Sunday, October 5, 2008

Troopergate Info

Here are a few links I want to share with my readers. They concern Troopergate, the accusation that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by firing Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan--because he refused to remove Palin's ex-brother-in-law, Mike Wooten, as a state trooper. The first is from the Anchorage Daily News, and it says that Palin released information to the Personnel Board about why she fired Monegan: because of his insubordination to Governor Palin's budgetary policies. The second link contains the papers that Palin submitted to the Board, which document that Monegan repeatedly went behind Sarah's back to undermine her budget and pursue his own agenda.

ADN Article

Papers

The papers point out that, even had Palin fired Monegan for refusing to remove Wooten, that would not violate the Ethics Act, which prohibits officials from using state resources to further their own financial interests. That somewhat reflects what we see in Palin's interviews, in which she says that she didn't pressure Monegan to fire Wooten, before portraying Wooten as an evil guy. But the documents are still informative because they show there were a variety of reasons to fire Monegan.

Why is she more open with the Personnel Board than with the legislature? Possibly because she's afraid the legislative investigators will twist everything around to help out Barack Obama.