Gov. Sarah Palin

 Gov. Sarah Palin. Get complete past and current coverage of Alaska’s Governor as she battles to become the next vice president.

The serious claims against Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin asserts that the Governor ordered the head of the Alaska State Troopers Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan to fire her brother in law State Trooper Michael Wooten which is being reported by the Anchorage newspapers to have roots in the governors family feud. This scandal erupted into public view with the July 11 firing of the state’s top public safety official.
Even though the John McCain camp says they were aware of this legal action pending it’s not resolved even now as she becomes U.S. Sen. John McCain’s running mate.

The papers are calling it “Troopergate” and reporting Palin’s abrupt dismissal of Monegan on July 11 is being investigated by a special counsel hired by the Alaska Legislature.

The Laguna Journal has learned that the Governor has now hired her own lawyer to defend and help unravel this potenuelly embarrassing circumstance.

Lisa  Demera reported in the Anchorage daily news that the issue is whether Palin, her administration or family improperly pressured state Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan to fire a state trooper — the ex-husband of Palin’s sister — and whether Palin fired Monegan when that didn’t happen. Trooper Michael Wooten and Palin’s sister, Molly McCann, are divorced but still battling in court over custody and visitation rights.
The McCain campaign says Palin “was never directly involved” and blamed the controversy on the campaign of the Democratic nominee, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama.
“The Governor did nothing wrong and has nothing to hide. It’s outrageous that the Obama campaign is trying to attack her over a family issue. As a reformer and a leader on ethics reform, she has been happy to help out in the investigation of this matter, because she was never directly involved,” the campaign said in a statement. When the Obama people were contacted by the Journal we were told that the Obama campaign was not the source of the story.

Palin has repeatedly said she did not pressure Monegan and did not know until recently that anyone on her staff might have done so.

This trooper controversy is not new according to locals James Wright of Anchorage who said,” this family trooper thing has been talked about by Alaskans for weeks, long before Palin was picked for the Vice Presidency. It has been brought to light and being thrust into the bright lights of the national campaign because of her appointment to the national stage.”
Trooper Michael Wooten claims Gov Palin was directly involved and was attempting to help her sister by using her powerful office to intervene and tried to have me fired, Wooten said. The governor twice brought up Wooten to him — once on the phone soon after she took office, and once in person not long after that, Monegan said.
Plus, the governor’s husband, Todd, talked to him several times about Wooten, three top officials in her administration contacted him, and another Palin aide contacted a trooper lieutenant, Monegan said.

Palin recently acknowledged, based on an internal inquiry, that a half dozen people in her administration had initiated contacts with the Department of Public Safety about Wooten.
Monegan also disclosed for the first time Friday that Palin sent him two or three e-mails that referenced her ex-brother-in-law and his status with troopers but he wouldn’t provide them because of the ongoing investigation.
Monegan said he believes his firing was directly related to the fact Wooten stayed on the job.
“It was a significant factor if not the factor,” Monegan said.
No one from the McCain campaign ever contacted him to vet Palin as a candidate, Monegan said.
Who did they contact?
“We don’t talk about the vetting process,” said Maria Comella, Palin’s vice president campaign press secretary.

Demera went on to say the Legislature is spending up to 0,000 “to investigate the circumstances and events surrounding the termination of former Public Safety Commissioner Monegan, and potential abuses of power and/or improper actions by members of the executive branch.”
The investigation is supposed to wrap up by Oct. 31, just days before the general election.
Palin will be deposed along with others in the governor’s office and former administration officials, said state Sen. Hollis French, a Democrat and former state prosecutor from Anchorage who is serving as the project director for the investigation. The special counsel just this week was trying to arrange Palin’s deposition, French said.

