Today's Stories

October 15, 2008

Steve Conn
The Real Story of Troopergate

October 14, 2008

Robert Richter
McCain: War Hero or War Criminal?

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bailout and the Smell Test

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Wall Street Coup and the Bailout Scam

Steve Conn
Made in Alaska: Fear of the Fringe

P. Sainath
The Race Could be Over, But Race Isn't

Gregory Elich
How the Nobel Peace Prize Was Won

Stephen Martin
A Tectonic Shift in Hegemony at the G7

Rev. William Alberts
Don't Blink Twice

Laura Carlsen
The Fall of the Bush Dynasty Plan

Joanne Mariner
The Uighurs Come to Washington

Howard Lisnoff
Left Behind: a Biden Fundraiser and the Children of Holyoke

David Macaray
A Tale of Two Unions

Website of the Day
Six Degrees of Hank Paulson

October 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Farewell to Daniel Cassidy

Michael Hudson
Rescue for the Few, Debt Slavery for the Many

Patrick Cockburn
Pogrom Against Mosul's Christians

Chris Floyd
The God That Failed: the 30-Year Lie of the Market Cult

Fidel Castro
The Law of the Jungle: Racism, Obama and the Fall of the American Economy

Robert Weitzel
Olmert's Depths of Reality

Derek Wright
How Chrysler Killed My Uncle

Stephen Soldz
Guantánamo's SERE Standard Operating Procedures

David Michael Green
Greed is Not Good

Norman Solomon
Requiem for the Bailout: a Storyline

Charles R. Larson
Toni Morrison on Her Own Terms

Lisa Massaciuccoli
The Shoplifting Association of the Americas

Website of the Day
Arlo Guthrie: "I'm Changing My Name to Fannie Mae"

October 10 / 12, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is McCain a Lot Sicker Than We Know?

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Obama's Nuclear Ambition

Douglas Valentine
Mission CREEP: From John Mitchell to John McCain

Noam Chomsky
Exposing the Un-Democratic Face of Capitalism

Ralph Nader
The Derivatives Game

Syed Saleem Shahzad
Why the Neo-Taliban is Winning

Patrick Cockburn
War in the Time of Cholera

Paul Craig Roberts
A Possible Solution to the Economic Crisis

Mike Whitney
Run on the System

Peter Morici
The Deficit and the Damage Done

Christopher Ketcham
The End of the Economy

Stephen Martin
Shock and Awe in Economic Warfare

Chellis Glendinning
Wireless Mind, Gullible Mind

Saul Landau
All Guns, No Butter

Ahmad Faruqui
21 Days to Baghdad

Adam Turl
Sheriff Tom Dart vs. the Banksters

Serge Halimi
The Battle for the West

Anthony DiMaggio
Making a Killing: the Business of Elections

John Ross
The Sky is Falling on Mexico, Too

José M. Tirado
Meltdown in Iceland

Paul Krassner
Beat the Crowd in Denver: Cops and T-Shirts

David Macaray
Adventures in Unionism

Robert Fantina
Bankrupt and Belligerent

David Yearsley
The Playlist for Election 2008

Julian Clec'h
The Soap Washing Through Saudi Arabia

Adam Engel
Sexual Healing ... for the Planet

Phyllis Pollack
The Rolling Stones Go Home, Again

Missy Beattie
Going North: the Coming Nation of Alaska

Poets' Basement
Landau, Moser and Henson

Website of the Day
Sarah as Esther? New Video From Inside Palin's Church

October 9, 2008

Robert Bryce
From Enron to the Current Meltdown

David Vest
The Great Rescue of 2008: Could Whatever Follows Bush Be Even Worse?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Meltdown at the Pentagon

Andy Worthington
The Ordeal of the Wrongly Imprisoned Uighurs

Anthony DiMaggio
Obama the Subhuman

Helga Serrano /
Hector Tamayo
Ecuador Charts the Way

Dave Lindorff
When Money Flies

Mats Svensson
At the Checkpoint on the Day of Atonement

Rannie Amiri
The Time for Mordechai Vanunu is Now

Website of the Day
The Palestine Chronicle Needs (and Deserves) Your Support

October 8, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Imbecilic Tedium

Linn Washington, Jr.
Palin's Racist Remark

Mike Whitney
To the Bunkers!

