Oh Boy... Palin and Ethics issue...

Well, if the McCain campaign wants to continue to tie 8-year-old Obama to The Weather Underground (I've met some pretty disruptive 8-year-olds, so, you know, it is possible that they could be involved with political radicals - those little monsters), then he'd better be cautious now. Why? Well, a bi-partisan review of whether Governor Palin violated Alaska's ethics laws found her guilty as charged - she abused her power. If Obama wants to point fingers then he's got every right to. However, I suspect that he won't. Why? Leave that to bloggers like me and the media to ask the hard questions.


What I want to know is will the right come to her aid. I swear, if I hear one conservative say: "IT'S THE LIBERAL MEDIA and THEIR ALLIES IN ALASKA MAKING THIS ALL UP", I'm going to vomit.

Here's the legal skinny from Alternet.org:

To put it another way, the Alaska constitution and statutes allow the Governor to do certain things, such as hire and fire officials at will. If she engages in illegally unethical behavior, she has still exercised her lawful authority. A court cannot overturn her actions as unconstitutional or contrary to the statutes setting forth how much authority she has.

But her exercise of power in an illegally unethical manner is still a violation of law -- a different law.

Think of it this way: Let's say that you are a major national politician and you have a gambling problem (as some do) and that you use your rich wife's money for your habit, without her knowledge or permission. Heck, let's even say that you took the money from your kids' school's fund for band uniforms and gambled with it.

You did not violate any statutory authority related to gambling. The casino can't say that, as punishment for stealing from the kids (an illegal act) you have to give your winnings back to the casino! Your punishment for that violation is elsewhere.

You still violated your power by acting in an unethical manner -- in fact, in a manner prohibited by law. It is a question, in part, of where the remedy lies for the stealing of the kids' money in my gambling example, or the abuse of the public trust in the case of Gov. Palin's actual actions.