Palin Abused Authority As Governor

When Sarah Palin was chosen by John McCain to be his running-mate, she was already the subject of an investigation by the Alaska Legislature. She had been accused of abusing the authority of the governor's office to get revenge in a personal matter. She used her authority as governor to press state officials to fire her brother-in-law (a state trooper) after a particularly nasty divorce. She even fired the state's Public Safety Commissioner when he refused to fire the trooper.

When the investigation started, Palin promised she would cooperate with it. But after she was chosen by McCain to be his vice-presidential candidate, all that changed. Instead of cooperating with the investigation, the McCain/Palin campaign did everything it could to stop or delay the investigation.

They began to accuse the bi-partisan investigation as politically-inspired by supporters of Barack Obama. They brought in out-of-state lawyers to fight the investigation. They even went to the Alaskan Supreme Court in an attempt to derail the investigation. But none of that worked.

Friday evening, the investigative report was released and unanimously adopted by the bi-partisan Legislative Council. The report says Governor Palin violated state ethics laws that prohibit any public official from using his/her office to pursue a personal agenda. The report states, "Gov. Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda."

Palin has claimed to be a "maverick" fighting the old-style party politics. It doesn't look like that is true. Her actions look to me just like the old-style Republican "gotcha" politics.