Deepak Tripathi
The West is Broke

George C. Wilson
Butter Over Guns? McCain and Obama on Defense Issues

Andy Worthington
Seized in Pakistan

Charles R. Larson
"I'm John McCain and I Approved This Lie"

Patrick Irelan
Ecuador's Choice

Matthew Koehler
Log, Baby, Log: Bailing Out the Timber Industry

Stanley Heller
Time to Design a New Economy

Daniel Gross
Working Class Hero: Alexandra Svoboda

Kimberly Hartke
Raw Milk and Civil Liberties

Website of the Day
Olivia Wilde Does It Early

October 7, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Obama and McCain's Goofy Afghan Bluster

Gary Leupp
Seven Years in Afghanistan:
From "War on Terror" to
"War of Terror"

Uri Avnery
Olmert's Final Divorce
From "All of Eretz Israel"

P. Sainath
The Cop-Out Election
Major Candidates, Congress, Press, All Fail in the Big Crisis

Peter Morici
The Dow Tanks as Bank Bailout Fails to Restore Confidence

Conn Hallinan
The Great Game in the Caucasus:
Bad Moves by Uncle Sam

Martha Rosenberg
Training America's Youth
Today a Pheasant, Tomorrow Osama

Binoy Kampmark
Let's Talk About Extinction:
CERN and Halo

October 6, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
A Futile Bailout as Darkness Falls on America

Mike Whitney
Still on the Edge of the Abyss

Tariq Ali
Goodbye to Grosvenor Square

Emily Horowitz
How People Tell Cops They're Guilty Even When They Aren't

Michael Hudson
What Did Jesus Say?
A Christian Perspective on the Paulson Bank Bailout

Ron Jacobs
Winter Soldiers and Washington's Wars

October 3 - 5, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Creatures of Capital

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Paulson's Plan is a Fraud

Saul Landau
The Chutzpah of Hank Paulson

Jonathan Cook
The Souring of a West Bank Romance: Israel's Army and Settlers Fall Out

Andy Worthington
The Dark Heart of the Guantánamo Trials

Dave Marsh
Bono (Himself) Challenges Me to a Debate

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Using the IAEA to Spy on Iran

John Ross
Massacre in Morelia

Brian Cloughley
The Unacceptable Face of Capitalism

Wajahat Ali
Dueling Partners: an Interview with Tariq Ali on Pakistan

Robert Schwartz
A Serious Blow to the Rights of U.S. Workers: NLRB Limits Political Strikes

Alan Nasser
FDR's Response to the Plot to Overthrow Him: a Paradigm for Today's Democrats?

David Ker Thomson
The Case for Drunk Driving

Peter Morici
Gone in 30 Days: U.S. Loses 159,000 Jobs in September

William Blum
When is a Holocaust Not a Holocaust?

William S. Lind
War on Two Fronts: Without Railroads

Michael Donnelly
The Ghost of Gen. McClellan

Thom Rutledge
On Presidential "Rule"

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Science and the 2008 Presidential Elections: a Survey of the Candidates

Dave Lindorff
Calling the Problem Early

Cindy Ellen Hill
Waging a Sustainable Peace?

Paul Krassner
Dying to Get High: the Side Effects of Medical Marijuana

Daniel White
Vietnam's Masterspy

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Absher, Gibbons and Jenkins

Website of the Weekend
How We Lost Glen Canyon: a Legal Chronology

October 2, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Can a Bailout Succeed?

