BlogWonks

As expected, the partisan Democratic “investigation” of Sarah Palin for the dreaded “troopergate scandal” has found that Sarah Palin fired Walter Monegan legally. Of course, the Democrats running the investigation had to save face so that they wouldn’t look even more like a bunch of partisan hacks than they already do. So, they found that Palin should not have tried to get Monegan to fire  Wooten. Here’s the McCain campaign’s response to the report:

Today’s report shows that the Governor acted within her proper and lawful authority in the reassignment of Walt Monegan. The report also illustrates what we’ve known all along: this was a partisan led inquiry run by Obama supporters and the Palins were completely justified in their concern regarding Trooper Wooten given his violent and rogue behavior. Lacking evidence to support the original Monegan allegation, the Legislative Council seriously overreached, making a tortured argument to find fault without basis in law or fact. The Governor is looking forward to cooperating with the Personnel Board and continuing her conversation with the American people regarding the important issues facing the country.

The bottom line is that Wooten is a deeply disturbed scumbag who tasered his 10 year old stepson, as well as getting drunk in his squad scar during working hours. There were more than enough reasons to fire Wooten, which Monegan should have done when asked to. Monegan was then legally fired by Palin for insubordination. Any normal person hearing the facts of the situation would agree that Palin was right. Besides, if people don’t seem to care that Barack Obama is a socialist and Obama’s friend and mentor Bill Ayers is a terrorist, I doubt they’ll care about this.

Roger Kimball is as genuinely underwhelmed by the Troopergate report as I am.

Surgeon General’s Warning: do not drive or attempt to operate machinery while contemplating the just-published 260-odd-page report orchestrated by Hollis French, Alaska legislator and supporter of Barack Obama. French had originally intended to release it October 31, for maximum effect on the campaign. Other legislators prevented that, but the report came out yesterday and guess what? It’s like Oakland according to Gertrude Stein, i.e., there’s no there there, Hollis, no smoking gun, no damning evidence, no nothing except 1) evidence of wasting the taxpayers’ money and 2) engaging in a clumsy smear campaign against Sarah. (Don’t you love the way Team Obama labels every criticism of The Dear One a “smear”: Google “Obama” and “smears”: 1,280,000 items in .13 seconds.)

French hired a chap named Steve Branchflower to conduct the investigation. Bill Dyer, writing on Hugh Hewitt’s Townhall weblog, has the details. For the purposes of the campaign, Dyer writes,

it boils down . . . to two paragraphs that completely contradict one another. And the one of them that’s unfavorable ignores the most important — indeed conclusive — evidence on point, but goes on to provide Branchflower’s guess as to whether Gov. Palin has done anything improper.

Please understand this, if you take nothing else away from reading this post: The Branchflower Report is a series of guess and insupportable conclusions drawn by exactly one guy, and it hasn’t been approved or adopted or endorsed by so much as a single sub-committee of the Alaska Legislature, much less any kind of commission, court, jury, or other proper adjudicatory body. It contains no new bombshells in terms of factual revelations. Rather, it’s just Steve Branchflower’s opinion. . . .

Got that? of course you can read the whole report for yourself (which would be a huge waste of time) or just take it from that the report says nothing, and is essentially just one guys’s opinion of what he thinks happened with pretty much no factual evidence to back up that opinion.