants as Governor, constitutes a “breach” of anyone’s trust is beyond me.  Except that this is an election year, and the rise of Sarah Palin has been terribly inconvenient for liberals, so this investigation needed to have a negative spin to it.

And it got it.  Not because Sarah Palin did anything wrong, but because it’s politically convenient for those who ran the investigation.

By the way, this is the headline the Associated Press is putting over this story:

Palin abused power?  No, she didn’t.  She was, per the explicit findings of the report, within her constitutional power.  If the citizens of Alaska don’t like how she used her power, they can elect someone else.

Something tells me, though, that Sarah won’t be losing any elections up there any time soon (though I do think she and her running mate may be losing one nationally shortly).