Joe Bageant
Speaking in the Tongues of Brokers: the Bailout in Plain English

Ralph Nader
Soulmates in Deregulation

Mike Whitney
Why the Bailout Stinks

Madis Senner
When Push Comes to Pull: How a Foreign Banker Invasion Sent the Markets Reeling

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congress as Usual:the Crisis Will Pass, But This Bunch Will Remain the Same

William Blum
A Boy's Game: the Origins of the Financial Crisis

P. Sainath
Wall Street Transforms Presidential Race

Website of the Day
McCain's Meltdown in Des Moines

October 1 , 2008

Glen Ford
The Last Hold Up

Steven Conn
Trashing Sarah Palin: the Boomerang Effect

Alan Maass / Lee Sustar
Why Not a Bailout for the Rest of Us?

Kenneth Couesbouc
The Blame Game: When Wall Street Pigs Sprout Wings

Stan Goff
How the Republicans Can Win (And Deserve It)

Adolfo Gilly
Racism, Domination and Bolivia

Rannie Amiri
Bombs in the Levant

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Recurring Myth of Peak Oil

Adam W. Parsons
Food and Markets

Dave Lindorff
Bums' Rush to the Bailout: Where are the Hearings?

Douglas Valentine
The Bush Continuity Plan?

Adrien Rain Burke
The Party's Over: an Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi

Website of the Day
Sarah Palin's Beauty Pageant

September 30, 2008

Pam Martens
What Wall Street Hoped to Win

Chris Floyd
The Shadow of the Pitchfork: Elite Panic on Wall Street

Stephen Martin
A Biological Walk Down Wall Street

Deepak Tripathi
A Bitter Harvest in Afghanistan

Mark Engler
Bad Money

Jonathan Cook
The Attack on Zeev Sternhell: Has Israel Become a Breeding Ground for Jewish Settler Terrorism?

Dave Lindorff
The Power of No

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Time for a General Strike?

Ahmad Faruqui
In Cold Blood: Buried Alive in Pakistan

John Chuckman
Will the Bride Wear White? As Rome Burns, Bristol Palin Prepares to Tie the Knot with Mr. "Sex on Skates"

David Macaray
Blaming the Labor Unions

Fatemeh Keshavarz
What Obama Could Have Said

Website of the Day
538: a Cognitive Map of American Politics

September 29, 2008

Mike Whitney
Black Monday

Jeff Gibbs
"Just Say No!" to Reverse Robin Hood

Paul Craig Roberts
Why America Should Listen to Ahmadinejad

Peter Morici
The Bailout and the Economy

Tim Wise
Racism as Reflex

John Walsh
Sarah Palin is a Rotten Mom

Uri Avnery
Israeli Fascism: Yes, It Can Happen Here

Alan Farago
Hell to Pay: the Financial Collapse and the Housing Market

Andy Worthington
Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Running the 9/11 Trials?

David Michael Green
Where's the Repudiation?

Carl Finamore
Capitalism on Steroids; Labor on Tranquilizers

Iris Keltz
Postcards from the DNC

Bill Hatch
Take This Shrimp Slayer!

Website of the Day
Tina Fey as Palin, Round Two

September 27 / 28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
How McCain Blew It

Linn Washington, Jr.
Alaska's Blacks and Palin: a Strained Relationship

Christopher Ketcham
An Israeli Trojan Horse

Mike Whitney
The People vs. the Banksters

Kevin Alexander Gray Race in the Race: Is Obama Shining Us On?

Anthony DiMaggio
The Unspoken War: Pakistan, the Media and Nuclear Weapons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Their Assets; Our Debts: How Economic Crises Are Overcome

Marc Levy /
Susan Erony
War Jokes Wanted: No Laughing Matter

Stan Cox
Livestock of Mass Destruction: Germ Labs in the Heartland

Saul Landau
Election Drizzle

Ali Khan
Meltdown in American Markets: an Islamic Perspective

David Rosen
The Great Fear: the Sexual Politics of Sarah Palin

Todd Alan Price
Bailing Out the Foes of Public Eduction

Matts Svensson
The Red and White Bird in Gaza

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan Through the Eyes of a Native Son

Robert Fantina
McCain and the Economy

Richard Rhames
Hank-ering for a Bailout

David Krieger
The U.S.-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking Charter Schools

