Troopergate probe running into new resistance

By STEVE QUINN, Associated Press Writer 23 minutes ago

Alaska's investigation into whether Gov. Sarah Palin abused her power, a
potentially damaging distraction for John McCain's presidential
campaign, ran into intensified resistance Tuesday from state Republican
lawmakers who want to end it or delay it past the election.

Alaska's House speaker, a Republican who supported the "Troopergate"
investigation two months ago, openly questioned its impartiality and
raised the possibility of delaying the findings.

The surprise maneuver by Rep. John Harris reflected deepening resolve by
Republicans to spare Palin embarrassment or worse in the final weeks of
the presidential campaign.

And it marked a further fraying of a bipartisan consensus, formed by a
unanimous panel before Palin became McCain's running mate, that her
firing of the state's public safety commissioner justified the ethical
investigation.

- - -

Gotta love the Repubs...stonewall, stonewall, stonewall.

On Sep 16, 5:32*pm, A Boater wrote:
Troopergate probe running into new resistance

By STEVE QUINN, Associated Press Writer 23 minutes ago

Alaska's investigation into whether Gov. Sarah Palin abused her power, a
potentially damaging distraction for John McCain's presidential
campaign, ran into intensified resistance Tuesday from state Republican
lawmakers who want to end it or delay it past the election.

Alaska's House speaker, a Republican who supported the "Troopergate"
investigation two months ago, openly questioned its impartiality and
raised the possibility of delaying the findings.

The surprise maneuver by Rep. John Harris reflected deepening resolve by
Republicans to spare Palin embarrassment or worse in the final weeks of
the presidential campaign.

And it marked a further fraying of a bipartisan consensus, formed by a
unanimous panel before Palin became McCain's running mate, that her
firing of the state's public safety commissioner justified the ethical
investigation.

- - -

Gotta love the Repubs...stonewall, stonewall, stonewall.

Damn you people are dumb. The Alaska State Troopers belong to the AFL
CIO that has spent $millions on the Obama campaign. Troopergate is a
political smear job.

"A Boater" wrote in message
...
Troopergate probe running into new resistance

By STEVE QUINN, Associated Press Writer 23 minutes ago

Alaska's investigation into whether Gov. Sarah Palin abused her power, a
potentially damaging distraction for John McCain's presidential
campaign, ran into intensified resistance Tuesday from state Republican
lawmakers who want to end it or delay it past the election.

Alaska's House speaker, a Republican who supported the "Troopergate"
investigation two months ago, openly questioned its impartiality and
raised the possibility of delaying the findings.

The surprise maneuver by Rep. John Harris reflected deepening resolve by
Republicans to spare Palin embarrassment or worse in the final weeks of
the presidential campaign.

And it marked a further fraying of a bipartisan consensus, formed by a
unanimous panel before Palin became McCain's running mate, that her
firing of the state's public safety commissioner justified the ethical
investigation.

- - -

Gotta love the Repubs...stonewall, stonewall, stonewall.

How do you say GUILTY! as charged. Clearly is she were innocent and had
nothing to hide she would get it behind her as quickly as possible.

Palin is just more of the Cheney bull ****. People would be NUTS to elect
her and McSame. Had enough of this crap yet?

On Sep 16, 6:42*pm, "Bob Eld" wrote:
"A Boater" wrote in message

...





Troopergate probe running into new resistance

By STEVE QUINN, Associated Press Writer 23 minutes ago

Alaska's investigation into whether Gov. Sarah Palin abused her power, a
potentially damaging distraction for John McCain's presidential
campaign, ran into intensified resistance Tuesday from state Republican
lawmakers who want to end it or delay it past the election.

Alaska's House speaker, a Republican who supported the "Troopergate"
investigation two months ago, openly questioned its impartiality and
raised the possibility of delaying the findings.

The surprise maneuver by Rep. John Harris reflected deepening resolve by
Republicans to spare Palin embarrassment or worse in the final weeks of
the presidential campaign.

