John McCain has been around so much Republican corruption for so many years that he must have gone nose deaf. How else could he not have noticed the familiar stench coming off of Sarah Palin? Her particular brand of this unpleasantly pungent flower is abuse of power, a staple in the Republican garden with roots in Nixon's Watergate scandal and a full flowering in the religious and political litmus tests applied by Monica Goodling in the Gonzalez Justice Department and the tyrannies of torture, domestic spying and aggressive warmaking by the unitary executive of Bush and Cheney. [Aside: When you hear the term unitary executive, mentally substitute George III. It gives a better sense of the meaning.]
There's more . . .
We also sometimes see a version of Republican abuse of power that results, at least in part, from an office holder's professed duties and devotion to some higher power, like God or family or both. Thus Ronald Reagan's Pentecostal Interior Securetary James G. Watt arbitrarily bans the Beach Boys from a performance on the Washington Mall because rock and roll attracts a bad element. Or Tom Delay manipulates what little there is of Texas campaign finance laws to serve his delusional goal of a permenant Republican majority. Or an entire Republican Congress trashes the court approved legal rights of Terry Shivo's husband as he seeks to cope with her tragic death.
Governor Palin's case is a similar kind, involving abuse of Alaska civil service laws in an effort to get her ex-brother-in-law fired from his State Trooper job. Then she stuipdly risked exposure of her misconduct by firing, apparently in retaliation, the state Public Safety Commissioner who wouldn't fold to pressure from her office to get the trooper fired. Then she lied to cover up her role in the undeniably sordid matter. Strong evidence makes it probable that Governor Palin committed a crime under the Alaska civil service law that makes her subject to forfeiture of her office.
Before giving you the details of the message, let me tell you something of the messenger. During an ongoing 30 year career as a practicing attorney I spent nearly ten years at the state capitol of a small Western state where I represented and advised, with frequent contact on a daily basis, various officials holding state wide elective office, including the attorney general, governor, state treasurer and others. This included matters involving personnel and state civil service laws. For the last five years my practice has consisted entirely of public employee civil rights and civil service litigation in administrative hearings.
My first reaction to hearing former Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan's description of the pressure exerted against him to fire Governor Palin's ex-brother-in-law was to look up the applicable Alaska statutes. I found that as a State Trooper, the Governor's brother-in-law enjoyed the full protection of the state's Personnel Act.
This brought him within the protection of the Alaska Administrative Code Section 07.415:
(a) The appointing authority may dismiss a permanent employee for just cause only.
Just as importantly the Governor is subject to Chapter 25 of the Personnel Act, providing:
39.25.160 Prohibitions
(f) Action affecting the employment status of a state employee or an applicant for state service, including appointment, promotion, demotion, suspension, or removal, may not be taken or withheld on the basis of unlawful discrimination due to race, religion, color, national origin, age, disability, sex, marital status, change in marital status, pregnancy, or parenthood. In addition, action affecting the employment status of an employee in the classified service, including appointment, promotion, demotion, suspension, or removal, may not be taken or withheld for a reason not related to merit. (Emphasis supplied.)
and also provideing:
Sec. 39.25.900 Penalties.
(a) A person who willfully violates a provision of this chapter or of the personnel rules adopted under this chapter is guilty of a misdemeanor.
(b) A state employee who is convicted of a misdemeanor under this chapter or the personnel rules adopted under this chapter immediately forfeits the employee's office or position.
So that is the law. As a chief executive Governor Palin swore to uphold Alaska law. Did she instead use her office to carry out a family vendetta against a statutorily protected civil servant, over matters relating to a change of his marital status and his treatment of family members rather than the merits of his performance as a State Trooper? Did she then, arbitrarily, if lawfully, fire the Public Safety Commissioner, who unquestionably served at her pleasure, because he wouldn't bow to her pressure? The answers to those questions depend on the facts.
In my world the best place to get facts is from a credible witness with good recall and corroborating records and personal knowledge of what he or she is talking about. Also it helps to directly see and hear the witness so that you can personally judge whether he or she is telling the truth or selling a tall tale.