The investigation will continue, French said.
“I think it raises the profile but it doesn’t really change the mission or the work,” the senator said.
Before she was governor, Palin pushed for a trooper investigation of Wooten over a number of matters, including using a Taser on his stepson, illegally shooting a moose, and accusations of driving drunk. At one point, Palin and her husband hired a private investigator.
Troopers did investigate, and Wooten was suspended for 10 days, later reduced to five. That took care of it, Monegan said. But the Palin administration and Todd Palin wouldn’t let go, he said.
Palin initially said that, after she took office in December 2006, she broached the subject of Wooten with Monegan just once, when they discussed her security detail. She said that she told Monegan that Wooten “had threatened to kill my dad and bring me down.” She said she thought that was the end of it.
Monegan said Palin called him on his cell phone one night in January 2007 about Wooten, but it wasn’t related to her security detail. He said he had already met with Todd Palin about Wooten, whom he hadn’t heard of before, and had looked into the family’s complaints only to learn they already had been investigated. Palin seemed frustrated that nothing more could be done, he said.
“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.’”
Palin again brought up Wooten in February 2007 as they were walking together to wish a state senator a happy birthday, Monegan said. He said he told Palin he had to keep her at arm’s distance on the matter and she agreed.

Andrew Halcro, was the first to publicly mention the Wooten matter in connection with Monegan. He titled his blog post: “Why Walt Monegan got fired: Palin’s abuse of power.”
“This is a governor who really built her name by stepping on the back of sinners — Randy Ruedrich, Greg Renkes, Frank Murkowski,” Halcro said in an interview Friday, referring to the Republican Party chairman, the former attorney general and the former governor. “And now her administration seems to be taking the same approach as the people that she criticized.”
More of the story came out on July 17, when the Public Safety Employees Association, with Wooten’s permission, released the investigative file concerning the complaints brought against the trooper by the Palin family and others.
The personnel investigation began in April 2005, long before Palin became governor and months before her October 2005 announcement that she was running. The investigation into Wooten wrapped up in March 2006, before she was elected.
Troopers found four instances in which Wooten violated policy, broke the law, or both:
- Wooten used a Taser on his stepson, to show him how it worked.
- He shot a moose without a permit. At the time he was married to McCann, who won a highly coveted permit in a drawing but never intended to use it herself.
- He drank beer in his patrol car on one occasion.
- He told others that his father-in-law — Palin’s father, Chuck Heath — would “eat an f’ing lead bullet” if he helped his daughter get an attorney for the divorce.

On July 28, the state Legislative Council, a bipartisan panel of senators and representatives, approved hiring an independent investigator to look into Monegan’s firing and any abuse of power. Retired prosecutor Steve Branchflower was named special counsel.
“I’ve said all along you could come up with dust, you come up with no evidence of wrongdoing, or you could come up with clear evidence of wrongdoing. And it might be by the governor, it might be somebody else,” French, the state senator, said Friday.
Meanwhile, Palin also faces an ethics complaint filed by Andree McLeod, a former state employee and political activist. McLeod has accused the governor’s office of using its influence to get a Palin supporter a job. Complaints against the governor go before a three-person state personnel board. McLeod based her complaint on e-mails between members of the governor’s staff that are among four boxes of papers she got through a recent public records request.
This month, as Palin’s administration gathered materials for the legislative investigation, the governor released a recording of a phone call in which one of her aides pressured a trooper lieutenant to fire Wooten.
That contradicted her earlier claims that there had been no pressure. She said she was unaware of the conversation until then.
In the Feb. 29 phone call, which was recorded by troopers as they do routinely, aide Frank Bailey told the trooper lieutenant that Palin and her husband wanted to know why Wooten still had a job.
“Todd and Sarah are scratching their heads, ‘Why on earth hasn’t this, why is this guy still representing the department?’ He’s a horrible recruiting tool, you know,” Bailey told Lt. Rodney Dial.
Palin has put Bailey on paid administrative leave during the investigation. She said she never asked Bailey to make that call.
After Monegan’s dismissal, Palin’s pick for his replacement backfired. Charles Kopp, who had been police chief in Kenai, lasted just two weeks in the job, stepping down as public safety commissioner in July over revelations of sexual harassment while police chief.
At a press conference to announce Kopp’s resignation, both Palin and Kopp read brief statements then, in an unusual move for Palin, dashed off without answering questions.
Regarding Monegan, Palin has maintained that her decision to fire him had nothing to do with his refusal to dump Wooten. She said she wanted a “new direction” for the department.
Palin has formed a committee to help her pick a new public safety commissioner.