And it marked a further fraying of a bipartisan consensus, formed by a
unanimous panel before Palin became McCain's running mate, that her
firing of the state's public safety commissioner justified the ethical
investigation.

- - -

Gotta love the Repubs...stonewall, stonewall, stonewall.

How do you say GUILTY! as charged. Clearly is she were innocent and had
nothing to hide she would get it behind her as quickly as possible.

Palin is just more of the Cheney bull ****. People would be NUTS to elect
her and McSame. Had enough of this crap yet?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Commissioners are appointedd by the Governor and the Governor can fire
them at any time. After a whole year the Commissioner would not hire
the 50 extras troopers that he was directed to hire and that is why
she fired him. Also when Palin took up the Governor job, she was
routinely asked if there were anyone that might harm her or her family
and she replied that the trooper Wooten had threatened to put a bullet
through her father's head. That alone was reason for firing the
trooper but he was not fired. Wooten still has his job and the
Democrats and the AFL-CIO are attempting to exploit the dismissal of
the commissioner for political gain.

Headlines from the troopers' union web site:

AFSCME Takes Largest AFL-CIO Delegation to the Democratic National
Convention
Union Sets Plans for Its Biggest Mobilization Program Ever

Washington, DC - The American Federation of State, County and
Municipal
Employees (AFSCME) is taking the largest delegation in the AFL-CIO to
the
Democratic National Convention in Denver next week. More than 150
AFSCME
members from across the country will serve as delegates, alternates
and
committee members.

AFSCME, widely regarded as America's most politically active and
powerful
labor union, will host daily caucuses and events for its members that
include governors, members of Congress and other special guests. The
AFSCME
caucus meetings will be held daily beginning Sunday, August 24,
through
Thursday, August 28.

AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee chairs the AFL-CIO's Political
Committee.

All caucuses will take place at the Hyatt Regency Denver at the
Convention
Center:
from:
http://www.afscme.org/press/20144.cfm

Alaska State Trooper's union:

ASEA/AFSCME Local 52 Local Juneau Field Office

400 Willoughby

Suite 201

Juneau, AK

Phone: 907-463-4949 Toll free: 800-478-0049

Fax - 907-463-4950

from:
http://www.psea.net/about_staff.shtml

Answering a subpoena is not an admission of guilt.
Refusing to answer a subpoena, on the other hand,
is to commit a separate crime before a world of witnesses.

On Sep 16, 8:15*pm, James Of Tucson wrote:
Answering a subpoena is not an admission of guilt.
Refusing to answer a subpoena, on the other hand,
is to commit a separate crime before a world of witnesses.

The investigation is tainted because the leading Democrat in the
investigation, State Senator Hollis French, said the report would be
damaging before the report was compiled.
And there is more. This investigation has Obama written all over it.

ANCHORAGE — Five Republican state lawmakers on Tuesday filed a lawsuit
seeking to halt an inquiry into Gov. Sarah Palin’s dismissal of her
public safety commissioner, arguing that the Legislature has exceeded
its authority by conducting a “McCarthyistic investigation.”
The lawsuit, filed in the state’s Superior Court, comes as the McCain-
Palin campaign has escalated its involvement in the bipartisan
inquiry, providing Ms. Palin’s lawyer with help and mounting a public
relations offensive.

The legal action marks the most aggressive challenge yet to the two-
month-old investigation, which Ms. Palin initially said she would
cooperate with.

The campaign said Tuesday that it had no involvement in the decision
to file the lawsuit.

The lawmakers are being represented by a local lawyer, Kevin G.
Clarkson, and the Liberty Legal Institute, which is based in Texas and
has a history of taking up conservative causes.

Hiram Sasser, director of litigation for the institute, said he had
not spoken with anyone at the McCain campaign, but was contacted by
Mr. Clarkson, who sought him out because of his constitutional
expertise. Mr. Sasser’s co-counsel in the case is Kelly J.
Shackelford, who founded the institute. He told reporters at the
Republican convention that Mr. McCain’s selection of Ms. Palin
“resurrected” the party’s social conservative base.

