A bipartisan investigation has found that Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin abused her power as Alaska’s governor and violated state ethics law. The allegations stem from effort to get Palin’s ex-brother-in-law fired from the state police. While Palin originally agreed to cooperate with the investigation, she refused to comply with a lawful subpoena issued by a bipartisan committee once she became a national candidate. She now represents something of a novelty. While Dick Cheney was accused of various forms of federal violations, he waited until he was in office to start breakin’ the law. Palin is now running for the second highest constitutional office in the land while refusing a valid subpoena and facing a finding of ethical violations in office.
The investigation found “Gov. Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda.”
The investigation also found that Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan’s refusal to fire State Trooper Mike Wooten from the state police force was “likely a contributing factor” to Monegan’s July dismissal — as opposed to the later reasons given by Palin and her husband. Palin has simply rejected the findings of the investigation and the campaign stands beside her. This means that both candidates has been found guilty of misconduct since McCain was admonished in the Keating Five scandal.
I do not know if this is an example of “small town values” but in my town of Washington D.C. it is a serious problem.
It should surprise no one that unethical people will not punish or even castigate other unethical people who share their same purposes. This is doubly true if the stakes are high as here. Justice requires, as its first order, the presence of the just who have the power to choose.
Mukasey will never man up. You know as well as I do that he’s a competent Gonzales – the very definition of lipstick on a pig. If prosecutions come about (as they will if the Constitution still means anything), it won’t happen on his watch and until the DOJ is cleared of RNC plants.
Even though I like JT, I’d still like to suggest him to Obama for AG (Sorry, Johnathan).
‘Sounds like Palin makes a better successor to Bush than McCain.’
****
She just might except nobody ‘with brains’ takes her seriously.
It won’t be obvious until AFTER the election.
‘They’ are using her by capitalizing on and publicly utilizing her physical attributes, charisma, political wrangles, and quasi-scandalous family history.
It’s a made for TV ‘Lifetime for Women” movie or a summer Grade B film…at best.
“And this is making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private separate advantage. When the governor, however intitled, makes not the law, but his will, the rule; and his commands and actions are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion.”
http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr18.htm
Sounds like Palin makes a better successor to Bush than McCain.
Exactly, RC – your wife and I are ‘soul sisters’. And Your thinking is also why I commented recently that Palin was McCain’s ‘insurance policy’.
We were discussing here how important it was to have the ‘natural born’ issue decided and agreed upon well in advance of the election as to who was on the ticket to ensure those elected are those sworn. The current administration obviously had/has their own ideas and can still throw this election a curve depending on how ‘things’ play out.
I’d trust ’em ‘about as far as I can throw ’em’, as they say.
If there ever was a more glaring reason to impeach Bush AND Cheney – it’s now!
It’s also said, ‘It ain’t over ’til it’s over’… 😉
And unless Mukasey ‘Man’s Up’, asap, he needs to be persuaded to resign, as well – for personal reasons, of course.
It’s pretty hard to be called a maverick when you have documented evidence that you govern like Dick Cheney.
My wife hypothesized something very interesting last night at dinner with some friends. The other lady asked if we thought this would cause Gov. Palin to resign from the GOP ticket? My wife said she thought not, but that in the unlikely event McCain and she got elected (shudder), Palin would be forced out almost immediately for some “personal reason” in favor of someone–anyone–else. It was then that I remembered reading about Karl Rove’s interview with the Washington Post on Sept 1 at the RNC convention. Rove told the Post that Palin was “a campaigning choice not a governing choice”. Hmmmmm.
I agree, she did break the law. According to the report at Talking Points Memo, other people who knew even more refused to testify, agreeing to only a few days before the report was due out. Another report will be issued after this testimony is taken, most likely with more damning evidence than the first.
By not resigning and facing charges Palin exposes herself as the complete phony she is. She likes to talk about patriotism and law and order. If she had any real belief in either she would resign immediately.
cheneybushpalin have all figured out how to control the system by ignoring it and putting stooges in place at the justice dept. I truly hope a whole group of people in the justice dept. decide upholding the law should mean more to them than being a stooge. We already have two sitting criminals in our highest offices. As FFLEO says, it’s up to the voters to keep out another one.
While I did point out that the report is weak with regards to any enforcement action, its important to remember that the report does find Palin guilty of violating the law.
The republicans want to pull your attention to the report stating she was within her rights to fire the trooper and did not violate the law with regards to the actual procedure of firing him.
They will use this to try and claim the report says she didn’t violate the law.
But thats false.
The report states in no uncertain terms that Sarah Palin, Govenor of Alaska, DID violate the law. The report finds Palin violated Alaska Statute 2952.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act, and therefore claims that she did not violate the law are false.
She did. And this report says so.
Now someone needs to do something about it.
Codes of Conduct/Ethics and Oaths of Office violations are why I first accessed this forum and I have previously written about my concerns. I have documented numerous such violations by federal and state public servants, some of whom are LEOs. They falsified official documents and made false and misleading statements. The judge in a recent case gave judicial deference to the government based partially on the falsification of those documents by government employees, of which the judge did not know the complete facts because those were not part of the administrative record. I submitted some of the misleading information–although not all of the document falsification because I did not know about that at the time—by means of an amicus curiae, which the judge allowed in her Order. However, if the case goes to appeal the “extra record” evidence is irrelevant because it was not part of the original administrative record.
Palin’s case somewhat answers my questions regarding the chances of successfully prosecuting violations of oaths of office and ethical misconduct by governmental officials; that is, she and the persons I referred to are likely ‘off the legal hook of justice’.
My understanding of the First Amendment is that politicians, the government et al. can lie and misstate facts with few exceptions. Politicians such as McCain/Palin can outrightly lie in their political advertisements without legal/judicial retribution. The founders relied on citizens’ judgment to sift through and decide the truthfulness of such political claims and speech, in general.
Therefore, I guess we all can openly lie at will as long as we do not become perjurers or violate the torts of libel and slander. However, that is not the standard by which I raised my son or the example to which our younger generation should aspire.
I agree, the report is pretty wimpy. Basically, she was within her right to dismiss the employee, but it was her reason(s) for the dismissal that are under fire here (just like the Justice Dept. firings). It is clear that when she, her staff, and even her husband (who is not an elected official) were making numerous calls to Monegan to fire Wooten, it had become a personal vendetta.
Still, the fact that she has abused her power and ignored subpoenas kind of makes her a perfect Republican Veep, eh?
I’m confused by this report. Like most reports these days on such things its somewhat toothless. It finds her guilty of an actual violation of the law but does nothing about it.
The report finds Palin violated Alaska Statute 2952.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act.
Yet it makes no recommendation for prosecution or accountability.
Seems to me that someone found to have violated the law should not only be no where near running for President, but should be under indictment for her violations and removed from her current office.
Mainstream Republicans need to take back their party for the good of this nation. I know many honorable people from this party. It is time for them to make a stand. Holding oneself above the law has nothing to do with conservative Republican values. Palin should be removed from the ticket. Republicans with a conscience need to ask themselves what they are winning if the McCain/Palin ticket wins. We are losing this country, if it is not already lost. It will only be regained if people of good will from both parties, hold their leaders accountable. That is one of the most important aspects of a democracy and it is well past time to take action.