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That’s what they do in a small town called Natchitoches where I live now and in La Grande, Oregon where I grew up. It’s a celebrated annual event. The local grocery has big wooden racks to display the killed. You can even buy postcards to add your picture, with you and the dead deer beside. You don’t need den walls for display anymore, just props for the trucks on the road.

Now I was raised on deer meat, and I like it. It makes sense when you need to feed a family, as my folks did years ago. But sport? Like football for cheering?

Sarah Palin likes hunting wolves, which aren’t creatures we think of sympathetically. But in research on mass murder and war it has been found that people who enjoy killing animals don’t mind killing people some time. (True Crime) A smile from someone who talks about the sport of killing wolves (Detroit Free Press) that is then beamed on a political stage to celebrate the possible death of one’s son should make many of us worry. (KNVN 24) Because if someone likes killing animals from the air and finds that fun and smiles when a son goes to war, then will that same person protect or worry about our sons in a world where killing is a sport?

Certain types of creatures have been on the Palin hit list for some time. Still they have more in common than that; they help keep the rest of us safe. So we should probably think about protecting these characters, especially given all the other problems we have because they are directly involved in what’s going on. What happened to them might be the proverbial tip ofThe iceberg to what might happen to us.

Let’s talk about fish first. Let’s talk about salmon. I don’t know about you, but salmon is my favorite fish, anytime and any place. I was born and raised in Oregon, in salmon country. I grew up with salmon steak and went out with friends and family to catch a few now and then. So I love them and know them well enough to want to make sure they get the right treatment. By that I mean I want their waters to be clean enough to keep them healthy, and I want them to have an overall environment to breed, make babies and keep lots of us fed.

Sarah Palin doesn’t have the same opinions about salmon as I do. Oh, she likes to catch and eat them, that’s true. Protecting them is a whole other matter. Palin can look right out the door and see fish that are dying, even when the lake near her house is stocked as the fish continue to die. In order to get commercial interests into Wasilla Palin sacrificed the environment to do it. An example is right in her own backyard. Lake Lucille has been declared seriously impaired and really dead and has been since 1994 when Palin was Mayor of Wasilla. That was documented by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation and remains like that today. (Talbot)

One Wasilla resident has said, as reported in Salon.com, “Sarah’s legacy as mayor was big-box stores and runaway growth,” said Patty Stoll, a retired Wasilla schoolteacher. Stoll, as reported, worked with Palin’s parents, Chuck and Sally Heath, at the same school. She continued, “The truth is, Wasilla is just plain ugly, it’s not a pleasant place to live. It’s not thought out. And that’s a shame.

“Sarah fouled her own nest, and I can’t understand why. I hate to think it was simply greed or ambition.”(Talbot)

But that’s not the only reason why salmon are grieving and leaving. If they want to die, they would likely want to do that proudly and not in polluted waters. One would think that watching a lake turn bad, and the fish flounder as a result, that some clean water regulation would be welcomed. However, Sarah Palin did the opposite: she spoke out against the Clean Water Act. Palin and her public want mineral mining more than food without tapeworms, which salmon from Alaska now have in abundance. (Summer Johnson) I wonder how many people who eat salmon grown in Alaska worry about how that affects them today. Palin, it appears, may not care.

If you thought it was only fish that should worry, you need to know about bears. Sarah Palin is against classifying polar bears as endangered species. Palin told the public that scientists had said that polar bears were not endangered at all. When questioned, secrecy measures immediately began, as anyone who asked for the emails from scientists were kept at bay with large sums of money asked for disclosing them. Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor, was someone who had asked for them and was told that this request would be costly, as in 8,784. After going through federal records, Steiner found out that the scientists had indeed said that polar bears are an endangered species and worthy of protection. (Steiner)

Despite Steiner’s findings and the available knowledge about polar bears, Palin filed suit to keep the polar bears off the endangered list. Palin’s reason: she was worried that environmentalists are using the Endangered Species Act to block the extraction of oil and gas according to an interview she had earlier this year with Glenn Beck.

