the TOWN HALL weblog

Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy -

In this issue:

1. Palin
2. Begich
3. Georgia
4. ESA

1. Palin. One of the techniques that democrats and their toadies in the drive-by media have perfected over the last 40 or so years is the art of politically inspired investigations, indictments, and the incessant drumbeat of allegations – true and otherwise – in local and national media. Eventually the conservative target of such an assault runs out of money, gives up, or is hounded from office in disgrace. Democrats do this well. They are raised on it. And they use it their primary vehicle into higher office. Such is the game here in Alaska, where Governor Palin, who ran as a squeaky-clean candidate, willing at the drop of a hat to demand instantaneous resignation of any Republican with any question of impropriety. Last month, Palin fired Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan. The firing came as a surprise to most observers, as Monegan was popular and appeared to be doing his job well. As the days went by, information started dribbling out of the state government that he was fired because he refused to remove from state employment a state trooper who was Palin’s former brother in law. The trooper had been involved in a very nasty divorce and custody fight, and the fight was family-wide, with various Palin family members filing nearly 40 official complaints against him over the course of a couple of years. The event has opened Palin into charges of abuse of office, for while she does have the ability to hire and fire her political appointees at will, she does not have the ability to reach down into the state bureaucracy and do the same thing. We are now at the point where there are over 1,100 e-mails being sequestered by the governor. We have democrat state senators demanding and getting a special investigator appointed to look into it. We have the legislature getting involved. And we have the involvement of Palin’s husband in state business. The event has progressed to the point where Palin aides have claimed that they were the ones who were pressuring Monegan to fire the trooper. Finally, Palin has contacted the Attorney General to start his own investigation. One of the local political observers (anti-Palin) pointed out late last week that this has progressed to about the point that Watergate had prior to the infamous Saturday Night Massacre in 1973. A few observations are in order. First: Never, ever run on a platform of being clean as the driven snow, as you will make yourself far more vulnerable to being removed from office over ethical lapses than someone who runs on other issues. Second: Be very, very careful about demanding resignations of people on your side of the political divide, as you will look a bit silly when you are caught up in an accusation (and if there are leftists involved, there will ALWAYS be accusations made against you), and don’t resign. Third: This is a small state, and people have long memories. If you dish it out, you probably ought to be able to stand up and take the return fire. Finally: When anything like this comes up, come clean, and do it immediately. Otherwise, the democrat investigation / scandal machine will crank up and eat you alive. Don’t know how this is going to work out. It has opened the door for Palin’s political opponents on both sides of the political divide to go after her. It has opened the door for democrats to crank their scandal machine, which is their best historical vehicle back to political power.

2. Begich. Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich just gave his Republican opponent in the November election (likely Ted Stevens) a couple issues that may very well turn the election against him in November. The issue is bears and his response to their marauding in local parks. Following the second mauling of a jogger in Far North Bicentennial Park last week, Mayor Begich ordered the trail closed, ceding control of the land to the wildlife. He did not order the bears hunted and killed. He removed access for the general public. How may this turn against him in the general election? The US Senate has the responsibility to declare war, fund armed conflict, and provide for the common defense. If Mayor Begich is not up to the task of standing up to bears mauling citizens in city parks – a local public safety issue – how can he possibly be up to the task of providing for the common defense of this nation? If Mayor Begich cannot stand up to the bears here in Anchorage, how can we trust him to stand up to Kim Jong Il, Vladimir Putin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, Al Qaida, Bin Laden or a thousand other nasties that hate us and wish us harm as a nation? Another way to look at this would be from an environmentalist standpoint. Begich is beholden to the greens for part of his major support. And the greens don’t want the bears turned into rugs (killed). If Mayor Begich is unable to stand up to the greens when public safety is on the line, how can he possibly stand up to them on state and national issues like mining, fishing, logging, oil and gas exploration, roads or bridges? In this test of his ability to lead, he has failed and is clearly not up to the task. We will see if the other campaigns notice it.

3. Georgia. There were a couple fun essays last week regarding our response to Putin’s invasion of Georgia. The first came out of Dr. Jack Wheeler’s To the Point Monday and made the case that we need to turn Georgia into Putin’s Afghanistan. The Russians and Putin are far overextended in this affair, and it is time to give them a bloody nose. Wheeler suggests making Putin’s $40 billion in Swiss bank accounts disappear. He proposes turning our military hackers loose on the Russians, as the invasion was preceded by a Russian hacker assault on Georgia. He suggests that we supply anti-aircraft missiles and advanced anti-tank man portable weapons to the Georgians. Finally, he suggests that we supply the Georgians with every bit of electronic intelligence possible. Charles Krauthammer in his weekly column suggested a different set of approaches. His suggestions include more international, formal actions. I tend to like Wheeler’s suggestions, as they will allow Putin to pretend that nothing is wrong on the international stage, while getting his backside handed to him on the battlefield in Georgia, financially, and in cyberspace. It appears the Russians are not doing as well as they claim, and that the Georgians are doing a whole lot better. The Georgian President has been doing superbly so far. A couple final comments on this are in order. I believe this assault represents yet another stunning intelligence failure, as the assault took months to plan, the lines and rows of tanks were sitting out there in the open, available to all satellite imagery, and I do not recall seeing anything in the media or online about possible attack. The second failure is once again, in the State Department, as they have managed to do little other than talk. Finally, the drive-by media appears to be simply parroting all Kremlin propaganda on this, passing along as truth, every press release from Moscow. How is it that our drive-by media is now an echo chamber for Russian pro-invasion propaganda? The next president needs to do a substantial housecleaning in the CIA and State Department. We should have seen this coming and been prepared to do something about it beforehand. Perhaps the incumbents in those agencies were too busy trying to get Barack Obama elected president to do their jobs.

4. ESA. The Bush Administration is going to propose changes to the way the Endangered Species Act reviews are conducted by various federal agencies. The stated reason is that they do not want the Act to be used as a back door vehicle to implement rules to control carbon dioxide emissions. Today, all federal agencies are required to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service on every environmental impact statement. The new rules acknowledge that each agency now has their own internal expertise and will get to use that internal expertise first, asking for outside review if necessary. The administration noted that anything proposed always ended up in court, so oversight of environmental impacts would not be harmed. Of course, the greens are screaming like stuck pigs, and congressional democrats are making dark threats in response. The proposed new rules are expected to be releases shortly, followed by a 60-day public comment period. They may be put into effect before the election.

More later — AG

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

Note: Interesting Items can be found also at the following locations: MatSu Valley News and the home page. Rod Martin’s The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column. Alex Gimarc is a long-time member of the Town Hall Conservative group.