Govenor of Alaska??? LOL Most Americans probably don’t realize Alaska is even part of the United States. So, why would Mccain, WHO IS 72, chose such an inexperienced woman? Mccain met this lady ONCE and he is pandering to Hillary Clinton supporters in an effort to win. That is the reason she was chosen and it’s obvious when she keeps pandering to Hillary Clinton supporters. But yesterday, Palin was BOOED at a rally when she spoke and pandered to the Clinton supporters. BOOED!!! Right-wingers do not like Hillary Clinton and do not believe they need her supporters.

Wooten had a history of disciplinary action against him. Two eyewitnesses reported the drinking. The allegation of using a taser on a child was sustained. He was found to have violated the law by shooting a moose without a permit and he threatened to put a bullet in his father-in-law. I spent 30 years in law enforcement. In any other state or department he would have been fired and probably prosecuted.

Anyone who argues that shooting your child with a taser is not a criminal offense, regardless of the circumstances, is a moron.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Story last updated at 7/28/2008 – 9:15 am
Agency leader changed ruling in trooper case
Union head says Wooten probe was the first in which findings were revised by a top official

By Alan Suderman | JUNEAU EMPIRE

A former top official of the Alaska State Troopers reversed a finding in a 2005 investigation of the conduct of trooper Mike Wooten, the former brother-in-law of Gov. Sarah Palin, a step that’s unprecedented, according to the head of the trooper’s union.

John Cyr, executive director of the Public Safety Employees Association, said former Alaska State Trooper Col. Julia Grimes punished Wooten, who has a rocky relationship with the Palin family, for drinking beer before and while operating a marked patrol car even though there was no “just cause” to do so.

An earlier internal investigation done in 2005 by Sgt. Ronald Wall, who is now a lieutenant, found that those claims were unsubstantiated.

Cyr said it was the first and only time he’d seen the findings of an internal investigation in a trooper’s conduct revised by a top agency official.

“It’s totally outside the expected norm,” Cyr said.

Cyr said when he asked Grimes why she had reversed the agency’s own findings, she said: “Are you going to call Sarah Palin a liar?”

Wooten has become a key figure in a political imbroglio for Palin that began when she fired former Department of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan on July 11.

Monegan said he was pressured by members of Palin’s family and administration to fire Wooten after Palin took office.

Palin has denied those claims and said Monegan’s dismissal was the result of her seeking a new direction for the department.

Palin was not governor when Wooten was investigated and suspended, but was known statewide for her ethical stances.

Palin was questioned twice by Wall regarding Wooten. She also wrote a letter to Grimes accusing Wooten of a multitude of sins, including driving a patrol car with a beer in his hand.

In her letter, Palin said Adrian and Marilyn Lane, who are friends of Palin’s family and who lived in the same subdivision as Wooten, had seen him drink a beer at their house and then drive off in a patrol car “waving with beer in hand.”

In their interview with the investigator, Wall, the Lanes said they had seen Wooten come by their house and drink a beer before driving his patrol car during the summer of 2004.

Marilyn Lane said she had seen Wooten drive off in his patrol car with another beer in hand.

Wooten denied the Lanes’ allegations, and Wall’s investigation ruled that the claims made by the Lanes were unsubstantiated.

In an internal memo, Grimes wrote she “could not reconcile why the statements of the Lanes were not found to be credible” to Wall. She re-interviewed the Lanes and found “their recollection to be completely truthful and credible” and their friendship with Palin’s family did not have “any influence” on their statements.

Alaska State Troopers spokeswoman Elizabeth Ipsen said she could not comment on the Wooten matter directly. But she added that top agency officials typically do not alter findings of internal investigations into trooper conduct.

“They just use the information,” Ipsen said.

Grimes has retired from the Alaska State Troopers and moved out of state, according to staff at the Department of Public Safety. She could not be reached for comment.

Grimes suspended Wooten for 10 days. He also was punished for illegally shooting a moose and using a Taser on his 10-year-old stepson. The trooper admitted to using the Taser on his stepson in a “training capacity” and said he shot a moose on his wife’s tag, but didn’t think the act was illegal.

Cyr said the Public Safety Employees Association filed a grievance regarding the 10-day suspension and the punishment was later reduced to five days.

Several other allegations were made by Palin and her family but were denied by Wooten and found to be unsubstantiated, including that Wooten has used illegal steroids, driven drunk on a number of occasions and tried to bully his way out of paying a $5 fee at the local dump.

Wall’s investigation did find that Wooten threatened Palin’s sister, Molly McCann, with shooting her father if he hired a lawyer to represent her. Wooten denied making the statement, but Palin, McCann and Palin’s son all confirmed that he did.

Wall said the act wasn’t a crime because Palin’s father was not present when Wooten made the statement.

Reached by phone last week, Adrian Lane said he had no comment about whether he saw Wooten drive a patrol car after drinking a beer. He added that it was easy to find something unsubstantiated if one wanted to.

“It depends on which side of the fence you’re standing on,” Lane said.

I personally think Wooten should have been fired for allowing a precocious boy to con him into misusing his taser and it’s also ok with me that the supervisor is no longer a supervisor. He did not fire him.