The lawsuit, consisting of 26 pages, was filed against two Democrats,
State Senator Hollis French, who is overseeing the investigation, and
Senator Kim Elton, who is the chairman of the Legislative Council,
which voted on July 28 to open the inquiry; and Stephen E.
Branchflower, the independent investigator, a former Anchorage
prosecutor who now lives in South Carolina.

The plaintiffs said they hoped to persuade the Legislative Council, a
bipartisan body of House and Senate members who can convene to make
decisions when the Legislature is not in session, to drop the inquiry
by naming it in the lawsuit.

At the heart of the lawsuit is the argument that the inquiry exceeds
the Legislature’s constitutional power and that the process has been
handled in a politically biased fashion intended to besmirch Ms.
Palin’s reputation and affect the outcome of the November elections.

“The defendants are conducting a ‘McCarthyistic’ investigation in an
unlawful” and “partial and partisan political manner,” the lawsuit
said.

The ethics case has its roots in Ms. Palin’s decision this summer to
dismiss Alaska’s public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, who
contends that he was dismissed for refusing to fire Ms. Palin’s former
brother-in-law, Mike Wooten, a state trooper.

Ms. Palin has denied that, saying his dismissal stemmed from his
“insubordination” over budget matters.

Tuesday’s lawsuit contends that the investigators have a
“predisposition to make findings against Governor Palin” and are
manipulating the timing of the inquiry “so as to affect the outcome of
elections” by not agreeing to release the report after Nov. 4.
Lawmakers have said the report would be completed by Oct. 10 to give
both sides ample time to respond. “There is no nonpartisan reason
that” the investigation “needs to be completed prior to the election
on Nov. 4, 2008,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit singles out Mr. French and Mr. Elton, pointing out that
Mr. Elton gave $2,000 to the Obama campaign and citing comments in
which Mr. French called Mr. McCain’s selection of Ms. Palin a “bad
choice.” It also accuses Mr. Branchflower of having a conflict of
interest because his wife once worked under Mr. Monegan. Mr. Elton
said in a written statement that while the lawsuit is a distraction,
the investigation would continue.

Among the five lawmakers who filed the suit was Representative Wes
Keller, an elder in Ms. Palin’s church whom she appointed to his
seat.

The reaction among their Republican colleagues was mixed. The House
Speaker, John Harris, asked the Legislative Council to convene a
meeting within the week to discuss the status of the investigation.
“What started as a bipartisan and impartial effort is becoming
overshadowed by public comments from individuals at both ends of the
political spectrum,” Mr. Harris said in a letter to Mr. Elton.

State Senate President Lyda Green, a Republican who has frequently
clashed with Ms. Palin over policy, said the lawmakers who filed it
were all “step-by-step followers” of Ms. Palin.

“The McCain campaign is the one that has made this partisan,” Ms.
Green said. “This was 100 percent bipartisan effort on the part of the
Legislature to ask questions that deserve to be answered.”

Ms. Palin’s lawyer has sought to move the investigation to the state
Personnel Board, whose members are appointed by the governor for four-
year terms. But on Tuesday, Ed O’Callaghan, a former senior Justice
Department official advising the campaign and Ms. Palin’s lawyer, said
that even if Ms. Palin succeeds she had not yet decided if she would
testify.

A person briefed on the campaign activities in Anchorage also said
that outside lawyers in coordination with the campaign have
volunteered legal advice to Ms. Palin’s lawyer. One volunteer left
Anchorage on Tuesday and one or two others have been here to plot
legal strategy over the past few weeks, the source said. Taylor
Griffin, a campaign spokesman, declined to identify the lawyers by
name.