Palin also said that the population of polar bears is growing, but not according to the experts. One of them, Ian Stirling, who is a scientist who has studied polar bears for 37 years, says “Polar bear populations have not been increasing for the past 37 years, and that’s a well-known fact,” Stirling has studied polar bears more than anyone. So the issue is to lie, no matter the consequence to polar bears these days. That makes some people sad, just to think of how soft and cuddly they look, but who would feel sad for the wolves we’ll talk about next? (Stirland)

Most people don’t feel a sense of wonder and joy when they think about wolves. Actually most people get scared, but these days the wolves are. It’s one thing to keep wolves out of areas where people live and work, especially when they can eat not only livestock but people too if they are hungry enough. It’s another thing to make that a sport, just to kill for the fun of it. I’ve touched on that before, but it warrants inclusion with the fish and the bears.

Palin put a bounty on the heads of wolves, to encourage average citizens to load up their guns and go kill them, from the air, from everywhere. (Benjamin) That bounty was eventually stopped through legal action. Palin, however, wanted the practice to continue despite the ethical issues involved. All over the Internet there are pictures of Palin smiling over wolf carcasses as part of her campaign, so the practice continues certainly. Palin claims that humans killing wolves helps thin out the populations of predators that kill moose and elk which subsistence farmers in Alaska need to survive.

In defense of those wolves, not my friends surely, there’s not much scientific support for Palin’s position. In fact in 2007, 172 scientists wrote to Palin with their concerns about the lack of real science supporting killing the population of wolves. ( Benjamin) They are concerned about the balance of nature related to global warming taking place in the wilds of Alaska. (O’Brien) That didn’t influence Palin to change. The shooting continues and is applauded as well. In the wilderness of the gun, this is one more place people can practice sharp shooting. So what’s next for the propaganda machine that supports candidates like Palin who really don’t care about the effects of what they do on the rest of the world?

How someone thinks about life in any form, including protected animals, in relationship to the acquisition of material gain tells us something about how an individual might relate to victims of acts over which they have little control. Let’s learn about how Sarah Palin looks at certain social issues to try to figure out how she might respond to legislation surrounding such issues as domestic violence, sex abuse, and the rights of people with disabilities since these get to the core of her beliefs about life and how we should treat the least among us.

Gov. Sarah Palin’s top aides was supposed to be interviewed Wednesday as a key witness in the investigation into her firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan. But the aide, Frank Bailey, abruptly backed out.

Gov. Sarah Palin wants a state board to review the circumstances surrounding the dismissal of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan — taking the unusual step of making an ethics complaint against herself. The state has hired a private lawyer to represent Gov. Sarah Palin’s office in the Legislature’s investigation into the firing of former Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan. The lawyer already has challenged whether lawmakers even have authority to oversee the inquiry.

  

The governor’s lawyer has accused the troopers of turning a blind eye to an alleged

rogue officer, Mike Wooten, who also is the governor’s ex-brother-in-law.

 

 

Troopers’ Union is up-set and angry about the Governors accusations.

The new ethic’s complaint being filed against Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin outlines misconduct by the Gov. and her office staff alleging records where improperly made pubic.

John Cyr of Wasilla, Alaska the Executive Director of Public Safety Employees (PSEA) told the Laguna Journal that “our attorney Steve Sorenson of Juneau Alaska will file the compliant.” The grievances include the illegal release of records of Alaska State Trooper Michael Wooten the former brother-in-law of the governor, according to Mr. Cyr.

Attorney Sorenson said the filing is with Alaska State Dept. of Law ethic’s attorney Judy Bockmon.

 

Gov. Sarah Palin is using the Alaska State Troopers as a “whipping boy” to try and

cover up her misdeeds, the head of the troopers’ union said Wednesday.

 

“It is outrageous and disappointing that the governor would choose to make the

Alaska State Troopers the whipping boy for her ethical lapse of judgment,”

said John Cyr.