Charles R. Larson
Dear Mrs. Abacha: a Nigerian Email Romance

Kim Nicolini
Sadism in the Desert

Poets' Basement
La Morticella, Holt, Moser and Buknatski

Website of the Day
The Great Schlep

September 26, 2008

Moshe Adler
Bailing Out Wall Street Won't Save Main Street

Bill Quigley
The U.S. War on Unarmed Working Mothers

Jonathan Cook
When Archaeology Becomes a Curse

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Visions of Pinpoint Control: the Romance of Laser Weapons

Madis Senner
Why the Bailout will Fail

Brian Cloughley
US Raids in Pakistan: Violations of Sovereignty

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Oh, Henry!

Joanne Mariner
Passport Fraud and Torture

Dan La Botz
The Financial Crisis: a View from the Left

David Macaray
Ralph's Management Indicted by Federal Grand Jury

Website of the Day
Nader and Obama Girl at the Office

September 25, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Insanity of the $700 Billion Giveaway

Sharon Smith
Democrats and Corporate Bailouts

Ralph Nader
Who Will Show Some Backbone Against the Bailout?

Christopher Ketcham
The Economy of Dead Sperm (or What I Learned From My Race-Car Grandpa Who Had No Bankers)

Eric Toussaint
Is Another Third World Debt Crisis in the Offing?

Robert Weissman
Getting Wall Street Pay Reform Right

David Estabrook
A Better Bailout Plan

Nikolas Kozloff
The Voyage of the SS Peter the Great

Steve Early
The High Price of Purple Dissent

Judith Scherr
Blue Helmets in Haiti

Laray Polk
South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Notes from the Inside

Website of the Day
Letterman Spanks McCain

September 24, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin at the UN: a Tutorial from Uribe

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis: How and Why Congress Should Play for Time

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Trials: Govt. Says Six Years Not Long Enough to Prepare Evidence

Steve Conn
Will Nader's Warning be Acknowledged in the Presidential Debates?

Karyn Strickler
The $700,000,000,000 Power Punch

Diane Farsetta
Stealth Marketers Gone Wild

Dennis Loo
Poisoned Legacy

John Halle
Wealth Tax Now!

Khalil Nakhleh
Palestinians Under the Occupation

Website of the Day
Nader: Debate Crasher

September 23, 2008

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Bail Out on This Bailout

Michael Hudson
Henry Paulson and the New Yazoo Land Scandal

Tariq Ali
Why was the Marriott Targeted?

Patrick Dyer
A Death Row Visit with Troy A. Davis

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah and the Palestinians

Joshua Frank
Oppose Barack Obama? How Dare Thee!

Alan Farago
Pushing the Referees: How the Financial Crisis Occurred

Dave Lindorff
The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar

Tanya M. Kerssen /
Roger Burbach
Bolivia's Popular Upheaval

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Power Liabilities Dwarf Bush's Wall Street Bailout

Website of the Day
Hammered by the Irish: the Video

September 22, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?

Mike Whitney
Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street

Christopher Ketcham
Let It Collapse!

Ron Jacobs
The Predators' Bailout

Anne-Marie McManus
Lost in the Rhetoric of Crisis

Robert Weitzel
The Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: a Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Howard Dean

John Ross
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America

Steve Breyman
Does the U.S. Really Need Cluster Bombs?

Patrick Bond
On the Bellies of the Filth

Uri Avnery
Fly, Tzipora, Fly

Carl J. Mayer
An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal): Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience?

Website of the Day
Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 20 / 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is This the Stake Through Neoliberalism's Heart?

