Pretext Worse Than The Crime
Sarah Palin’s critics say she fired Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan in an abuse of power related to her desire to abuse the powers of her office to pursue a vendetta against a family enemy. The McCain campaign counters that, no way, the real problem is that Monegan was too zealous in pursuing his extremist anti-rape agenda:
The last straw, the McCain campaign said, was in July, when Monegan planned to travel to Washington to seek federal money for a plan to assign troopers, judges and prosecutors who could exclusively handle sexual assault cases — one of the state’s most intractable crime problems.
That doesn’t sound like the kind of thing you’d fire a well-respected public servant for, but Tim Fernholtz points out that there’s a pattern here of Palin taking a strong stand against anti-rape measures (Alaska leads the nation in such crimes) what with her make rape victims pay for evidence collection scheme, so maybe she really did find Monegan’s anti-rapist activities to be beyond the pale.
76 Responses to “Pretext Worse Than The Crime”
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September 17th, 2008 at 11:47 am
Once again I applaud Republicans for their ability to leave me mystified as to how this could all be real instead of some hallucination or satire.
September 17th, 2008 at 11:51 am
And they say McCain is running a dirty campaign; Obama just outsources I guess….when he’s not trying to shut down radio stations.
September 17th, 2008 at 11:51 am
This has got to be from The Onion. Can Republicans really be this stupid? Better question: Can Americans be stupid enough to elect these idiots?
September 17th, 2008 at 11:51 am
I’ve seen this movie before, but I am pretty sure we are supposed to be cheering for the “rogue cop” who tries to fight the bad guys despite being told to cool it by the politicians.
September 17th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Rab –
You seem to consider this an outrageous attack. What’s outrageous about it? Are you disputing Palin’s claim that she fired Monegan for this budgetary dispute (that is, he wanted to fund rape investigations; she didn’t; she fired him)? Or are you disputing that progressives should see this as a legitimate problem?
I quote from the AP article Matt links:
What is outrageous or dirty here? The campaign itself admits that Monegan was fired, in part, for his zeal in seeking federal funds in an attempt to combat Alaska’s sky-high level of sexual assaults.
September 17th, 2008 at 11:58 am
“Pursue a vendetta against a family enemey”? Really? Have you read any of the details of the trooper’s conduct? It’s not exactly some personal vendetta, the dude sounds like a menace to everybody.
September 17th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
I’ve always said that I’d vote for the first Pro-Rape candidate. Looks like SP has won me over.
September 17th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
New Obama ad fodder here. Palin to rape victims: Drop Dead.
September 17th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
That’s such a bizarre complaint to even offer up, even if it is a completely disingenuous attempt to hide your crooked activities. He was too committed to prosecuting rape? Maybe that’s a problem if you have no rapes and hundreds of murders. But if you have the highest rape rate in the country? Probably a problem you should tackle head on.
http://thesebastards.blogspot.com/
September 17th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Rape: That’s education about sex that McCain-Palin can believe in!
September 17th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
This opens the door to a whole new category of political excuses.
“I missed that budget vote, but it’s not my fault–I had just killed someone and burning a body is way harder than people think!”
“No way would I have taken a crummy $20k bribe…here’s my ledger book, and you can see clearly that I’m a $100k-and-up operator, always have been.”
“I didn’t fire her because she was a woman–I fired her because she was Jewish.”
September 17th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Monegan isn’t the guy who was married to Palin’s sister. He’s the guy who didn’t fire the guy married to Palin’s sister.
This is just a sample of Palin’s vindictive nature.
September 17th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Maybe it is because the lions share of rapes in AK are whites attacking natives. Perhaps she has a problem with protecting the brown people.
September 17th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
“Pursue a vendetta against a family enemey”? Really? Have you read any of the details of the trooper’s conduct? It’s not exactly some personal vendetta, the dude sounds like a menace to everybody.
It’s not either/or. The trooper sounds pretty scary, but at the same time it sounds like Palin (and her husband) really did use her power to interfere with the established process.
September 17th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Homer Brain: “Don’t say you were at a bar. But what else is open at night?”
Homer: “I was at a pornography store! I was buying pornography!”
Homer Brain : “Hehe. I woulda never thought of that.”
September 17th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
My initial instinct to guess this might hurt with social conservatives. After all, didn’t the “tough on crime” mantra used to score a lot of points for the GOP? And last I checked social conservatives are pretty fairly in the anti-rape category. But then I remeber the First Law of social conservatism: pro-life, evangelical Christian politicians get a free pass on absolutely everything.
September 17th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
“pursuing his extremist anti-rape agenda”
How can you be extremist when you are pursuing sexual criminals? I would think trying to arrest sexual predators(sp?) would be a GOOD thing!