 

Alaska’s former commissioner of public safety says Gov. Sarah Palin, John McCain’s pick to be vice president, personally talked with him on two occasions about a state trooper who was locked in a bitter custody battle with the governor’s sister.

The state Legislative Council, a bipartisan panel of senators and representatives, ordered an investigation that is to wrap up by Oct. 31 into whether Palin’s administration abused power in the dismissal of Monegan. The center of the issues are whether Palin, her staff or family pressured Monegan to fire her ex-brother-in-law, Trooper Mike Wooten, and then whether Palin fired the states top cop when trooper Wooten stayed on the job. The state Legislative Council hired retired state prosecutor Steve Branchflower as special counsel to investigate the matter.

Monegan has told the media that Palin sent him two or three e-mails discussing Wooten and adding to the pressure.

On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that Monegan showed Palin’s e-mails to the paper, but declined to provide copies. The story says Palin’s e-mails pointed out problems with Wooten’s continued employment and ridiculed a trooper investigation into Wooten’s conduct.

“It was a joke, the whole year long ‘investigation’ of him,” Palin wrote in a Feb. 7, 2007, e-mail, according to the Post. “This is the same trooper who’s out there today telling people the new administration is going to destroy the trooper organization, and that he’d ‘never work for that b****’, Palin’.)”

That e-mail came a few weeks after Palin’s husband, Todd, met with Monegan to press the case for action against Wooten based on a series of incidents including illegally shooting a moose, Tasering his stepson and drinking while driving his trooper vehicle, the newspaper said.

Palin’s note recounted the transgressions, including his killing of the cow moose under his wife’s permit, according to the Post. When the moose was killed, back in 2003, Palin’s sister Molly McCann was married to Wooten and she drew the permit.

“He’s still bragging about it in my hometown and after another cop confessed to witnessing the kill, the trooper was ‘investigated’ for over a year and merely given a slap on the wrist,” the e-mail said, according to the Post. That seems to contradict a background paper recently released by the McCain- Palin campaign that says the family never knew that Wooten had been disciplined, which is one reason Todd kept pressing the point.

Palin has said she never pressured anybody, doesn’t know that anyone on her staff did, and wasn’t aware of what Todd was up to. She has called Wooten a dangerous “rogue trooper” and says that any contacts about him were legitimate. Monegan was terminated because of differences over the budget, she claims.

Thomas Van Flein, an Anchorage lawyer being paid by the state to represent the governor, said he thinks only the state Personnel Board has the authority to look into what he considers an ethics matter involving the governor. He wants the Legislature to drop its investigation.

The governor is now running for vice president alongside Republican Sen. John McCain. Is the campaign calling the shots?

“I am making the legal strategy for the governor. I have a legal team. We conduct our own strategy internally. I am not working for the McCain campaign and they are not working for me,” Van Flein said.

Still, questioning the Legislature’s jurisdiction could tie up the case in court and delay a resolution. Van Flein said he’s trying to get it sorted out this week so that doesn’t happen.

Van Flein says the legislative investigation is like “a secret grand jury” and that’s one of his problems with it.

Sen. Hollis French, a Democrat from Anchorage and the project’s director, said the Legislature has the right to investigate and that he intends to push on. Both he and Branchflower are former state prosecutors.

“Stephen is working hard over the next two weeks to do a bunch of interviews. … This certainly will not help him get his work done on time,” French said of Bailey’s cancellation.

French said he’s consulting with Republican legislative leaders. The process will be fair to Palin, he said.

Nicki Neal, director of the state Division of Personnel and Labor Relations, said Wednesday that the board will meet soon in executive session — closed to the public — to begin its work. Palin had asked for the ethics case to be open. Neal said she’ll check into how that relates to the board meetings.

Bailey, the governor’s director of boards and commissions with a ,500 annual salary, has been on paid leave since Aug. 19 as a result of what Palin has called a “smoking gun” conversation with a trooper lieutenant about Wooten. He is paying for his own lawyer.

