re: trooper/tasergate report
An analysis of Branchflower's report on the trooper/tasergate "scandal" involving Gov. Palin, with the conclusion that it's "just one guy's opinion that contradicts itself and ignores the relevant facts and law". I'm sure we're going to see a lot more on the subject--I suggest being leery of mere summations.
ETA: Info on Obama and ACORN--there are more links at the bottom of the post and in the comments. I think this freaks me out even more than the whole Bill Ayers thing--voter fraud invalidates the whole democratic process.
ETA: Info on Obama and ACORN--there are more links at the bottom of the post and in the comments. I think this freaks me out even more than the whole Bill Ayers thing--voter fraud invalidates the whole democratic process.
He makes a big deal about the supposed "contradiction" in the report. There's not a contradiction; those are two separate issues being addressed. Maybe the problem is that the national media has been conflating the two issues, but whether or not Palin fired Monegan illegally is a separate (if related) issue from whether she violated the state's ethics laws. And I don't think most people here, even at the beginning, expected that she'd be found guilty of the first, including Monegan himself.
The thing that made a lot of Alaskan eyebrows go up was that the investigation cranked along happily for a month -- with Palin's office cooperating fully with French, Branchflower and the bipartisan panel that appointed them -- until Palin was selected as McCain's running mate. At that point, suddenly accusations of unfair bias came out of the woodwork, leaving a lot of Alaskans (including me) going "...wait, what?" The commission that appointed French consists of 8 Republicans and 4 Democrats; the other major proponent of the investigation has been Rep. Jay Ramras, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, a Republican. After cooperating for a month with the investigation and apparently being perfectly happy with French, Ramras, et al, suddenly Palin switched gears (around Sept. 1) and called for the investigation to be conducted, instead, by the state's Personnel Board, members of which are appointed by the governor. (In essence, she filed an ethics complaint against herself, with an agency whose members she can hire and fire at will.)
I keep seeing allegations that the investigation was politically motivated to undermine McCain, but that seems completely silly to me, because the investigation -- with French and Branchflower already in place -- was already going forward when McCain picked Palin as his running mate. The commission refused to stop the investigation because of the election, but, well, my sympathy is all for them, really. They shouldn't. If McCain's running mate being under ethics investigation is a problem for him, then, to be honest, he shouldn't have picked a running mate who was actively being investigated by her state's ethics committee! In fact, they moved up their timetable -- the report was originally supposed to come out Oct. 31, but they moved it up to Oct. 10 to avoid being quite so close to the election. The editorial you linked to gives the impression that it was timed for Oct. 31 in a specific attempt to undermine McCain's shot at the election, but that's flat-out wrong -- this is the timetable that was established back in July, long before anyone knew that Palin would be running for VP. And sure, they could have moved the timetable the other way, but you know what? As a voter, I don't want to go to the polls knowing that there's an ethics investigation hanging over one candidate's head, an investigation that they effectively quashed. That's not a tick in the plus column for me. I'd rather have that information out on the table.
A lot of people up here are pretty pissed about the way that the Palin office has been handling the whole thing, because we have an endemic corruption problem here -- as everywhere, I suppose, but Alaska's got it bad; my husband calls us a banana republic without the bananas -- and Palin's predecessor in office was an extremely unpopular governor who redefined corruption and cronyism. She was elected on a pledge to do things differently, and generally stuck to that pledge through the first part of her term. It's been a slap in the face to see her do a sudden about-face (in the middle of an ongoing investigation) and start playing the same game as her predecessor and every other legislator who's been brought up on ethics charges: stonewalling, refusing to cooperate, blaming the other side. I think people here would have a lot more respect for her if she'd stuck to the course she originally laid out, taken her lumps and moved on.
The campaign does seem to be handling things clumsily--actually, both campaigns have been decidedly less than graceful or gracious. Which is politics, I suppose, but it's certainly depressing. So much for change.
I must admit I'm glad the election's in less than a month. I'm sure the drama will continue long after, but it'll be fallout, not buildup, and someone else's business. If I didn't have the reassurance that everything will work out for good (eventually), I probably would have chewed my nails down to nothing by now.