Sarah Palin was elected governor of Alaska by touting her experience as an ethics reformer. Yesterday, however, a panel composed of eight Republican and four Democratic Alaska legislators voted unanimously to approve a finding citing Palin for abuse of power:
Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda,

[Palin] abused her power in pushing for the firing of a state trooper once married to her sister and by allowing her husband to use the governor’s office in a crusade against the officer, a legislative investigation found.

“Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired,” concluded investigator Steve Branchflower in his report made public Friday.

The governor let her husband, Todd, use the governor’s office and its resources, “including access to state employees, to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired,” Branchflower wrote.

“She had the authority and power to require Mr. Palin to cease contacting subordinates, but she failed to act,” he wrote.

This created conflicts of interests for the state employees Todd Palin was contacting. “They must choose to either please a superior or run the risk of facing that superior’s displeasure and the possible consequences of such displeasure. This was one of the very reasons the Ethics Act was promulgated by the Legislature,” Branchflower wrote.

Palin also made several inquiries herself about why Wooten remained on the job shortly after she became governor, Branchflower said.

Republicans on the panel gave Palin cover in two ways. Although the report clearly states Palin abused power, it also says she legally had the right to Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan, despite the fact that she improperly failed to stop her cronies from illegally pressuring Monegan to fire Wooten. This contradiction gives the McCain campaign cover to say that Palin was exonerrated by the panel, even though the report says her actions were improper.

Secondly, the panel delayed approving the report until late Friday evening, well past the East Coast news cycle. The delay was apparently an attempt to tamp down news coverage of the story.

The delay has apparently worked. While most daily newspapers reported the results of the investigation on their front pages, the story was not leading the news cycles on CNN or MSNBC early Saturday morning, and there has been scant mention of it, if any, on Fox News.