BUSTED! Ethics investigation finds Palin abused power

[kaiser soze]

America does not need another person in office who will go above the rule of law and do things "their way" rather than the way of the Constitution. If she cannot conduct her business ethically as governor of Alaska then she does not deserve to be Vice President of the United States.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHOcZbRAuLQ&eurl

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27105917/

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Sarah Palin unlawfully abused her power as governor by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper, the chief investigator of an Alaska legislative panel concluded Friday. The politically charged inquiry imperiled her reputation as a reformer on John McCain's Republican ticket.

Investigator Stephen Branchflower, in a report by a bipartisan panel that investigated the matter, found Palin in violation of a state ethics law that prohibits public officials from using their office for personal gain.

[mikizee]

Big surprise.

[King PSYZ]

they should honestly conceed now, or he needs to find an alternate quickstyle.

[DroppinScience]

This news will surely give the boost of energy their ailing campaign desperately needs! :rolleyes:

[yeahwho]

John McCain seems to be even more dangerous than George Bush, which I find almost unbelievable, but at least Bush attended Yale & Harvard and received a bachelors degree in history and masters in business. He embedded his political rallies and kept the overt hatred level on the lowdown. Bush also was able to debate at a presidential debate while being president. McCain tried to dodge the debate as a presidential candidate.

Rolling Stone takes a direct hit to McCain this current issue (http://www.rollingstone.com/).


Wow this is cool (http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2008/10/10/beastie-boys-announce-swing-state-tour/)

Sarah Palin represents everything I hate about politics. She talks nonsense while real people are getting hurt. She is petty, mean and self aggrandizing.

Now she has been proven to abuse her power as governor along with her husband to settle a family issue. Using her stature as a governor to intimidate, reach out across state agency heads, try to fire and defame her sisters ex-husband.


What did we do to deserve this sort of shit? We're hard working people who are being completely subjected to classless fucking hicks. McCain and Palin have lowered the bar so low it's a mockery of America.

Grow up, shut up and apologize with this vile. It's unacceptable. I have had it with ignorance and arrogance. They've now appealed to people who scream hatred at their political rallies. Unreal.

May as well add this little tab (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/10/10/palinlogo1.jpg) into the post.

[yeahwho]

I love Hearts response (http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2008/10/10/stop-using-my-song-republicans-a-guide-to-disgruntled-rockers/) to Sarah Palin using their song Barracuda during political rallies.

[RobMoney$]

Democratic state senator and staunch Barack Obama supporter Hollis French of Alaska boasted in early September that he would provide an "October Surprise" which would upset the McCain-Palin campaign. Indeed, he originally planned to time it for October 31, four days before the election, for maximum impact, until other legislators forced him to abandon that particular strategy.

Today, however, in an episode of political theater that would make Josef Stalin blush, French gave it his very best shot: The investigator he hired and directed, Steve Branchflower, has labored mightily and given birth to a bloated and redundant 263-page report which boils down, for purposes of the ongoing presidential campaign, to two paragraphs that completely contradict one another. And the one of them that's unfavorable ignores the most important — indeed conclusive — evidence on point, but goes on to provide Branchflower's guess as to whether Gov. Palin has done anything improper.

Please understand this, if you take nothing else away from reading this post: The Branchflower Report is a series of guess and insupportable conclusions drawn by exactly one guy, and it hasn't been approved or adopted or endorsed by so much as a single sub-committee of the Alaska Legislature, much less any kind of commission, court, jury, or other proper adjudicatory body. It contains no new bombshells in terms of factual revelations. Rather, it's just Steve Branchflower's opinion — after being hired and directed by one of Gov. Palin's most vocal opponents and one of Alaska's staunchest Obama supporters — that he thinks Gov. Palin had, at worst, mixed motives for an action that even Branchflower admits she unquestionably had both (a) the complete right to perform and (b) other very good reasons to perform.

Here are the two key "findings," however (from page 8 of the .pdf file; boldface mine):

Finding Number One

For the reasons explained in section IV of this report, I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) provides

The legislature reaffirms that each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust."