Michael Hudson
America's Own Kleptocracy

Pam Martens
The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design

Lila Rajiva
Putting Lipstick on an AIG

Mike Whitney
Full-Spectrum Breakdown

Richard Rhames
A Bailout to Nowhere

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The NY Yankees and the U.S. Economy

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies: a New Study of Neocon Influence

Susan Block
Palin as Venus in Furs: the Dominatrix Politics of Drilling and Killing

Robert Fantina
Republicans and Subpoenas: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Heidi Walters
Hung Up on Route 36: an 18-Wheeler and a Nuclear Cask

David Yearsley
Germany's Lost Organs: When Bigger Was Better

Raymond J. Lawrence
The Politics of Tribulation: Sarah Palin and the Rapture

David Rosen
One Billion Pills Later: Viagra at 10

David Michael Green
Living in Sarah Palin's America

Anthony Papa
Imprisoned Voters and the Elections

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Freddie, Fannie, Daddy, Nanny

Howard Lisnoff
When We Notice the Homeless

John Goekler
Leaving Every Child Behind

Missy Beattie
Impalement

Dave Zirin
Leave Josh Howard Alone

Charles R. Larson
Holden Caulfield, Rest in Peace

Tim Matson
Too Big for His Birches: Woodlot Economics

Susie Day
Attack of the Angry Fetus

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Gibbons, Jenkins and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Dylan & Baez: Deportees

September 19, 2008

Steven T. Banko
McCain's Passion Play

Mike Whitney
The Point of No Return

Michael Hudson
The Dow Jones' Wonderfully Cheesy Addition

William Kaufman
Shattering the Glass-Steagall Act: the Bi-Partisan Origins of the Financial Crisis

Brenda Norrell
The Fall of Lehman Bros.: Blowback for Black Mesa?

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
The New Rhetoric of Racism: Why Won't Obama Call It Out?

Clifton Ross
Bolivia: Cleaning Up the Bull Ring

Dave Lindorff
Hang On to Your Wallets: the Government's About to Rescue Us!

Cynthia McKinney
Seize the Time!

Susan Hurlich
Storm Survivors: a Dispatch from Cuba

Michael Donnelly
Let's Hand It All Over to the Democrats (They Helped Create This Mess)

Website of the Day
The Crisis Explained

September 18, 2008

Benjamin Dangl
The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Drill, Drill, Drill Scam

Susan Abulhawa
The Lobby Has Spoken: Biden and Israel

Robert Weissman
After the Fall: the Financial Re-Regulatory Agenda

Anne-Marie McManus
McCain's Cinderella: the Fetishization of Sarah Palin

Corey D. B. Walker
The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

William S. Lind
Senator O'Bush: Why Obama is Wrong on Iran and Afghanistan

Ron Jacobs
Washington's False Logic of Torture

Dave Lindorff
American and China: Joined at the Hip

Binoy Kampmark
How Damien Hirst Got Away With It

Website of the Day
An Invisible Army

September 17, 2008

Stephen Conn
Palin and the Politics of Big Oil

Forrest Hylton
Reactionary Rampage in Bolivia

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Leaves Iraq

Gregory Elich
Inside North Korea

Ralph Nader
How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

Franklin Lamb
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila

Pam Martens
The Gang's All Here: Bush, McCain and the Old Iran/Contra Team

Dave Lindorff
The End of the Blue Chip Economy

Peter Morici
The Damage Deepens

Stanley Heller
The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte

Douglas Valentine
Rambling David Foster Wallace

Website of the Day
Free Cindy McCain!

September 16, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling from Direct Hits

Tiphaine Dickson
Citizen Palin: Why Sarah Palin Quoted Westbrook Pegler

Stan Goff
America is Now Rome: an Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Uri Avnery
Tzipi's Choice

Michael Winship
Lipstick on Polar Bears

Jeff Halper
Warehousing Palestinians

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia Versus the Empire

Oscar Gonzalez
Who's Dumber? Ike's Refugees or Wall Street's?

Binoy Kampmark
Cheney and His Records

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Muslims are at Peace with You

Sen. Russ Feingold
Restoring the Rule of Law

Website of the Day
The Next Great Rock Band?

September 15, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

Patrick Cockburn
Take Another Look at the Surge

Charles R. Larson
The Maverick Has No Clothes

Jonathan Cook
The Expulsion of Palestinians from Jaffa

Nikolas Kozloff
Racist Rhetoric in Bolivia

Roger Burbach
Morales Confronts the Insurrection: Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende

Helen Redmond
Where's the Health Care Bailout?

