Troopergate Accomplishes Its Goal: Smear Palin

The Alaska committee investigating Sarah Palin's firing of her public safety commissioner has been released and concludes that "Sarah Palin abused her power" as governor. It presents no evidence or rationale for coming to this conclusion, but none was needed. This investigation was a typical Democrat smear job from day one. Paul Mirengoff at Power Line says the report is "thin gruel." Read what he says about it here.

Over the years the Democrats have honed their "investigation" skills to a fine edge, wherein they
1. Find a trumped-up or semiplausible reason to investigate a Republican
2. Publish all kinds of innuendo regarding the Republican's alleged nefarious deeds, which is then picked up by the Democrat mass media and broadcast to the world, e.g., "Joe Republican is the target of an ethics probe," where the breach of ethics is clearly on the investigator's side, i.e. using his role to accomplish a political goal instead of actually determining truth or justice.
3. Reach an unsubstantiated conclusion that the Republican did indeed do something nefarious, disgusting, unethical, racist, bordering on highway robbery, incest, rape and outright treason; but due to some technicality the Democrat investigators will let it pass.

Another case in point is the so-called "Keating Five" investigation of corruption involving the failure of Lincoln Savings and Loan Association and subsequent trial and conviction of its President for fraud and corruption. Five senators were associated with the Lincoln S&L Association: four Democrats and one Republican. John McCain was the sole Republican. Wikipedia says this:

Lincoln Savings and Loan collapsed in 1989, at a cost of over $3 billion to the federal government. Some 23,000 Lincoln bondholders were defrauded and many elderly investors lost their life savings. The substantial political contributions that Keating had made to each of the senators, totalling $1.3 million, attracted considerable public and media attention. After a lengthy investigation, the Senate Ethics Committee determined in 1991 that Alan Cranston, Dennis DeConcini, and Donald Riegle had substantially and improperly interfered with the FHLBB in its investigation of Lincoln Savings, with Cranston receiving a formal reprimand. Senators John Glenn and John McCain were cleared of having acted improperly but were criticized for having exercised "poor judgment."

So McCain was cleared of acting improperly? You'd never know that by Democrat references to "Keating Five" today. There is always the very useful reference to smear McCain and imply that he did something unethical or illegal, and indeed, that was the reason he was included in the Senate Ethics investigation in the first place.

Yesterday, on the way to work, Brian Sussman on KSFO radio interviewed the chief investigator in that Ethics probe, who himself is a Democrat. The investigator said that, early on in the investigation, it was clear that McCain had done nothing wrong and didn't deserve to be a target of the probe. He therefore advised the Committee to drop McCain from the investigation. However, the Democrats on the Ethics Committee didn't want to implicate only Democrats -- they insisted on including McCain for political reasons and political reasons only.

Democrats play very dirty. If, or should I say when, Obama is elected, expect for Bush and Cheney to be arrested and put on trial for a long list of alleged crimes.