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Politics : MCCAIN - PALIN (Why he picked her) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (25)	10/10/2008 9:48:43 PM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 29

October 11, 2008 Alaska Inquiry Concludes Palin Abused Powers By SERGE F. KOVALESKI Gov. Sarah Palin abused the powers of her office by pressuring subordinates to get her former brother-in-law, a state trooper, fired, a investigation by the Alaska Legislature has concluded. A report on the bipartisan inquiry that was released Friday by lawmakers in Anchorage, however, concluded that she was within her right to dismiss her public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, who was the trooper’s boss. The public portion of the report concluded that Ms. Palin violated the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act by allowing pressure to be exerted to get State Trooper Michael Wooten, her former brother-in-law, dismissed. In the 263 pages that were released, the independent investigator, Stephen E. Branchflower, a former Anchorage prosecutor, said that Ms. Palin wrongfully allowed her husband, Todd, to use state resources as part of the effort to have. Trooper Wooten dismissed. The report says she knowingly “permitted Todd Palin to use the governor’s office and the resources of the governor’s office, including access to state employees, to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired.” Further, it says, she “knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda.” Mr. Branchflower based his finding of abuse of power on Alaska’s Executive Branch Ethics Act, which was established to “discourage executive branch employees from acting upon personal interest in the performance of their public responsibilities and to avoid conflicts of interest in the performance of duty,” the report says. But the document concludes that Ms. Palin both acted upon her public interest in seeking the firing of Trooper Wooten and created a conflict of interest by forcing subordinate employees to choose between doing her bidding and or not.