Partisan report? Not very likely

So, John McCain and Sarah Palin want us to believe that the report on “Troopergate” clears her of any wrongdoing even though they also apparently claim that Alaska’s part-time Legislature (it has sat in session only 25 times since Alaska became a state) is comprised of a bunch of Obama supporters.

Alaska’s Legislature consists of a House of Representatives and a Senate. There are 23 Republican and 17 Democrat representatives; there are 11 Republican and nine Democrat senators.

In July of this year, before anyone (probably including John McCain) had heard of Sarah Palin, Alaska’s joint Legislative Council (nine Republicans, three Democrats) unanimously authorized an investigation into whether Sarah Palin had engaged in “abuses of power and/or improper actions” as governor of Alaska by trying to get the Alaska Commisioner of Public Safety to fire her former brother-in-law, a state trooper, from whom her sister was divorced. The McCain/Palin campaign has called this investigation “a partisan-led inquiry run by Obama supporters” and a “politically motivated investigation.”

Really? With a majority in the House, a majority in the Senate and a “supermajority” on the joint committee? The Republican party in Alaska is run by folks who support Barack Obama for president? As the French say, Quel Surprise! I simply don’t believe it. No thinking person should.

More mindboggling is that, when the report was published last Friday, the McCain/Palin campaign proudly announced that it demonstrated that Palin “acted within her proper and lawful authority” and was “completely justified” in her actions.

Really? Well, yeah, if you only read one sentence of it.

What the report actually concludes is that “Governor Sarah Palin abused her power” and violated her public trust in an “effort to benefit a personal … interest through official action.” However, the report also concluded that, as governor, when she fired the public safety commissioner, it was a proper and lawful exercise of her authority as governor.

Hardly a ringing endorsement of what she did, especially in light of the fact that after she had “welcomed” the investigation and promised that she and her husband would cooperate with it, neither of them did so. Fifth Amendment and all that stuff, probably.

In short, the report says that she had the power as governor to fire whomever she wanted but that she did not have the right to violate the public trust in the process.

And this is one of the candidates for the vice presidency?

Paul Decocq

Howell, Mich.