In the phone call, which was recorded by troopers, Bailey told Lt. Rodney Dial that “Todd and Sarah are scratching their heads, ‘Why on earth hasn’t this, why is this guy still representing the department?’ He’s a horrible recruiting tool, you know.”

Palin has said Bailey wasn’t speaking on her behalf, and Bailey has said the same thing. The phone call doesn’t prove her staff members were pushing troopers and Monegan to get Wooten fired, she has said.

Bailey will cooperate, once it’s clear who’s in charge, Bailey’s attorney said.

“No. 1, he’s still an employee of the state,” the attorney said. “No . 2, he’s stated publicly what his position was, which is that no one put him up to making the phone call. Sarah Palin was not involved. He is going to say the same thing under oath. This is just to try to make sure we are going through the proper legal proceedings.”

Palin has made repeated public statements that she’ll cooperate, and that hasn’t changed at this point, Van Flein says.

What if the Legislature won’t drop its investigation? “Haven’t crossed that bridge yet,” Van Flein said.

Go to or Google: New ethic’s complaint filed against Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin 

For more articles from Michael Webster Investigative Reporter go to or Google: www.lagunajournal.com

All the best moments of Sarah Palin interviews, starring Sarah Palin, Charlies Gibson, Katie Couric, Sean Hannity, and special guest appearance from John McCain himself
Video Rating: 4 / 5

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Congressman Lindsay Graham (R-SC) made a staunch declaration that America was winning the war on Iraq. Taken by itself, Graham’s assertion is not surprising given the GOP’s history of weaving dung into Egyptian cotton – then selling it as silk. While Graham was declaring mission accomplished, a photograph showed headstones at Arlington National Cemetery – a truly tragic juxtaposition.

Other images from the GOP Convention are less tragic, but no less disturbing.

The most disturbing image of all was that of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin claiming her Party’s nomination as vice president. In a speech devoid of substance and long on folksy and dubious claims of her reform expertise, Gov. Palin did prove she could read from a teleprompter. This is no small feat given how she was thrust upon the national stage as a last minute replacement. Reports have surfaced that John McCain had his heart set on Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) but chose Palin after a single meeting.

Will Palin’s speech, riddled as it was with half truths and some outright lies, be the basis of honest media scrutiny and assessment? Or will legitimate questions be lost in the haze of cotton candy fluff spun by the GOP? Beyond Gov. Palin’s camera presence and GOP stagecraft lays the minefield of questions about her ideology and her knowledge of the world.

For the foreseeable future, Gov. Palin is safe in the cocoon that is Camp McCain, safely sequestered in a cone of indoctrination. Gov. Palin will hear a constant drone of policy facts and figures, accompanied by a heaping helping of quaint phrasing and plenty of the same revisionist history that punctuated the convention. Not until her handlers have deemed her ready, will Gov. Palin be allowed to face the news media – alone.

In the aftermath of all the bellicose rhetoric and national chauvinism, the corporate news media has been left in state of disorder and confusion. Torn between their responsibilities as journalists and fawning over the newest Republican shooting star, few substantive questions are being asked – or answered.

Ironically, the same McCain-friendly media on which the Maverick Mythology was built has now been declared the enemy by Camp McCain. Uber lobbyist and Camp McCain commandant Rick Davis has declared that the campaign will tightly control media access to Palin.

So just what does Gov. Palin know – and not know – about history and the current state of world affairs? There is no end to the list of issues, claims and inconsistencies to cover when it comes to vetting this vice presidential nominee. Will the titans of American journalism have the chance – or the guts – to ask the right questions and insist on getting the answers?

By her own admission, Gov. Palin knows little about Iraq. During an interview in March 2007, Gov. Palin was asked about the troop surge in Iraq. Her answer was stunning given that the war on Iraq has been dragging on for almost 6 years. Treating this tragic chapter in U.S. history like the World Series, Palin admitted that she had “been focused on state government” and “haven’t focused on the war in Iraq”.