What is wrong with this women? She cannot stop changing her stories on Trooper-gate, keeps repeating the same lies over and over and over again, and doesn’t know A THING about how the world works!
I suppose those reichwingers are a whole lot dumber than I already knew!
September 17th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Maybe there is more going on here than the vendetta related to Palin’s sister. It sounds like Palin has some real grudge over what she regards as overzealous rape prosecution. Who is she protecting?
September 17th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I’m appalled by the selection of Palin, but this post unfairly omits relevant information. The linked news story contains other relevant information before “the last straw” that Matt quotes. This other information makes clear that the “last straw” wasn’t that he wanted funding for rape, but that, once again, he was going outside of normal channels. Relevant quotation below. Note also that I don’t necessarily believe that going outside of channels was the real reason he was fired, but taking quotations out of context is a cheap trick.
September 17th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
My guess is that Palin is in favor of rape. Yup, that is the only logical explanation. There sure isn’t a need to investigate further.
September 17th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
That might make for an interesting topic during the VP debates. Joe Biden and his fight on the behalf of women versus Sarah Palin who fires people because they want to stop crimes against women.
September 17th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
“This other information makes clear that the “last straw” wasn’t that he wanted funding for rape, but that, once again, he was going outside of normal channels.”
But even that really doesn’t fly: Monegan went to Washington to get more money in ADDITION to what Palin wanted to give him in his budget. He didn’t go to Washington to get more money from Alaska’s budget, but rather from the federal one. Since Alaska has a fairly serious sex crimes problem, why would Palin be opposed to Monegan getting additional external funds to combat it?
It’s true to say that IF Monegan didn’t get pre-approval for the trip (which he says he did), he might have created some quite minor confusion as to what Alaska’s legislative priorities in Washington were. At best, I can’t see that as a reason for dismissal, particularly since this is a very important issue for Alaska’s anti-crime efforts.
September 17th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
ostap, those quotes really add very, very little context. The first email is totally ambiguous, and if Palin fired him because he supported a project to help runaway and homeless teens, that’s almost as bad as Palin opposing the federal funding for the “anti-child rape” plan, especially since it seems like that’s the only money from Washington that she ever opposed!
September 17th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
I’m a liberal, the most obvious explanation is that this is a totally bogus pretext for firing him, concocted after the fact.
It’s just a bogus pretext that totally backfires on them b/c this explanation makes them look even worse.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
It’s pretty clear, when one reads more detail, that the DPS wasn’t fired because Palin is ‘pro-rape’… but that DPS Moneghan wasn’t ‘following orders’ (’going off the reservation’ is how someone here put it…). OK.
That’s a pretty conservative reservation though… doncha think?
The very best that could be said about Palin in this is that she was pretty soft on (a particular) crime (rape). That the DPS felt strongly enough to ‘wander off the reservation’ in search of alternate funding for anti-rape programs is pretty telling in and of itself. That the governor feels that loyalty and fealty are somehow more valuable than actual problem solving is likewise telling.
That the McCain campaign doesn’t seem to ‘get’ that the alibi is worse than the accusation is jsut freaking scary.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Which is a more difficult claim to make, based on reported facts and all available evidence:
(1) Obama wants to teach 5-year-olds about sex.
(2) Palin wants to protect rapists.
With the rape-kit thing and this new explanation for firing Monegan (even though it’s almost certainly false), that second claim seems pretty sound. Is there some extreme right-wing religious reason for wanting to make it harder to prosecute rapists? Does it tie in with being anti-abortion even in the case of rape or incest? Like it’s more important to punish the victim for having sex, even if the sex is unwanted.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
It’s my understanding that rape kits contain emergency contraception (”morning after” medication), and it’s the victim’s choice whether or not to use it.
In this light the town of Wasilla’s forcing women who had been raped to pay for their own treatment makes more sense. It wasn’t so much Palin’s anti government-spending policies that drove her actions, it was her rabid anti-contraception, anti-choice, and anti-abortion, views.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Have you read any of the details of the trooper’s conduct? It’s not exactly some personal vendetta, the dude sounds like a menace to everybody.
If you beleive Palin and her sister’s version of events, which the judge hearing the custody case did not.
The point is, we have judges and juries to resolve these issues, and governors and other politicians need to butt out and let the legal system take its course. Moreover, if this were somehow one of the rare cases when a governor (in the abstract) might legitimately intervene, it was not proper for Sarah Palin to intervene, due to her personal involvement. If there was a decision relating to her own family to be made, her proper course was to recuse herself, and let maybe her lieutenant governor, or some other proper neutral official, make the decision.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
This dispute about anti-rape programs seems like something that is being fed to the Troopergate investigation in Alaska, to get her off the hook because it may fit with some of the circumstantial facts. But now the McCain campaign is stuck with it as a talking point, and I feel really sorry for them on that score.