Finding Number Two

I find that, although Walt Monegan's refusal to fire Trooper Michael Wooten was not the sole reason he was fired by Governor Sarah Palin, it was likely a contributing factor to his termination as Commissioner of Public Safety. In spite of that, Governor Palin's firing of Commissioner Monegan was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads.

Here's a note to Mr. Branchflower, who clearly is verbose, but obviously none too keen a scholar of logic: Gov. Palin's so-called "firing" of Monegan (it wasn't a firing, it was a re-assignment to other government duties that he resigned rather than accept) can't simultaneously be a violation of the Ethics Act and "a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority." This, gentle readers, is a 263-page piece of political circus that actually explicitly refutes itself on its single most key page!

What's more incredible is that Branchflower utterly ignores the public admission made by Walt Monegan himself that ought to have ended this entire inquiry (boldface mine):

"For the record, no one ever said fire Wooten. Not the governor. Not Todd. Not any of the other staff," Monegan said Friday from Portland. "What they said directly was more along the lines of 'This isn't a person that we would want to be representing our state troopers.'"

That explains, of course, why it took a couple of weeks for Monegan to be persuaded that he'd been improperly "fired" (for supposedly refusing to fire Wooten) by a windbag Alaska blogger, Andrew Halcro — a bitter loser whom Gov. Palin crushed in the 2006 Alaska gubernatorial race (he got less than 10% of the vote, proving that most Alaskans have long since figured out he's an untrustworthy windbag).

Instead, Branchfire has piled a guess (that the Palins wanted Wooten fired, rather than, for example, counseled, disciplined, or reassigned) on top of an inference (that when the Palins expressed concern to Monegan about Wooten, they were really threatening to fire Monegan if he didn't fire Wooten) on top of an innuendo (that Gov. Palin "fired" Monegan at least in part because of his failure to fire Wooten) — from which Branchflower then leaps to a legal conclusion: "abuse of authority." Branchflower reads the Ethics Act to prohibit any governmental action or decision made for justifiable reasons benefiting the State if that action or decision might also make a public official happy for any other reason. That would mean, of course, that governors must never act or decide in a way that makes them personally happy as a citizen, or as a wife or mother or daughter, and that they could only take actions or make decisions which left them feeling neutral or upset. This an incredibly shoddy tower of supposition, and a ridiculous misreading of the law.


Branchflower puts under a microscope every direct and indirect contact that can possibly be claimed to to come, directly or indirectly, from Gov. Palin or her husband, Todd. In none of them did either Sarah or Todd Palin demand or request that Wooten be fired. Some of them date back to before Gov. Palin was even a candidate for governor. All of them are equally well explained by legitimate concerns that Wooten was a potential threat to the Palin family (having already made death threats against Gov. Palin's father) and/or an embarrassment to the Alaska Department of Public Safety and the entire state law enforcement community. That the Palins also had strong — and entirely understandable! — negative feelings about Trooper Wooten does not make any of these communications remotely improper, much less illegal.


Nevertheless, Branchflower leaps to the personal conclusion (page 67 of the .pdf file) that "such claims of fear were not bona fide and were offered to provide cover for the Palins' real motivation: to get Trooper Wooten fired for personal family related reasons." Well, here's another memo to Mr. Branchflower: When the family is question is the family of the Governor of Alaska, and when her security detail is charged with protecting her from threats, and in the process of that, the security detail actively seeks out information as to who may have previously made death threats against the family, that's no longer solely a "personal family related reason." And when someone like Trooper Wooten threatens to bring ridicule and shame to the entire state of Alaska, that's no longer solely a "personal family related reason" either.


Branchflower, I'm told, is an attorney and a former prosecutor. If he thinks this kind of nonsense could support a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt, or even a finding of proof by a preponderance of the evidence, then he may be the worst lawyer I've ever encountered — and I've met a lot of awful ones in almost three decades before the bar.


