1. The Alaskan Legislative Council, dominated by Republicans, voted unanimously to publish an investigator’s report finding that Sarah Palin had not exceeded her powers in firing the Public Safety Commissioner but had abused her power by using public authority for a private purpose (revenge on her ex-brother-in-law), and that in so doing she had violated a statutory Code of Ethics for public officials.
2. Palin immediately announced that she had been “cleared of any legal wrongdoing, any hint of unethical activity.”
Question: Why did she think she could get away with making statements flatly contrary to fact? Why was she mostly right? (Apparently neither Troopergate nor her lying about it came up on this morning’s interview shows.)
Answer: No one expects Palin, or McCain for that matter, to tell the truth. They have managed to make each new lie into a non-event: a dog-bites-man story.
It’s an accomplishment, of sorts.
The problem with the bromide “all politicians lie” is that it elides the distinction between someone who sometimes stretches the truth under pressure and someone who routinely just makes sh!t up. Read the transcript. This isn’t ordinary lying. If it’s not schizophrenia, which seems inconsistent with everything else we know about Palin, then it’s frank sociopathy.