David Michael Green
The Democrats Do Poland

David Macaray
The Boeing Strike

Ralph Nader
Remembering Peter Camejo

Website of the Day
The Ballad of Sarah Palin

October 15, 2008

Even a Governor Can't Fire a Bad Cop

The Real Story of Troopergate

By STEVE CONN

If you think Palin’s Matalin-Corsi smear-Obama script in the new Runaway Train, was a stinker, consider her second, after she fired the Commissioner of Public Safety and failed to get her bad-cop-brother-in-law dismissed.  Sent to Alaska to delay or discredit the inquiry, the Republican truth squad made fools of themselves and infuriated Alaskans  It provided an opening for Democrats to play the victims, demand apologies  and seek justice for a Public Safety Commissioner who was fired -- in part -- because Palin was frustrated with a system neither she nor the commissioner could beat.

Buried in the report and lost in the shuffle was a familiar public policy issue- how do those policed get simple justice from a system more protective of police than those it serves?

The real story behind Troopergate is better than the one created by Republicans or Democrats -the Partisan Investigation or Big Bully in the State House, take your pick.  The Palins naively believed that, armed with the power and authority of the top state office, she (or her husband) could discover and even change the results of an internal and confidential state trooper process and get a bad cop canned,  because the evidence was solid that he was, indeed, a bad cop. The only reason we know he was a bad cop is that he voluntarily opened his own, otherwise confidential, personnel files to the public.

An editorial in the Anchorage Daily News –“He’s No Angel” spells it out:

Trooper Wooten gave his 10-year-old stepson a ‘test’ firing from his state-issued Taser because the boy wanted to know what it was like. That was astoundingly bad judgment. Because the child ‘consented’ and the test apparently produced no lasting harm, Wooten would have a good defense against any criminal charges. But it was a hopelessly inappropriate thing for a state trooper to do with state-issued equipment.

Trooper Wooten also shot a moose illegally, using his wife's permit. At the time the incident was investigated, he was a wildlife enforcement officer responsible for enforcing the very same hunting laws he broke. Questioned by troopers about the incident, he said he felt it was not inappropriate, according to the troopers' disciplinary report.

Trooper Wooten also said he would make his father-in-law ‘eat a f***-ing? lead bullet’ if he helped get a lawyer for his daughter. Apparently that didn't qualify as ‘assault’ under the law because Wooten did not say it directly to his father-in-law. No crime, but another example that trooper Wooten lacked the judgment and temperament to remain a trooper.
Another disturbing incident from Wooten's record was the courtesy treatment he got from a fellow trooper during a DUI stop. A bartender had reported Wooten as a suspected drunken driver after Wooten caused a commotion in the bar and drove away. Wooten's fellow officer stopped him, let him leave his car behind and gave him a ride to his destination. An arrest and conviction for DUI would have ended Wooten's career as a trooper.

In another incident, Wooten was off duty and drove his patrol car with an open container of alcohol. Witnesses indicate he had been drinking before he got in the patrol car -- a finding that trooper Col. Julia Grimes upheld in her review of Wooten's case.

Under normal circumstances, Alaskans and the country wouldn't know much about Wooten's record as a trooper. Typically, his infractions and disciplinary record would be confidential as a personnel matter. We'd all be left guessing what he had done that made the Palin family so upset.
Not to excuse the Palins' persistent queries about why Wooten was still a trooper, but they knew nothing of the disciplinary action that had been taken against him. They didn't know he had been suspended for five days. They just knew he was still on the force.

 However, in one of the more bizarre twists in the case, Wooten himself released his personnel information, perhaps thinking it would vindicate him. On the contrary, most who view his record are left wondering, ‘If what he did doesn't get you fired from the troopers, what does it take?’

That's a good question for the Alaska Legislature to ask.