Suddenly, in St. Paul, she knows about Iraq. With all of the “me first, country second fervor they could muster, Palin and the GOP have shamelessly exploited her son’s upcoming deployment to Iraq. While I respect her son’s decision to serve, I find it abhorrent that Gov. Palin chose to use the occasion as a political stage prop. Worse yet, having a son in the Iraq Theater of operations does not demonstrate a knowledge of the lies that were told in order to wage the war.

Nor does that fact alone prove that she understands the tragic consequences the war has wrought on the brave Americans who lay dead and wounded. Surely Gov. Palin has an opinion on the millions of Iraqis who been displaced or left homeless, not to mention the many thousands killed, injured and maimed.

In a complete refutation of the GOP’s platform plank on climate change, Palin has played fast and lose with the facts. Like the Prince of the Dark Ages, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), Palin is oblivious to the crushing weight of scientific evidence and consensus. Like Inhofe, Palin denies human activity as a cause of global warming saying “a changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.”

Religious extremists have welcomed Palin into the fold for her position on creationism. Again denying science, Gov. Palin advocates the teaching of creationism as an alternative to evolution, couching her position in the fog of educational balance. On reproductive rights, Palin again panders to the Religious Right by asserting that women have the right to give birth, even if the father is the rapist who got them pregnant.

While Palin and the GOP have touted reform and fiscal responsibility as a central theme, her record as a self-described reformer and conservative is murky.

As a gubernatorial candidate, Palin actively supported the now-infamous Ketchikan “Bridge to Nowhere”. As governor, Palin took credit for killing the project. In fact, the project died for lack of funding since Palin had redirected 80% of the allotted 8 million to other projects. Will the news media ask her why she opposed the bridge but kept the money anyway?

I hope that Gov. Palin will have to answer for why she reportedly left her hometown of Wasilla, Alaska nearly million in debt. Surely the question of how she left 7,000 people with a per capita debt of ,600 is relevant to her qualifications as a self-described fiscal conservative. Why did she feel it necessary to hire a lobbying firm in order to squeeze more earmarks out of Washington?

The list of questions is long and time is short. The future of legitimate journalism – and the country – hangs on the answers.

Copyright Michael O’Brien All Rights Reserved

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New ethic’s complaint is being filed against Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin today before the end of the business day. The complaint outlines misconduct by the Gov. and her office staff alleging records where improperly made pubic.

John Cyr of Wasilla, Alaska the Executive Director of Public Safety Employees (PSEA) told the Laguna Journal that “our attorney Steve Sorenson of Juneau Alaska will file the compliant before the end of the business day today.” The grievances will include the illegal release of records of Alaska State Trooper Michael Wooten the former brother-in-law of the governor, according to Mr. Cyr.

Attorney Sorenson said that the filing will be with Alaska State Dept. Of Law ethic’s attorney Judy Bockmon.

In her two executive jobs in Alaska, Palin ousted top law-enforcement officials because they were insufficiently loyal or not malleable enough.

Gov. Sarah Palin

One of those firings has already put Gov. Sarah Palin at the center of an ongoing legislative investigation that presumably will require her to testify about whether she was behind efforts by her husband and senior staff to pressure the state’s public safety commissioner to fire her ex-brother-in-law from the state troopers.

When the commissioner, former Anchorage police chief Walter Monegan, refused to go along, he was summarily ousted by Palin without any explanation.

If Palin did use her government office to punish a personal enemy – or that she fired the public safety commissioner because he refused to join in her family feud – the Republicans may have trouble continuing to sell Palin as a reform-minded governor and may have to dropped her as McCain‘s V.P.

Alaska newspapers and other media say it now appears that Sarah Palin shares the Bush administration’s view about putting cronies in key law-enforcement jobs. As mayor of the tiny town of Wasilla 10,000 population and in a state of only about 300,000 folks she managed as mayor and then as governor of Alaska, to fired two top law-enforcement officials when they didn’t show sufficient loyalty or obedience to her.

Ousting the Chief

In 1996, after winning the election to be mayor of Wasilla then with a population of about 5,000, Palin sought to oust six department heads because they had signed a letter supporting the previous mayor, their old boss. Palin ultimately fired two of them, including the police chief.

