It’s this simple. This partisan report concludes that a family grudge wasn’t the sole reason Gov. Sarah Palin fired the public safety commissioner but says it likely was a contributing factor, yet says that Sarah “abused her power”.

That infers that the firing was more based on Wooten’s misbehaving than it was a “family grudge”.

Doesn’t jive. Oh and by the way, Steve Branchflower, the so called “independent investigator” is a registered Democrat, as is Hollis French – the democrat from Alaska who is a diehard Obama supporter.

Me thinks there needs to be an investigation of the investigator and how this came to be an investigation in the first place.

UPDATE: By the way, the key finding:

“I find that, although Walt Monegan’s refusal to fire Trooper Michael Wooten was not the sole reason he was fired by Governor Sarah Palin, it was likely a contributing factor to his termination as Commissioner of Public Safety. In spite of that, Governor Palin’s firing of Commissioner Monegan was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads.”

The first part isn’t a “finding” it’s a opinion. The second is a fact and the end of the story.

UPDATE II: An excellent take down of this farce by Bill Dyer at Hugh Hewitt’s blog. Key verse?

“Here’s a note to Mr. Branchflower, who clearly is verbose, but obviously none too keen a scholar of logic: Gov. Palin’s so-called “firing” of Monegan (it wasn’t a firing, it was a re-assignment to other government duties that he resigned rather than accept) can’t simultaneously be a violation of the Ethics Act and “a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority.” This, gentle readers, is a 263-page piece of political circus that actually explicitly refutes itself on its single most key page!

What’s more incredible is that Branchflower utterly ignores the public admission made by Walt Monegan himself that ought to have ended this entire inquiry (boldface mine):

“For the record, no one ever said fire Wooten. Not the governor. Not Todd. Not any of the other staff,” Monegan said Friday from Portland. “What they said directly was more along the lines of ‘This isn’t a person that we would want to be representing our state troopers.”

Moving on, nothing to see here.

UPDATE: Good point by Klo at The Corner:

“So, catching up on the Alaska report here: She did nothing wrong, but the Democratic investigator, who is friends with the fired commissioner who doesn’t like in retrospect that Todd made a few phone calls. Maybe that last thing didn’t happen, but it doesn’t sound like he was playing her strongman. More concerned citizen and family man. The only question thing that bothers me about this incident is: How many kids does a cop have to taser because he gets fired?”