I don't care if the Cunningham, Wilkes and Foggo cases continued to be prosecuted. I would have really stunk to high heaven if they tried to shut those down.

It's been a year and a half since charges were filed against Foggo and Lam was replaced and he only pled guilty this month. Meanwhile, there is no word whether any of Foggo's colleagues at the CIA, DIA or White House are still being investigated.

Either de-railing the expansion of the investigation to new targets or simple payback explain her firing far better than the lame excuses about immigration cases.

Posted at October 2, 2008 4:07 AM in response to The OIG Report: Tying Up Loose Ends

I was particularly disgusted by her line "it's all on the record".

In fact, none of the news reports I have seen have given any details on the two dozen or so allegations the Palins made against Wooten that the state troopers considered too unfounded or too inconsequential to even investigate.

Nor have they given any details of the eight charges that the investigated but didn't well-founded enough to discipline him for.

And as noted above, the ones they did discipline him for don't make him look like a very nice guy but were either not criminal in nature or were not reported until long after they happened.

Posted at September 19, 2008 8:38 PM in response to Palin Still Bad-Mouthing Trooper

Even worse, using the dog tags of a soldier KIA in Afghanistan.

You would think McCain would not want to talk about supporting the troops in Afghanistan after Bush, with McCain's wholehearted support, decided that starting a new war in Iraq was more importing than winning the one we already had going in Afhanistan.

Posted at September 19, 2008 10:44 AM in response to Election Central Morning Roundup

Ask your trooper friend what would happen if allegations of drinking in a patrol car were brought forward months or years after the fact by people connected to the opposing side of a custody proceeding.

Posted at September 5, 2008 11:51 PM in response to Trooper-Gate Trooper Breaks Silence

"not the actions I want to see in the VP who is going to replace Cheney"

should read

"not the actions I want to see in a VP candidate, especially one who would follow Cheney if elected."

Posted at September 5, 2008 2:02 AM in response to New Complaint Against Palin on Trooper-Gate

1. The 11 year-old son is now 16 or 17, incident was over 5 years ago and family apparently didn't report it until in the middle of a custody dispute. Also, taser was reportedly used on minimum power setting after son asked to know what it felt like. Shows poor judgement, probably against regulations, does not by itself qualify as child abuse.

2. I am not going to excuse this but but we haven't been given any details about circumstances, when it happened or whether there is anything in his record that might make it credible that he would act on the threat. If there was a legitimate concern, criminal charges or a restraining order would seem more appropriate than going to his bosses. If either were upheld, that would probably take care of him being a trooper.

3. All the reports I have seen characterized this as "drinking in his squad car". This could represent anything from a single beer while parked to driving all over town drunk as a skunk. Illegal either way, but very different levels of seriousness, particularly when he obviously wasn't arrested and prosecuted at the time and we don't know how many years ago it happened.

4. Give me a break. Once again, we have no idea when this happened. If you have more than uninformed speculation that this is a serious offense, please provide a link. According to http://www.adfg.state.ak.us/ AK residents don't even need a permit to take a moose currently, though the PDF files with regulations for specific game management units would not open for me.

Now, I really don't know enough to judge what kind of person Wooten is. He may be a real scumbag. But I am very unhappy to see everyone taking it for granted that he is when the information is so sketchy and appears to have mostly originated with Palin's family and associates.

And as other have said, no matter what kind of person Wooten is, trying to use the influence of the governors office to get him fired while he is in the middle of a custody fight with the governor's sister is a conflict of interest at best and an abuse of power at worst. And firing Monegan, lying about trying to get Wooten fired and lying about why Monegan was fired are not the actions I want to see in the VP who is going to replace Cheney.

Posted at September 5, 2008 2:00 AM in response to New Complaint Against Palin on Trooper-Gate

That is not correct. The Alaska State Supreme Court had ruled that denying state employee benifets to same-sex domestic partners violated the state constitutions equal protection clause. In a special session called by the previous governor to enact enabling legislation for the ruling, they instead passed 2 unconstitutional laws. The first to forbid the state controller from implementing the ruling and the second to submit the issue to a non-binding public referendum.

Palin vetoed the first measure and signed the second. From Gay City News by way of The Bilerico Project:

"The Department of Law advised me that this bill... is unconstitutional given the recent court order... mandating same-sex benefits," Palin said in a statement. "With that in mind, signing this bill would be in direct violation of my oath of office."

The statement added, "The governor's veto does not signal any change or modification to her disagreement with the action and order by the Alaska Supreme Court. It is the governor's intention to work with the Legislature and to give the people of Alaska an opportunity to express their wishes and intentions whether these benefits should continue."

Or as Bilerico put it:

The AK supreme court ruled about a year before that the state had to provide those benefits to same-sex partners of state employees, but instead of just giving those benefits, Palin pushed for a nonbinding referendum on those benefits.

Cost of the referendum: $1.2 million

Cost of the benefits: $313,562

Stirring up homophobia in Alaska: Priceless

She also publicly supported a constitutional ammendment banning gay marriage.

Posted at August 30, 2008 4:51 PM in response to Palin scrubs her own wikipedia page!

And by the way, I do think someone's marriage vows should mean something.

Having an affair should not be a career ending move for a politician but it is not 'none of our business' when someone who wants to run the country demonstrates a lack of judgement and integrity in that manner.

Posted at August 8, 2008 4:28 PM in response to ABC: Edwards Admits Affair

If it isn't that big a deal and wouldn't have hurt his candidacy then he should have publicly acknowledged the affair when asked about it by the press at/near the start of the campaign.

By lying about it:

a) he generates a huge amount of anger from any journalists that accepted his denial and didn't follow up on the story then.

b) runs the risk that the story and his lies become public knowledge after he wins the nomination.

Perhaps it should be possible for a candidate to admit a recent affair and still be a viable presidential candidate. By his actions, Edwards prevented us from finding out if that time has come.

Posted at August 8, 2008 4:22 PM in response to ABC: Edwards Admits Affair

Because some of us actually know a little history and recognize that accusations, usually false, of black men raping, assaulting or lusting after white women were the most common excuse used for the nearly 5,000 lynchings carried out in this country between 1862 and 1955.

The actual 'offense' of most of the victims was to threaten white's sense of dominance by being economically successful, insufficiently deferant (uppity) or having entirely consensual relations with white women (sometimes sexual, frequently just social).

It's also worth noting that the electoral dominance that permitted the passage of laws and state constitutions disenfranchising blacks and poor whites and of the Jim Crow laws was the result of a successful campaign of terrorism conducted across the south in the mid 1870s.

Posted at August 8, 2008 3:05 PM in response to New McCain Ad: "Life In The Spotlight Must Be Grand"