More likely, however, Branchflower knows that his imaginary case will never be tested before any judge or jury — and instead, Branchflower's audience, and the audience of his political patron Sen. French, is a purely political one. They do not want you to read the 263 pages of his report, but I invite you to do so: By the end of it, you'll be thoroughly convinced that both Wooten and Monegan ought to have been fired! And if you're a person, as I am, who admires husbands and fathers who stand up for their families, you'll definitely want to shake First Dude Todd Palin's hand, and maybe even give him a (manly) bear-hug.


No, indeed, Sen. French and Mr. Branchflower dearly hope most Americans won't look past the headlines generated by this ridiculous farce of a report. French and Branchflower hope that Americans will be misled into thinking this report is from someone whose judgment or opinions actually count for something — instead of being from a hitman hired to complete a political hatchet job, as it actually is.


This report changes absolutely nothing, except that it will be manipulated politically by Obama supporters and Palin haters in an attempt to drive more potential voters into taking sides with Trooper Mike Wooten — a proven child abuser (Tasered his own 10-year-old stepson on a lark) who's been conclusively determined by his own department to have also engaged in drinking and driving in his squad car and to have used a deadly firearm to violate the very fish-and-game laws he himself was assigned to enforce. "It is nearly certain," wrote Col. Julia Grimes, then then Director of the Alaska State Troopers Division of the Alaska Department of Public Safety, "that a civilian investigated under similar circumstances would have received criminal sanctions." The only real question in Tasergate remains why Trooper Mike Wooten is still not only uncharged for his confessed crimes, but carrying a badge and gun — to the continuing shame of the good and decent people of Alaska.



The liberals don't even have to set the hook to reel you in, do they Kaiser?
You've completely lost any credibility in this forum.

[Ali]

The Republicans won in 2004, when Bush could not have been any less popular and was up against a rich white guy with good teeth.

How much of a chance do the Democrats have with a black guy?

[RobMoney$]

Anyone care to venture a guess how much the Great State of Alaska paid Mr. Branchflower to prepare this 300 page pile of partisan poop?

$100,000.00 for an eight week investigation, not to mention the residual benefit of sniffing Obama's jockstrap and smearing the political aspirations of his longtime foe, Palin.
Perhaps there will be room for Mr. Branchflower in Obama's cabinet as well for being such a good lap dog?

All you need to do is follow the money and look at who has something to gain.

[DroppinScience]

It was a bi-partisan panel (that means 4 Democrats, 4 Republicans), so they reached this conclusion together.

[kaiser soze]

The liberals don't even have to set the hook to reel you in, do they Kaiser?
You've completely lost any credibility in this forum.

ok!

:cool:

[Documad]

I predicted that Rob would highlight the republican talking points. :)

All the other crap doesn't matter to me. Other people can fight over all the teeny tiny side issues. Palin's character is clear to me. Thank goodness that people like her are rare in government. It tends to be the people like Palin who come from the outside and rise too fast who abuse power. The people with complete contempt for what government does are downright dangerous. While her history in government is short, during that time Palin has consistently tried to abuse her power rather than let the responsible people below her perform their jobs.

As mayor, Palin tried to get the librarian fired because the librarian wouldn't ban books. The people of the town apparently rallied behind the librarian. I want that librarian and those town people on TV because those are american heros in my book.

As governor, she tried to reopen a closed case where there was no legal basis to do so. While I think that bad cops should be fired and that unions shouldn't protect them, the governor and first dude can't come along later and try to open a closed case. When you're a high government official and you have a personal stake in the outcome of a disputed case, you have to stay away from it and wall yourself off from it. You have to do the exact opposite of what Palin and her first dude did.

[Laver1969]

To me this news isn't a "game changer" it's just another reason that shows Palin was the wrong choice.

All the little things add up.

[Documad]

The nice thing is that people in Alaska have seen Palin exposed and some of them don't like what they're seeing. If McCain loses, she will have been seriously wounded by this. That means that Alaska will likely have a different republican governor in 2 years.

[kaiser soze]

This is what happens when you don't properly vet your running mates!

[Documad]

By the way, if you actually read the report (I skimmed the public portions but did not read all the testimony supporting it), there are some interesting bits in there that won't play on national news but they're amusing to me.