Palin’s own e mail to her commissioner echoes the editorial and Wooten’s record, but from a complaintant’s perspective: (from the Branchflower report to the Legislative Council)

In sharing a few personal examples with you including the trooper who used to be related to me -- the one who intentionally killed the cow moose out of season, without a tag -- he’s still bragging about it in my hometown and after another cop confessed to witnessing the kill, this trooper was “investigated” for over a year and merely given a slap on the wrist…though he’s out there arresting people today for the same crime! This same trooper who shot his 11-yr-old stepson with a taser gun, was seen drinking in his Patrol car, was pulled over for drunk driving but let off by a coworker & brags about this incident to this day…he threatened to kill his estranged wife’s parent, refused to be transferred to rural Alaska and continued to disparage natives in words and tone, he continues to harass and intimidate his ex.-even after being slapped with a restraining order that was lifted when his supervisors intervened…he threatens to always be able to come out on top because he’s ‘got the badge,” etc.etc.etc.)  This trooper is still out on the street, in fact he’s been promoted. It was a joke the whole year long “investigation” of him- in fact those who passed along the serious information to … were threatened with legal action from the trooper’s union for speaking about it. (This is the same trooper who’s out there today telling people the new administration is going to destroy the trooper organization, and he’s never work for that b***, Palin”.)

Anyway-just a personal example of what I’ve personally seen out there and had to live with for two years -- and this is what people in the Valley are putting up with (those many residents who know of this trooper timebomb who supposed to be “protecting them.) (Branchflower Report pp.57-58)

The Palin family could not believe that a state trooper who had tasered his step-son, broken the fish and game laws he was charged to enforce and threatened a member of their family would be given a few days suspension in an internal inquiry and not fired. They assumed that a governor with the power to hire and fire their boss could  reverse this decision, even if a mere civilian with a complaint against a cop could not. The Palins were wrong.

Legislative Investigator Branchflower did not question  Palin’s right to constitutionally  dismiss her Commissioner of Public Safety. The Alaska constitution gives Governors extremely broad authority to hire and fire members of their cabinets. The drafters wanted centralized power in a strong governor and not scattered authority, as in territorial days,  when the state took on natural resource developers- in those days, the mining and fishing industries    Her legal violation was in use of her power to advance a personal interest, by allowing her husband to pressure employees to get rid of the bad cop.

Alaska personnel rules and state statutes trumped civilian access to the process or any civilian’s ability to find out what happened with her complaint or to get a bad cop canned. Her use of her official authority in her personal quest was the abuse of power cited in the Branchflower Reporte, even though it got her nowhere

Palin used her very broad constitutional authority to dump the one person who was giving her good advice, Walt Monegan, the public safety commissioner. He warned her that she couldn’t make it happen. He couldn’t either, and he was “the boss”.

Said Monegan: “I was resisting the governor from the very beginning on the Wooten matter to protect her from exactly what just happened to her here, being found to have acted inappropriately.” When Palin fired Monegan, she killed her messenger.

What Palin really needed in her Alaskan movie was a “local Native guide,” from any rural Alaskan native village policed by the troopers. Any village leader could have warned Palin that, in matters of trooper conduct, the employees of the Department of Public Safety take care of their own .

In the vast Alaska bush are hundreds of villages  peopled by the last hunter and gatherers on the continent. They look to official state law enforcement from the Department of Public Safety because they can’t afford their own departments. Troopers usually fly into villages to respond to crime from rural towns. As non-native cities incorporated and, along with bigger rural towns, hired their own police, the Alaska bush and the few state highways became the trooper’s remaining turf which they jealously guard from interlopers. What Palin  and most urban Alaskans  fail to appreciate is that the trooper agency effectively lacks civilian oversight. Its clients in the rural villages are policed by it as it chooses and, unlike the citizens of a town like Wasilla or at least its political leadership, they have no control over police behavior and limited authority over abuses.

Hundreds of villages in the Alaska bush (with the exception of rural towns and the North Slope Borough that can afford their own police agencies) are policed by a Agency which they don’t control, a system of legal colonialism over rural Alaska.

