Nutshell #1: Why Troopergate means something
This from Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo summmarizes the whole thing pretty well, with the exclusion of the whole business about the new top trooper that replaced the guy she fired leaving after a few days because of sexual harassment charges against him coming out in the press that Palin didn’t bother to look into (and that he’d been found guilty of). Sounds like nobody knows how to vet anymore…
Clips from the TPM item after the cut:
We rely on elected officials not to use the power of their office to pursue personal agendas or vendettas. It’s called an abuse of power. There is ample evidence that Palin used her power as governor to get her ex-brother-in-law fired. When his boss refused to fire him, she fired his boss. She first denied Monegan’s claims of pressure to fire Wooten and then had to amend her story when evidence proved otherwise. The available evidence now suggests that she 1) tried to have an ex-relative fired from his job for personal reasons, something that was clearly inappropriate, and perhaps illegal, though possibly understandable in human terms, 2) fired a state official for not himself acting inappropriately by firing the relative, 3) lied to the public about what happened and 4) continues to lie about what happened.
These are, to put it mildly, not the traits or temperament you want in someone who could hold the executive power of the federal government.
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