Forget Her Pregnant Daughter, Focus on Troopergate

ST. PAUL -- Barack Obama's right. The families of candidates for high office ought generally to be "off limits." And that is especially true when it comes to their kids.

So let's put aside the discussion of whether her child's out-of-wedlock pregnancy raises any questions about the whether it was wise for Alaska Governor Sarah Palin -- the presumptive Republican nominee for vice president whose name John McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds continues to mispronounce -- to promotion abstinence education.

Pay attention, instead, to the wholly legitimate -- and rapidly evolving -- scandal known as "Troopergate."

While much of the national media was trying to get a conversation going about Palin's pregnant daighter, a dramatically more unsettling story was evolving with regard to Palin's abuse of her position as part of an effort to punish an in-law with whom she had fallen out.

Each passing hour brings new evidence of just how serious this abuse-of-power scandal has become.

Palin on Monday hired a lawyer to defend her interests as the investigation surrounding the firing of her public safety commissioner explodes into a full-blown political crisis.

Thomas V. Van Flein, an Anchorage lawyer, is attempting to gather documents relating to Palin's firing of a top state law enforcement official who apparently angered her by refusing to dismiss a state trooper who was involved in an exceptionally nasty divorce fight with the governor's sister.

The official in question Walt Monegan, a former Anchorage police chief, says that when he served as Alaska's public safety commissioner he was pressured by Palin to fire the governor's brother-in-law.

When Monegan failed to fire the state trooper Palin wanted dismissed, the governor fired the public service commissioner.

The buzz in Alaska Monday was about "electronic evidence" of Palin's wrongdoing.

Monegan says he has emails sent by Palin before she fired him.

Emails! Confirmations of abusive pressures!

Let's be clear about the issues raised by this scandal:

If Palin fired Alaska's public service commissioner because he refused to dismiss her brother-in-law, she did not merely act inappropriately. She violated the public trust and almost certainly broke the law.

And if Palin has lied about her abuses of power -- in the face of an official investigation approved by the Alaska legislature -- she has committed wrongdoing that that disqualifies her from consideration for the vice presidency.

The comparison here is not to Richard Nixon's Watergate-era deceits.

The comparison is to Nixon's vice president, Spiro Agnew, who had to step down after it was revealed that he took bribes while serving as governor of Maryland.

If Palin is an Agnew in waiting, McCain would be wise to ask her to leave his ticket now -- before her troubles begin to define his campaign.

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