I invite you to watch and listen to recently sacked former Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan describe the pressure placed on him to take adverse action against the Governer's ex-brother-in-law. See this informative report from an Alaska CBS station that includes interviews with Commissioner Monegan and Governor Palin, among others.
Here is Governor Palin addressing the matter on CNBC after the Wall Street Journal broke the story nationally in July:
This was Palin's basic defense that she was selling before the tape surfaced to undercut her: there is no scandal except for a couple of partisan legislators, those rascals, trumping up charges against her just to cause trouble. She was perfectly in her rights to fire a state official who served at her pleasure and doesn't really have to explain it to anyone. The CBS report did a good job of showing how Palin seems to be scrambling now. The CNBC report, interestingly, is also the source of the delicious story that she doesn't really have a grasp of the job she will be nominated for.
Governor Palin's defense is familiar to lawyers. It is called issue transferance. If you can't win your opponent's argument, try to change the argument to something you can win. Walter Monegan may not have any right to contest his firing. The Alaska Personnel Act at Sec. 39.25.110 provides complete exemption from civil service protection for:
(4) the head of each principal department in the executive branch;
So, Governor Palin, and Republican talking heads on the pundit circuit whom I have heard selling Palin's talking points on this, want to defend the firing of Monegan and deny trying to influence action against the Governor's former brother-in-law. That was a good stratagy until she lost plausable deniability when the tape caught the lie in her blanket denials and assorted non-denial denials.
As the cover-up unravels and evidence mounts of the sheer extent of the gubernatorial pressure exerted against the trooper in question, I expect it to become increasingly clear that Governor Palin cannot overcome the proof that she herself took action, and countenanced such action in others, attempting to influence the Alaska Commissioner of Public Safety to take adverse action against the trooper. She and her surrogates did so without having or offering a shred of evidence reflecting on the actual merit of the trooper's performance of his duties.
Whether others come to agree with me will probably depend on whether they believe the consistent, straignt, detailed and corroborated account of former Commissioner Monegan or the concealments, evasions and attempts to change the subject by Governor Palin and the Republicans. In my experience, facts are stubborn things and the evidence will out, usually.
But what does it all mean. Even if there were a criminal prosecution against Palin, the state would have to prove a willful violation of the law. Palin could beat the wrap by creating reasonable doubt on whether she willfully violated the law.
Unfortunately for her, this usually amounts to an "I'm stupid." defense. She has to suggest she didn't know that the Governor wasn't supposed to call or get others to call the Commissioner of Public Safety to try and influnce action against specific merit system employee. She has to thereby create enough doubt that she actually intended to break the law.
Either way, the existence of an ongoing investigation, during which everyone necessarily must speculate about the ultimate outcome, gives this story more than legs enough for the two months remaining before the election. And no matter the foreseeable outcome, Palin looks terrible.
She either knowingly abused her power or she ignorently abused her power. Many Republicans, who exist entirely beyond the reach of reason, will believe that Palin has done nothing wrong and we shall hear great gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over how the nasty Democrats are piling on, those sexist bastards. But those Neandrathals were going to vote for McCain if he picked the corpse of Reagan's chimp, Bonzo, as a running mate.
Meanwhile, voters, still increasingly, seem to be paying more attention this election cycle than those that anyone remembers. The choice between ignorance and arrogance offered by Sarah Palin's philosophy of government, as illustrated by this latest episode of Troopergate, offers little to choose from, indeed, and affords this beleaguered republic no chance at the future Americans want and deserve. It offers only the chance for more and even worse of the blundering, blustering and American suffering of the last eight years.
And on a personal note, the federal government, where I work, has a huge civil service. The abuse by the Bush administration of that system of merit by religious and political zealots at the Justice Department under Alberto Gonzalez remains one of the darkest blots of the immense collage of dark blots that is the Bush administration. The next administration must fix, not carry on and make worse, the Bush abuses of the merit system. I don't want a person like Sarah Palin any where near, much less a heart beat away from the Presidency. Enough of Republican efforts to return to the spoils system of the Gilded Age.
PS: If you have information relevant to the investigation, call the Tip Line at 907-264-6617.