The troopers’ immunity from meaningful civilian review may have surprised Palin, her husband and her family, but thousands of Alaska natives knew it already. Colonial-style policing, complete with a cadre of  Alaska native para-police, akin to Australia’s Aborigine bush trackers of yesteryear, and modeled on the long abandoned Native police in Canada- have been sustained by urban, non-native Alaskan political leaders of both parties for decades.

The first thing Inuit leader Eban Hopson did with property taxes from the North Slope oil fields, collected by an organized borough after a protracted fight with the state, was set up his own police force for his half dozen villages of the hundreds policed by troopers. The state’s department of law and the troopers retaliated. No cases “made” by these new cops were prosecuted for months, including one by a man who later murdered two non-native campers. You don’t mess with the troopers.

Palin, as Wasilla mayor, fired her town’s police chief. But the mayor of Emmonak, on the mouth of the Yukon River, can’t hire or fire or discipline a trooper. Complaints over the decades from villagers who have attended what Alaskans call bush justice conferences, usually related to non-response from troopers who wait for crime to occur before making an appearance. A suit by the Native American Rights Fund which argued Alaskans got unequal legal protection (note: I was one of NARF’s expert witnesses) failed in state court. The state legislature and governors across party lines give short economic  shift to village Alaska, treating villages as the US Congress treats the ghettoes of Washington, DC. Institutional racism persists.

Further, some Alaskans have noticed that while the Federal authorities have been busy with prosecutions, the state police and the state department of law has been notably absent in ferreting out corruption among state lawmakers, a kind of live and let live arrangement with those who fund them and otherwise leaves them alone, a longtime arrangement that sacrifices police oversight for institutional independence.

Once Palin was nominated, a Republican political operative, with no knowledge of Alaska, wrote her new script. He or she decided to delay the inquiry by the Alaska legislature into the governor’s firing of her public safety commissioner and its rationale.  To delay an Alaskan investigation until after the election must have seemed easy to accomplish. You just sent someone to Alaska to bully the local pols, drawing on Palin’s wild Alaskan popularity. It was a dumb move and one that insulted Alaskans unnecessarily, unless it was calculated to do precisely that. It served the purposes of the oil companies who want Palin and the legislature at each other’s throats. And for the Alaska state troopers, it solidified their status as police left free from interference by those whom they police and even from those who fund them.

Palin’s husband used his wife’s authority to go after a cop who could and probably would have been fired in an agency still subject to civilian control. Within the Alaska system, blatant personal use of official authority amounted to an ethics violation . Only minorities abused by police with no remedy could appreciate her husband’s frustration with a system non-minorities rarely experience. None of this was part of the Troopergate inquiry.

So what did the Troopergate report recommend to help people frustrated after making complaints about police conduct, even people without the clout of Sarah Palin?

The legislature should consider amendment of (the statute) to permit those who file complaints against peace officers to receive some feedback about the status and outcome of their complaint.” (Branchflower report 79 of 263).

Whoop-De-Doo.

Branchflower says, in part,

When citizens are told no information can be released, it has the potential of engendering skepticism about whether the complaint was taken seriously. There is likewise a great potential that the confidence we need to have in our law enforcement agencies will be undermined, and respect for those institutions will be eroded. (Branchflower 80-18).

As in Alaska native villages and the Governor’s mansion?

The Palins had a story to tell, one that was buried in the legislative investigation and one that ordinary people -- especially minorities -- could relate to, about bad cops and the inability of ordinary citizens (and, apparently, even Governors) to get justice when they complain about them or even try to find out if anything happened with their complaints. That the Republican operatives who counseled delay and sought to smear the investigation as purely partisan did not see a better script in Troopergate about  a family with a legitimate grievance against a cop and a police organization, shows us how far removed Republicans  are from the working class voters and the  minorities  they seek to persuade.

Steve Conn lived in Alaska from 1972 until 2007. He is a retired professor, University of Alaska. His e mail is steveconn@hotmail.com.

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