CT Blue

There is a report, of uncertain reliability, that the McCain camp is only now sending people to Alaska to look into the Sarah Palin Troopergate scandal. If true, it would be unsurprising, as it appears that less thought went into this decision than I made today choosing an ice cream flavor at Salem Valley Farms (great ice cream, by the way). Every move McCain makes reveals his own incompetence and unsuitability to be the president of the United States. It really is beginning to appear that being a prisoner of war really doesn’t automatically qualify one to be president. What a surprise.

I’m indebted to one of my readers for pointing me to this site, where a little more of the Palin story is told. The writer is a former political rival of Palin’s, so a grain of salt might be in order, but the article appears well sourced, and he even includes a PDF of the most damning evidence.

In a nutshell, the scandal involves pressure put on the commissioner of public safety to fire the governor’s brother-in-law, who was in the midst of a bitter divorce with Palin’s sister. The commissioner refused, and he was then himself fired.

Apparently, family matters a lot to Palin. Not only did she fire a man who was doing his job, in order to help her sister, but as is demonstrated at the link above, she has let her husband, Todd, become an unofficial state official. He attends meetings with the governor. And, when one of her formerly most trusted advisors started seeing the estranged wife of one of Todd’s friends, he arranged to have him fired.

Another, and more disturbing example:

The most alarming indication of Todd Palin’s reach into state government came just yesterday.

Last month, a group of Alaskans filed a freedom of information act for emails sent from the computers of both Frank Bailey and Ivey Frye. Along with several boxes of documents, they received a cover letter along with 78 pages detailing the emails that were not released due to “Deliberative Process and Executive Privilege”…

Page 1 of the list showed seven emails from both Governor Sarah Palin and Lt. Governor Sean Parnell within a three hour time frame on Feburary 1, 2008 that were described as “Email re Andrew Halcro”.

The serious concern about these emails is that they were prohibited from being released to the public due to executive privilege, even though Todd Palin was copied on these same emails.

Todd Palin is not a member of the executive branch, nor is he even a government employee. Todd Palin is a member of the general public.

So why in the world is Todd Palin getting copied on emails that his wife’s administration is classifying as confidential?

…

These emails should be released to the public…after all Todd Palin has no standing to claim executive privilege. By including him in the email loop, the Palin administration has arguably breached any claim of executive privilege.

After all, government can’t pick and choose what private citizens get to see confidential material, that is exactly why freedom of information laws exist.

I have omitted portions of the post that relate to what, at least at the moment, is inside baseball, Alaska style.

Besides being manifestly unfit to be president, it appears that Sarah Palin has little or no appreciation for the distinction between public and private. She and her husband use the power of her office as an instrument to wreak vengeance on those with whom they have private grievances. In short, she abuses her office. In that respect, she fits in well with the ethos of the Republicans presently in Washington.