Meanwhile, in a separate lawsuit also filed Tuesday, a group of
private Alaskan citizens, many of whom contribute to Republican
candidates, sought to have the investigation thrown out, citing their
right as taxpayers to be free of “unauthorized, wasteful and unlawful
government spending.”
from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/us...l?ref=politics

"527_blue_collar_worker" wrote in message
...
On Sep 16, 5:32 pm, A Boater wrote:
Troopergate probe running into new resistance

By STEVE QUINN, Associated Press Writer 23 minutes ago

Alaska's investigation into whether Gov. Sarah Palin abused her power, a
potentially damaging distraction for John McCain's presidential
campaign, ran into intensified resistance Tuesday from state Republican
lawmakers who want to end it or delay it past the election.

Alaska's House speaker, a Republican who supported the "Troopergate"
investigation two months ago, openly questioned its impartiality and
raised the possibility of delaying the findings.

The surprise maneuver by Rep. John Harris reflected deepening resolve by
Republicans to spare Palin embarrassment or worse in the final weeks of
the presidential campaign.

And it marked a further fraying of a bipartisan consensus, formed by a
unanimous panel before Palin became McCain's running mate, that her
firing of the state's public safety commissioner justified the ethical
investigation.

- - -

Gotta love the Repubs...stonewall, stonewall, stonewall.

Damn you people are dumb. The Alaska State Troopers belong to the
AFL CIO that has spent $millions on the Obama campaign. Troopergate
is a political smear job.

This might almost make a tiny little bit of sense if the Alaska State
Troopers, The AFL-CIO or the Obama campaign had anything to do with
launching or conducting the investigation. But, the fact that it was
initially launched by the very Republicans who are now trying, as a result
of desperate pleas from the McCain campaign, to cover it up and make it go
away, only highlights who's REALLY dumb here.

Take a look in a mirror, Bozo.



--
I'm not really anti-Bush . . . I'm really just anti-stupid.
I support the right of all Americans to arm bears.
The only Bush I trust is my wife's.

"527_blue_collar_worker" wrote in message
...

The investigation is tainted because the leading Democrat in the
investigation, State Senator Hollis French, said the report would
be damaging before the report was compiled.

Gee, that's almost as bad as screaming to the world that there was a "Whitey
Tape", and assuring everyone that it would be explosive. Except this is far
more likely to be true than the innuendo of the "Whitey Tape" was. That
said, please explain why Alaska's Republican legislators were not only for
this before they were against it, but were actually the ones who initiated
it in the first place. Now they're suing to try to stop something that they
themselves started. Go figure. No pressure coming from the McCain
campaign, right?

And there is more. This investigation has Obama written all over it.

BWAH HA HA HA HA HA! Obama and his campaign have bent over backwards to
distance themselves, as much as they possibly can, from this whole affair!
They're not the ones who have spent millions of dollars to send teams of
high-priced lawyers up from the "lower 48" to try to influence the outcome
of what should be an internal Alaskan affair. That would be the GOP and
McCain campaign who would be doing that.


--
I'm not really anti-Bush . . . I'm really just anti-stupid.
I support the right of all Americans to arm bears.
The only Bush I trust is my wife's.

527_blue_collar_worker wrote:
Damn you people are dumb. The Alaska State Troopers
belong to the AFL
CIO that has spent $millions on the Obama campaign.
Troopergate

....is a legitimate BIPARTISAN investigation into Palin's
possible abuse of power. What is Palin hiding? If she has
done no wrong, why is she stonewalling, KKKwifi?

Where is the 'whitey' tape, KKKwifi?

Where is the 'Obama calls Palin a Pig' tape, KKKwifi?

527_blue_collar_worker wrote:

Commissioners are appointedd by the Governor and the
Governor can fire
them at any time. After a whole year the Commissioner
would not hire
the 50 extras troopers that he was directed to hire and
that is why
she fired him.

LIE.

Where is the 'whitey' tape, KKKwifi?

Where is the 'Obama calls Palin a Pig' tape, KKKwifi?