“Pursue a vendetta against a family enemey”? Really? Have you read any of the details of the trooper’s conduct? It’s not exactly some personal vendetta, the dude sounds like a menace to everybody.
The trooper’s bad conduct happened well before Palin became governor, and he was also discinplined for it before she took office. Then she became governor and wanted to reopen the issue of the dirtbag trooper who had been discipined already but happened to be her hated ex-brother-in-law. There were no new offenses, there was just the fact that he was a bad guy and Palin wanted him canned. Monegan told her that there was no reason to fire him at that point.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Considering Palin’s position on abortion, her pro-rape stance makes sense.
No evidence, no “abortion exception.” No enforcement, no support for an “abortion exception.”
Neato.
.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Firing someone because they undercut their bosses position on various issues is not a bad justification. If you have an underling who when you tell them you are opposed to issue X then tries to go outside of channels to whip up support for issue X, you may want them to be working for someone else.
It is a bit embarassing though that the issues that Monegan felt the need to do this with were providing help for troubled teens and addressing the issue of rape in Alaska.
But rab is right that there is an important distinction to be made between firing someone for insubordination, and firing them because they favored the particular issue on which they were insubordinate.
He is also right that “they say McCain is running a dirty campaign.” As it happens, they are also right to say it.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
You really shouldn’t prosecute rapists or even talk about rape, because if a woman is raped and gets pregnant, she might want to get an abortion. And if she did that, she couldn’t use the fact that she didn’t abort as some sort of holy badge of self-righteousness. Or something.
That is the only way I can decipher these dog whistles that sane people can’t hear. This is probably one of those Dred Scott abortion references that leaves anyone who wasn’t home-schooled baffled.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Sounds like someone is building a hell of a strawman, complete with a crown of lit firecrackers just to make sure nobody misses it. They might as well hang a “LOOK HERE NOW!” sign on its back.
Whatever really happened in Alaska must be a hell of a lot worse than I imagined.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Well, it seems you have two options in that instance:
A) fire them
2) change your position on issue x.
But the real issue here isn’t that guy was fired, nor that they didn’t change their position… it’s that they don’t see a problem with firing the guy because he placed advocacy above fealty. “soft on crime” is ok with them as long as they get laptop fealty.
They honestly look at the issue as a game of tactics and strategies and this guy was not playing the game the way they wanted it played. Guess who suffers (more)? Rape victims and, in fact, most of the women in Alaska not protected by a Governors security detail… ‘Cause denying greater enforcement of the law surely allowed rapes to occur that, given greater funding and aggressive policing, might not have occurred. Neither McCain, nor Palin, appears to have the slightest problem with that…
This is not your fathers Republican party…
September 17th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Err…
Lap DOG, is what I meant to say…
September 17th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
I’m with Chesser on this one. Why are people being some wimpy about throwing this crap back at McCain-Palin? Are people waiting for some secret tapes of McCain, Palin signing a contract with Satan?
You have to go to war with the ammunition you’ve got – I think swing voters, especially women are just looking for reasons NOT to support Palin – this just gives them another one.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
You’re right, he sounds like a piece of shit. But that’s something for the law to figure out, not for the governor to go outside of her jurisdiction to deal with. Moreover, prior to even becoming governor, the Palins were told by a judge to cool it on the grounds that they were going to mess up the kids. To push for him to be fired and then fire a police commissioner who wouldn’t fire him is pretty extreme abuse of power, to say the least. Ultimately, it’s not the governor’s place, and Governor Palin’s actions show an extreme disrespect for good government and the rule of law, whether or not he’s a scumbag.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Because that money to reduce rapes could instead have been used on building bridges to Wasilla or nowhere.
In all seriousness though, it sounds like Palin isn’t particularly good at delegating authority unless she personally appointed the person she’s delegating to. Judging by her public claims since being nominated, it would seem that she wants to be able to take credit for everything.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
I’m dead, but if I was still alive I’d be voting for Sarah Palin every chance I had. I’d probably even work for her campaign.
She’s my kind of gal!
September 17th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
…as long as they get laptop fealty.
Brings to mind Chekhov’s famous short story “The Lady With The Laptop.”
September 17th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
ostap is correct. The issue isn’t “pro-rape,” but whether Monegan was a team player.
petr and Lon are correct that this raises the more serious issue of why it was so important to Palin that Monegan play on her team instead of joining him in protecting public safety.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
>>whether or not he’s a scumbag.
You bleeding heart liberals don’t get it. As long as you think a person is evil, you are completely morally justified when you break the law and abuse your power. In fact, that trooper should be tortured to see if he knows of any plots to blow up the governor’s tanning bed. The clock is ticking!
