Todd Palin refuses to testify

Did you read the case and is that what you got out of it?

It was an interesting case of the husband trying to use the spousal immunity to stop wife from testifying against him. Clever twist by the lawyer, but court said no way, it 's her immuntiy to invoke or waive. That is what the case was about. It was not defining what the spousal immunity was although it did cite a case that defined spousal immuntiy.

I could start to cut and paste the decision and holding by the court, but now we are getting wierd about analyzing case law on the internet. If you see the case being about the right to ignore a subpeona for an investigation about your spouse or that it defines spousal immuntiy, I guess we read the case different.

But the investigation has a lot more questions that communications with the wife. For some reason, Todd Palin is very invovled in Alaska politics to the point of participating in meetings, phone call and emails to gov't employees. Small state politcs . . .trippy.

 

I get where you are coming from. It is a sad satement and I hope not everyone expects leaders to take advantage of the privledge of power, but I'm not surprised that many are willing to forgive that kind of behavior.

Palin is in a strange position because she is running as the person who will help clean up this perception you are talking about and when she was fist told of the investigation, she wanted to be held accountable for anything they found. I guess they aren't going find much when subpeonas are ignored.

 

Well that is her attorney's side of the argument and if those facts are right, it sounds like a lawful termination.

Of course there are two sides to every story. More so, i don't think anyone has accused Palin of wrongdoing, except the Monegan. All they are saying is there is enough information to raise concern and conduct an investigation (before anyone had any idea Palin would be VP).

But how do you conduct an investigation if gov't employees are being instructed by Palin's attorneys to not honor the subpeonas. I'm not even saying they are wrong to ignore them, taht is for a judge to decide . . . I just think it is clear there will not be a complete investigation.

 

yeah, I agree with you. I was speaking from the strategic side, much like when you shout at Randolph to go down and punish Peja Stojakovic in the post.

I wasn't speaking from my own personal ethics, though. much like I wouldn't want Randolph to have sex with my sloppy seconds.

 

Well at least we agree that the issue is if they have a legal right to ignore the suboepna . . . to be decided by the courts at a much later date.

But I would bet dollars to donuts whatever the decision is about if Todd Palin can ignore the subpeona, it will not be based on spousal immunity.

Funny you cite Hawkins, I talked about Hawkins much earlier . . . now that defines spousal immunity. Not Trammel.

 

Sure, but how is this relevant? No one is saying that this is one of the biggest scandals in the nation. It's simply a scandal affecting a person running to be one of the most powerful politicians in the nation. That wasn't the case before Palin was tabbed to be McCain's running mate.

 

To be fair, I don't think it was that big of a deal in Alaska until she was named to the GOP VP slot either. Now, it's been put on the front burner by those that support Obama in the House Legislature.

 

I disagree. It was a scandal even prior to her becoming the VP candidate. It's simply become an extremely politicized scandal now and hyped well out of proportion with its significance.

 

Not to get semantic, but doesn't the word "scandal" imply some sort of hype by itself? This issue was part of the vetting process and up to the point where Gov. Palin joined the McCain campaign, she apparently bent over backward to cooperate with the investigation, even taking the step of telling the Alaska AG to investigate it as well.

Now that--as we both agree--it has become highly politicized beyond a simple matter for the State of Alaska, her strategy with dealing with the incident has changed. In my mind, it's a different enemy, so the battle needs to be fought differently as well.

 

I'm not sure. I use "scandal" to mean an accusation of wrong-doing in a public figure that requires investigation.

From what I've read, this is not a reasonable description of her motivation in telling her attorney general to investigate. She supposedly had him do his own investigation for her, so she would know what an independent investigation could be expected to turn up. In other words, it was an information-gathering mission for her own ability to better defend herself. Not an attempt to hold herself accountable.

 

That's a bit of spin as well.

 

Not to my knowledge. Hopefully, it will all come out in the investigation(s).

 

To help put this in pespective . . . how often are governor's under a formal investigation by state congress? (again, all befoer she was VP)

It is more than one perosn saying they wre fired wrongfully, many of those claims don't turn into formal investigations. There were some strange facts going on here that rose to the level of investigation. How starge to me would be answered by knowing how often these kind of investigations are done.

The only time I think I would here about a governor being investiagted by congress is here is Oreogn, and I don't recall teh last sitting governor being investigated.

Of course if we talk about former governors being investigated . . . all I need to say is Neil Goldschmidt (a democrat) and whatever gave them suspicion to investigate was the right call . . . in that case where there was smoke, there was fire.