Sarah Palin Accused of Abuse of Power - Violated State Ethics Law

In her attempt to oust the Alaska State Trooper, Mike Wooten, who was her brother-in-law and accused of abusing her sister during their marriage, Alaska Governor and GOP Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin was found guilty of violating a state ethics law.  

The Alaska Legislature's investigation determined that both Palins played a large role in attempts to strong arm subordinates to have Wooten removed.  One of the key persons involved as a victim was now former public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, who explained in detail how Palin's husband Todd visited him or asked him to come to her office -- not his -- on the matter of Wooten.   


As the NY Times reports, ...

The report says she knowingly “permitted Todd Palin to use the governor’s office and the resources of the governor’s office, including access to state employees, to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired.”

Further, it says, she “knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda.”

Now that the "cats out of the bag" what does it mean for Palin?  Well, she's not going to jail, but in the court of public opinion it totally removes her tag as a "good government reformer" because of the charge of abuse of power.  Moreover, it will almost certainly spillover onto Senator John McCain and open fresh questions regarding how well the McCain staff failed to "vet" Governor Palin.  


The other question is will this news impact McCain's overall polling, which was already behind Senator Obama's after the economic disaster, which shows no sign of abating.  This certainly can't help, but just how much it hurts will not be known until Tuesday, after the public's first two working days of media coverage of the matter.


The McCain staff is already spinning this as the work of "Obama supporters" but as it's an ethics violation, those powerful words will override such fingerpointing.  It's a scarlet letter of the worst kind to have as a public official. 

McCain Still Comes Off As REAL ANGRY; Some OF His Supporters Are Nuts

I just subjected myself to watch Senator John McCain and his running mate Alaska Governor Sarah Palin at a town hall meeting in Wisconsin that was on MSNBC and CNN -- I skip Fox News when I can.

I've got to say that McCain and Palin are drawing the radical fringe movement and I can't help but wonder how many of them are White Supremacists.  Do they represent America? Well, considering that the audiences at these rallies are almost all white, the answer's no.

McCain and Palin are running for a part of America, not all of it.  That's the problem.

Thomas Muthee Prays Over Sarah Palin - Economics, Witches, and Isreal

This is the controversial video making the rounds and really casting light on the idea of the separation of church and state -- which does not seem to exist with Governor Palin. Draw your own conclusions but while I'm a powerful believer of God, I'm also very scared that only one perspective of him is presented and used to control Governments and people.

I'm going to research this in more depth.

Republican Sues Gov. Sarah Palin Over Email Use

The growing perception that Alaska Governor and GOP VP hopeful Sarah Palin has her own ethics problems is fed by stories like this one. According to the Washington Post, Palin is being sued by a Republican Alaska activist Andree McLeod for her use of private email accounts for public business. Here's the detail:

In a lawsuit filed in Alaska Superior Court, a Republican activist seeks to force Gov. Sarah Palin to produce copies of official correspondence she sent and received on private e-mail accounts.

Andrée McLeod filed the suit Wednesday and publicized it in a news release today. "Rather than using her state e-mail account, throughout her two-year tenure as Governor of Alaska, defendant Sarah Palin, as a matter of routine, has used, and, on information and belief, continues to use, (at least) two private e-mail accounts... to conduct official business of the State of Alaska," the suit alleges.

The suit is the latest front in a battle McLeod is waging over Palin's e-mail. In June, she filed an open-records request and received four boxes of redacted e-mails. But more than 1,100 others were withheld, an action Palin justified by claiming executive privilege. McLeod appealed that claim last month before going to court last week.

McLeod has questioned whether Palin was using private e-mail accounts to conduct state business in a manner that would skirt open-records laws. In one notable e-mail, a Palin aide apologized for discussing state business on a public account. "Whoops!" Palin aide Frank Bailey wrote, after addressing an e-mail to the governor's official state address. "Frank, this is not the Governor's personal account," a secretary reminded him.