So, markg8, while you are waiting for the investigation to wind down, here are some Governor Palin facts that you can digest until then:

http://www.palinfacts.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UojMnCgqVA

It is the responsibility of these officers to make sure their weapons are secure at all times. This particular trooper not only exhibited poor judgement by the way he caved to the wishes of an 11 year old child in front of another child no less, but, by not securing his weapon he has shown that he can’t be trusted to follow through with explicit regulations that these officers are supposed to adhere to. Fire him.

Meanwhile Obama’s help from a convicted criminal to buy a house and his ongoing friendships with terrorists, criminals and corrupt politicians are NOT something to be worried about…not to mention his complete lack of experience except as a community organizer and he is running for President, not VP.

While I’m not defending Wooten’s actions, here’s how the tasering of his son is supposed to have happened:

TASING THE STEPSON

One day — maybe a year or two before the investigation — Wooten showed his stepson his Taser. He had just been to Taser instructor school. Wooten told Sgt. Wall that the boy was fascinated and pleaded to be tased.

“So we went in our living room and I had him get down on his knees so he wouldn’t fall. And I taped the probes to him and turned the Taser on for like a second, turned it off. He thought that was the greatest thing in the world, wanted to do it again,” Wooten told the investigator. The boy flinched but nothing more, he said. The boy was about 11 at the time.

In his interview with troopers, the stepson said it hurt for about a second, according to Wall’s report. The boy said he wanted to be tased to show his cousin, Palin’s daughter Bristol, that he wasn’t a mama’s boy. The probe left a welt on his arm, he said. His mother was upstairs yelling at them not to do it, the boy said.

As Bristol remembered it, the jolt knocked the boy backward, the trooper report says. She said she was afraid.

The probes are attached by thin wires to the Taser cartridge. In the field, an officer fires the probes into a suspect’s skin or clothing and the suspect receives a jolt of electricity for five seconds, said Steve Tuttle, a spokesman for Taser International, which makes the devices. They are only incapacitated during that time. In demos, the probes might be taped to a person so that they don’t accidentally strike an eye or injure the volunteer, he said. If the Taser is fired for just a second, it would feel like your funny bone was hit but the quick jolt wouldn’t knock you over, Tuttle said.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/v-print/story/45694.html

Stupidity aside, the man didn’t shoot his son like a criminal.

While certainly there are some real serious judgment concerns about Wooten, the question about not firing him, given these facts, can be meaningfully understood as open-ended, it underscores the legitimacy of the uncertainty of whether or not Wooten should be fired.

In the end, Wooten was officially punished for his bad judgment, yet it fell short of what the Palin’ family wanted. That’s obvious and that’s why the investigation is now being undertaken.

This country of ours has more wealth than any nation, but that’s not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that’s not what makes us strong. Our universities and our culture are the envy of the world, but that’s not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

Instead, it is that American spirit – that American promise – that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend.

That promise is our greatest inheritance. It’s a promise I make to my daughters when I tuck them in at night, and a promise that you make to yours – a promise that has led immigrants to cross oceans and pioneers to travel west; a promise that led workers to picket lines, and women to reach for the ballot.

And it is that promise that forty five years ago today, brought Americans from every corner of this land to stand together on a Mall in Washington, before Lincoln’s Memorial, and hear a young preacher from Georgia speak of his dream.

The men and women who gathered there could’ve heard many things. They could’ve heard words of anger and discord. They could’ve been told to succumb to the fear and frustration of so many dreams deferred.

But what the people heard instead – people of every creed and color, from every walk of life – is that in America, our destiny is inextricably linked. That together, our dreams can be one.

“We cannot walk alone,” the preacher cried. “And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.”

Less than 14hrs later, the Democratic Party closed its doors, pulled in its open arms, and returned to attacking the character and integrity of someone just because they have an R next to their name. Republicans have done it too in the past, but I can’t find an example where a Republican leader gave such a strong speech (called a “symphony not a speech” by MSNBC), a speech calling for national unity….and then 14hrs later went back into attack dog mode.

“LIBERAL” is defined as ‘open-minded’ and ‘with open arms’ People who attack a person based on a skin color, male/female, race, religion, nationality, family heritage, or the letter next to their name….those people aren’t liberals; open-minded, or having open arms. They’re afraid-so afraid they can’t even wonder why?

How incredibly ironic that immediately the Obama campaign went after her claiming she didn’t have enough experience. They automatically bring up a question of Obama’s experience level when they do that. Foolish. Talk about her youth/McCain’s age….and they get the flip flop again by the comparison of Obama’s youth to Biden’s age. Tough enough? She’s had 5 kids. No man in his right mind would DARE tell a woman who’s pushed out 5 kids that she’s not tough. That’s just plain common sense.

This is awesome. Far left is freaking and already abandoning the only good thing they had: Obama’s call for unity over partisanship.

Man, RNC won’t even have to rig the Diebold machines for this one.

http://www.jlaforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=5055328

This is the best chance in history to have a woman president. Democrats hyped Hillary but in the end they didn’t support her and never intended to (the backroom cigar smoking men who actually run the American Communist party, aka democrat, want someone they can control).