Originally posted at centrist blog The Motley Moose.

Sometimes, the headlines write themselves.

Gov. Sarah Palin owes more than a half million dollars to an Anchorage law firm that has defended her against ethics complaints, and she may create a legal fund to pay the bill, she said Friday.

Poor Sarah. Being targeted by a "partisan witch hunt" during the Troopergate scandal has set her back a cool half a mil, it seems. Sadly, it seems that capitalism is alive and well at all the most inconvenient times, doesn't it? Gosh, Sarah, shouldn't you just buck up to your "personal responsibility", and knock off this socialism garbage, what with getting other people to pay your legal bills?

Of course, there's a really good reason for all this- right?

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Crossposted from The Motley Moose

The Palin Fail on abuse of power and ethics violation is a matter of record now.  A non-partisan legislative council convicted her of those charges.  The McCain machine response is that she wins because she does not face certain censure and impeachment due to her violations, only potential censure and impeachment.  They - and most of the media - have missed the point.

The Palin administration has been convicted of rank amateurism. If this is the "executive experience" she touts, we are better off hiring an experienced executive crook like Ken Lay.

At least one person in the media didn't miss that.

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(Cross-posted at Clintonistas for Obama)

According to a report in The Anchorage Daily News, Sarah Palin is spinning the Troopergate Report that found she was guilty of a violation of Alaska's ethics law this way:

Well, I'm very, very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing ... any hint of any kind of unethical activity there.

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You can get a link to the report at:

http://media.adn.com/smedia/2008/10/10/1 6/Branchflowerreport.source.prod_affilia te.7.pdf

Now here is the smoke screen that the GOP is likely to play. They are likely to jump on finding number of 2 (page 8 of the report), which reads "Governor Palin's firing of Commissioner Monegan was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads." They will try to say that it means she did nothing illegal.

The problem is that the report also finds that "Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating ... the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act ("any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of ... trust"). Same page of the report. Think about it carefully - the two conclusion are NOT mutually exclusive.

The other problem, is that Palin has said that neither she, her husband, or anyone in the Governor's office ever pressured Monegan to fire Trooper Wooten. This report, in no uncertain terms, says that this is not true. So at a minimum, Palin has publicly lied about the circumstances for firing Monegan.

Finally, Governor Palin has criticized the report because the report was not based on her testimony. Please - even Mr. Magoo can could see through this one!

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Kudos to blogger Andrew Halcro and to the power of the blogosphere. We stand as sentinels of information gathering and dissemination and he is a fine example of one such netcitizen.

His diary, The blogger on the grassy knoll recounts the history of the Troopergate investigation, and the role he played in it.

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