Actually, though, this mentality explains the entire McCain-Palin campaign: lie and smear in the service of a “greater good.” The fact that the greater good here is their election is just a happy accident for them.
September 17th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
If this were Palin’s first explanation of why she fired him, it would be more believable, but since her explanation evolved over time, this latest explanation deserves cynicism.
September 17th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
“Can Americans be stupid enough to elect these idiots?”
Where the hell have you been?
September 17th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
If someone doesn’t start pushing a McCain-Palin soft on rapists ad soon, I will lose all faith in the Democratic Party. Do these guys want to win or not?
September 17th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Man, if we can’t craft up a good commercial flogging this story (I like the ‘Palin to rape victims: Drop dead’), then maybe our side is just too incompetant to win a modern election.
September 17th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Pagin Joe Biden. Joe Biden, you have a package waiting for you.
Mr Biden, your ammo is waiting…
September 17th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Wow. Is anything not despicable about this woman?
September 17th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
So, McCain-Palin’s argument is one of two things: “Rapes aren’t important crimes” or “Sarah Palin so values being the decision-maker that she would rather fire officials than stop her state from being the per capita leader in rapes.”
Neither seems like a winner.
September 17th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
C’mon, folks. Isn’t there anyone here who was alive in the 60’s? The answer is that women (”girls”) who get raped brought it on themselves by dressing all slutty. The poor guys just can’t control themselves when faced with that, so you really can’t blame them.
If you look at it like that, it all begins to make sense. If the victims really are to blame, then it makes sense to charge them for use of the police and its resources, and you sure wouldn’t want to waste a lot of state money on it. Even if Monegan was after Federal money, it makes more sense to use Alaska’s Federal clout to go after money for other purposes (bridges, anyone?).
September 17th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Yeah, he was such a menace that nobody gave a shit about anything he did at the time. It was only two years later when he was getting a divorce from Palin’s sister that he suddenly became a menace.
And did you hear he shot a moose without a permit? Fucking cra-zy! In fact, at the time, the Palins were so outraged about it that they took and ate a fair amount of the meat. There were really beside themselves with anger.
September 17th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
The guy does sound like a moron, but considering cops get medals for going into an innocent person’s house and almost blowing away their entire family, his transgressions are puppy feed.
Fer instance, the taser incident. Why didn’t they report it when it happened if they were so upset? Nope, they waited until the divorce proceedings two years later to bring it up. that’s upstanding law-abiding mayoral/gubernatorial decisiveness we all want.
September 17th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
@Rob_in_Hawaii #27
You misunderstand what a rape kit is. It has nothing to do with victim treatment: a rape kit contains standard medical material used to collect evidence. There’s no emergency contraceptive. Palin’s stance can’t be linked to anti-abortion or anti-contraceptive views. She charged victims of crime for the investigation of said crime.
September 17th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
It sounds like Palin has some real grudge over what she regards as overzealous rape prosecution. Who is she protecting?
You do have to wonder. The stats across the state do have some fairly striking demographic standouts, with Native American women at a huge risk of sexual assault compared to other races.
I think it’s worth raising the question of Palin’s record on women who report sexual assault in Alaska.
September 17th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Thanks for posting this.
I think I’m going to go vomit now.
September 17th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
This newest defense of her position on troopergate is not only unbelievable in its own right — as somebody pointed out, the alibi is worse than the accusation — but what is being lost in all this is what it shows yet again about Palin:
that she’s a liar. Just about everything she’s said about herself and her record thus far has been proven to be a lie, yet she not only sticks to past lies, but creates new ones daily.
While it’s not a good idea to obstruct justice if you’re a governor, probably the most forgivable reason for doing so would be the orginal reason that Palin gave — that her brother in law deserved to be fired because he was a creep.
But she keeps changing the story on the reasons, which makes it seem as if she’s covering up real criminal activity, when in fact her original reason is the most understandable. The McCain campaign is making what might have been a molehill into a mountain by the very act of its own attempts at obfuscation and at obstruction of justice. Refusing to respond to the subpoenas is just another way in which they have done so.
September 18th, 2008 at 10:09 am
The rape kits Sarah Palin was forcing the victims to purchase contained emergency contraceptive… do I really have to spell out why she doesn’t believe in the government paying for them? The absurdly conservative gov doesn’t want rape kits used because then her state’s money is providing “abortions”.
I’m Canadian but if I was american, I’d be horrified at the thought of the McCain/Palin team being in office…
September 18th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
In a sick sort of way, it could actually make sense. If more rapes mean more pregnancies, a wacko pro-lifer could justify being pro rape.
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