When the state's attorneys are asked to hand over Palin's emails they fail to do so. Their excuse is that they have been swamped with requests for government data on Palin and they just can't keep up.

While I think that's a bullshit answer when it involves a request from their own legislature because that request should be priority number one for Palin, I think it's probably true that the state of alaska has never had so many freedom of information style requests and they're probably working round the clock to fulfill requests from media all over the world. :p Her nomination probably did turn the state upside down.

[D_Raay]

The liberals don't even have to set the hook to reel you in, do they Kaiser?
You've completely lost any credibility in this forum.

No you're the one who just lost whatever shred of credibility you may have had left. This case was enabled by a bi-partisan panel, not Branchflower who was merely appointed by that very same panel. You speak as if Branchflower, a special prosecutor, had the power to just start an investigation of the governor up on his own.

Who was it that started the thread about conservatives just trying to go personal ? Point proven here.

[D_Raay]

BTW, do you conservatives even know why you like this woman, or more importantly, why you think she is qualified to hold the office she is running for?

[King PSYZ]

dude, she's hawt... she's a vpilf...

:rolleyes:

[NoFenders]

BTW, do you conservatives even know why you like this woman, or more importantly, why you think she is qualified to hold the office she is running for?

Same feeling I have towards Obama.

:cool:
:cool:
:cool:
:cool:
Come on Toucan you can do it.
:cool:

[D_Raay]

You're kidding right? Anyone can see that Obama is infinitely more qualified than her.

Oh and you didn't answer the question.

[QueenAdrock]

Has anyone noticed that her ex brother-in-law totally looks like the mind-reading cop from Heroes? Seriously look:

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/POLITICS/10/11/palin.investigation/art.wooten.ap.jpg

[Randetica]

in this case i wish witches would still get le burnt

[Bob]

Has anyone noticed that her ex brother-in-law totally looks like the mind-reading cop from Heroes? Seriously look:

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/POLITICS/10/11/palin.investigation/art.wooten.ap.jpg

haha, i'm watching heroes right now, and you're right

here's another interesting heroes factoid: the guy who plays lindermann is the guy who played alex in a clockwork orange

[QueenAdrock]

Ahhh! No fuckin' way! I would have never caught that.

[RobMoney$]

Really, you don't know who Malcom McDowell is?

...and the evidence of being naive continues.

[kaiser soze]

You're kidding right? Anyone can see that Obama is infinitely more qualified than her.

Oh and you didn't answer the question.

And So is Biden as V.P.

So the Dem ticket is proven to be more qualified period.

[Bob]

Really, you don't know who Malcom McDowell is?

...and the evidence of being naive continues.

i have a hard time recognizing him without hooks in his eyes

[yeahwho]

Palin Denies Report’s Finding That She Abused Her Power (http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/10/11/politics/fromtheroad/entry4514992.shtml)

Asked by a reporter if she abused her power, Palin shook her head and said, "“No.”

She added, “And if you read the report, you’ll see that there was nothing unlawful or unethical about replacing a cabinet member. You got to read the report, sir.”

While the investigation by the Alaska state legislature did find that Palin was within her rights to fire public safety commissioner Walt Monegan—state trooper Michael Wooten’s boss—the report found that she violated the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act by knowingly allowing her husband Todd to use state resources to try to get Wooten fired.

and i love the first comment on that page,

Apparently, she can''t read, either

[Documad]

Malcolm McDowell is on Heroes? I've never seen the show.

He is one of the worst actors of all time. I saw Caligula in college and it scarred me for life.

He also looks disturbingly similar to Sting.

[Bob]

Malcolm McDowell is on Heroes? I've never seen the show.

He is one of the worst actors of all time. I saw Caligula in college and it scarred me for life.

He also looks disturbingly similar to Sting.

not anymore (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Malcolm_McDowell_LF.JPG/363px-Malcolm_McDowell_LF.JPG)

unless that's what sting looks like these days, i don't really know

edit: alright, yeah, like an aged sting i guess