Palin Report : She Is Guilty

and I am surprised.

No, not surprised that she is guilty (that was obvious) but surprised that the damning report ever saw the light of day.

Investigator Stephen Branchflower, in a report to a bipartisan panel that looked into the matter, found Palin in violation of a state ethics law that prohibits public officials from using their office for personal gain.

The committee that approved this reports release had 5 Republicans for every 2 Democrats and while a couple of the Republicans may have had political motivations for the release, some of those who voted to release this had to be motivated by simple integrity. That is refreshing and a bit surprising.

Of course, the Palin/McCain camp's first step was to declare the report (like the joke report the campaign released earlier) exonerated her.

Gov. Sarah Palin's communications director says investigator Steve Branchflower's report vindicates the governor with a finding that she "acted within her constitutional authority" to remove executive employees who serve at her pleasure.

Interesting argument, except that what not what she was charged with. Yes, she had authority to fire Monegan, but she did not have the authority to fire Wooten and her efforts at that are where the violations came from. It is very much like Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre, where the use of executive power was abused to achieve a goal not allowed.

The report is clear and Palin is the loser in this little political drama. The big loser however, is McCain. What does the selection of Palin as his running mate say about his executive capacity?

How can anyone with a straight face claim that Palin was properly vetted. Aside from her Nixonesque behavior toward personal enemies that should have struck her from consideration at once, Palin is a collection of baggage and bad ideas that should never have been considered viable for a national office.

To start off, simply put, she is ignorant. She is anti-intellectual. It is clear that she works at being uninformed. She is against sex education, arguing that it is the parents responsibility, then her 16 year old daughter turns up pregnant. What does that say about her following her own pronouncements? She has sat through sermons where a guest argued that the Jews were responsible for terrorism in Israel because they had not accepted Jesus. At another service, she goes forward to get a personal blessing from a witch hunter (both of these events happened this summer). She believes that the earth is only 6,000 years old and the Cain and Able lived among T-Rex and Triceratops. She is anti-science (I suspect because she can not understand it) and an end-timer.

How John McCain found any of this acceptable is unfathomable. It is a clear indicator that her selection was not well thought out and there was no real investigation of the person he selected to replace him in the case of emergency. This incredibly poor choice is a clear indicator of what a McCain presidency would be like.

Tags
Election 2008, McCain, Palin