Wasilla’s ousted police chief, Irl Stambaugh, sued Palin in 1997 for alleged contract violation, wrongful termination and gender discrimination The police chief claimed Palin fired him not for cause but for being disloyal and because he was a man whose size – 6 feet and 200 pounds – intimidated her.

However, a federal judge dismissed Stambaugh’s lawsuit.

So, having escaped any serious damage for punishing Wasilla’s police chief for a supposed lack of political loyalty, Palin had little reason not to throw her weight around when she became Alaska’s governor in December 2006.

By then, Palin was deeply involved in her family’s vendetta against her sister’s ex-husband, trooper Michael Wooten. Through complaints to his superiors, Palin already had helped engineer Wooten’s five-day suspension from the state police earlier in 2006 for various examples of personal misconduct.

In January 2007, a month into Palin’s term, her husband, Todd, invited Palin’s new public safety commissioner Monegan to the governor’s office, where Todd Palin urged Monegan to reopen the Wooten case. After checking on it, Monegan informed Todd Palin that he couldn’t do anything because the case was closed.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Monegan said that a few days later, the governor also called him about the Wooten matter and he gave her the same answer. Monegan said Gov. Palin brought the issue up again in a February 2007 meeting at the state capitol, prompting his warning that she should back off.

However, Monegan said Gov. Palin kept bringing the issue up indirectly through e-mails, such as comparing another bad trooper to “my former brother-in-law, or that trooper I used to be related to.”

Monegan also began getting telephone calls from Palin’s aides about trooper Wooten, including from then-chief of staff Mike Tibbles; Commissioner Annette Kreitzer of the Department of Administration; and Attorney General Talis Colberg.

Questioning ‘the Process’

Colberg acknowledged making the call, after an inquiry from Todd Palin about “the process” for handling a threatening trooper, and then relaying back the response from Monegan that the issue had been handled and nothing more could be done.

Monegan also told the Post that he warned each caller about the risk of exposing the state to legal liability if Wooten filed a lawsuit.

However, Todd Palin continued collecting evidence against Wooten and lobbying for his dismissal. The governor’s husband acknowledged giving Wooten’s boss, Col. Audie Holloway, photos of Wooten driving a snowmobile while he was out of work on a worker’s compensation claim.

Alaska’s Deputy Attorney General Michael Barnhill told the Post that a member of the governor’s staff, personnel director Diane Kiesel, also made at least one call to Col. Holloway about the snowmobile incident. [Washington Post, Aug. 31, 2008]

On July 11, 2008, Palin abruptly fired Monegan, saying only that she wanted to take the public safety department in a different direction.

Monegan then went public with his account of the mounting campaign against Wooten from the governor’s family and staff. Monegan told the Anchorage Daily News that Todd Palin showed him the work of a private investigator, who had been hired by the family to dig into Wooten’s life and who was accusing the trooper of various misdeeds, such as drunk driving and child abuse.

Though Palin insisted she wasn’t involved in the pressure campaign, a review by the Attorney General’s office found that half a dozen state officials had made about two dozen phone calls regarding Wooten.

A tape recording of one conversation – between Palin’s chief of boards and commissions Frank Bailey and police Lt. Rodney Dial in February 2008 – revealed Bailey saying, “Todd and Sarah are scratching their heads, ‘Why on earth … is this guy still representing the department?’”

Expanded Investigation

On Aug. 2, the state legislature launched its own investigation into whether Palin “used her public office to settle a private score.” A bipartisan panel appointed special prosecutor Steve Branchflower to investigate and report back in a few months.

After Palin learned of Branchflower’s appointment, she questioned whether the investigation would be fair and objected to a comment from Democratic state Sen. Hollis French about the possibility that the case might lead to the governor’s impeachment.

Palin’s spokeswoman Sharon Leighow said, “Publicly elevating this to ‘impeachment’ raises doubts as to how fair a process some senators may intend for this to be.” [Anchorage Daily News, Aug. 2, 2008]

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