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Charles Krauthammer (pronounced /ˈkraʊt.hæmər/; born March 13, 1950) is an American Pulitzer Prize–winning syndicated columnist, political commentator, and physician. His column is syndicated to more than 275 newspapers and media outlets.^[1] He is a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and The New Republic. He is also a weekly panelist on the PBS news program Inside Washington^[2] and a nightly panelist on Fox News's Special Report with Bret Baier.

Life and career[link]

Krauthammer was born on March 13, 1950, in New York City.^[3][4] He was raised in Montreal, Quebec, where he attended McGill University and obtained an honors degree in political science and economics in 1970. He was a Commonwealth Scholar in politics at Balliol College, Oxford, 1970–1971. He later moved back to the United States, where he attended Harvard Medical School. Suffering a paralyzing accident in his first year of medical school,^[4][5] he was hospitalized for a year, during which time he continued his medical studies. He graduated with his class, earning a Doctor of Medicine from Harvard Medical School in 1975, and went on to complete a residency in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1984 he became board certified in Psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology^[6]

From 1975 to 1978, Krauthammer was a resident and then a chief resident in Psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Whilst chief resident, he co-discovered a form of mania resulting from a concomitant medical illness, rather than a primary inherent disorder, which he named "secondary mania"^[7] and co-authored an important chapter (with Gerald Klerman) on the epidemiology of manic illness for the first worldwide textbook of Manic Illness edited by Baron Shopsin.^[8] Frequent reference to his work appears throughout the 2007 textbook Manic-Depressive Illness, edited by Fred Goodwin and Kay Jamison, a standard reference for bipolar disorder.^[9]

In 1978, Krauthammer came to Washington, D.C. to direct planning in psychiatric research under the Carter administration.^{[citation needed]} He began contributing articles about politics to The New Republic and in 1980 served as a speech writer to Vice President Walter Mondale.^{[citation needed]} In January 1981, Krauthammer joined The New Republic as both a writer and editor.^{[citation needed]} In 1984, his New Republic essays won the "National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism".^{[citation needed]} In 1983, he began writing essays for Time magazine, one of which first brought him national acclaim for his development of the "Reagan Doctrine"...a term that endures to date (see below herein under "Cold War").^{[citation needed]} In 1985, he began a weekly column for The Washington Post, which in 1987 was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary.^{[citation needed]} In 1990, he became a panelist for the weekly PBS political roundtable, Inside Washington.^{[citation needed]} For the last decade, he has been a political analyst/commentator for Fox News.^{[citation needed]}

In 2006, the Financial Times named Krauthammer the most influential commentator in America,^[10] saying "Krauthammer has influenced US foreign policy for more than two decades. He coined and developed 'The Reagan Doctrine' in 1985 and he defined the US role as sole superpower in his essay, 'The Unipolar Moment', published shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Krauthammer's 2004 speech 'Democratic Realism', which was delivered to the American Enterprise Institute when Krauthammer won the Irving Kristol Award, set out a framework for tackling the post 9/11 world, focusing on the promotion of democracy in the Middle East."

In 2009, Politico columnist Ben Smith wrote that Krauthammer had "emerged in the Age of Obama as a central conservative voice," a "kind of leader of the opposition...a coherent, sophisticated and implacable critic of the new president." The New York Times columnist David Brooks says that today "he's the most important conservative columnist."^[11] Former congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called Krauthammer "without a doubt the most powerful force in American conservatism. He has [been] for two, three, four years."^[12]

Apart from the Pulitzer Prize and the National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism, Krauthammer has received numerous other awards, including the People for the American Way's First Amendment Award, the Champion/Tuck Award for Economic Understanding, the first annual ($250,000) Bradley Prize, and the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism,^[13] an annual award given by the Eric Breindel Foundation.

Former president Bill Clinton called Krauthammer "a brilliant man" in a December 2010 press conference.^[14] Krauthammer responded, tongue-in-cheek, that "my career is done" and "I'm toast".^[15]

Krauthammer is a member of the Chess Journalists of America^[16] and the Council on Foreign Relations.^[17] He is co-founder of Pro Musica Hebraica, a not-for-profit organization devoted to presenting Jewish classical music – much of it lost or forgotten – in a concert hall setting.^[18]

Opinions and ideas[link]

Foreign policy and interventionism[link]

Cold War[link]

Krauthammer first gained attention in the mid-1980s when he first used the phrase "Reagan Doctrine" in his Time magazine column.^[19] The phrase was a reference to the American foreign policy of supporting anti-communist insurgencies around the globe (most notably Nicaragua, Angola and Afghanistan) as a response to the Brezhnev Doctrine and reflected a U.S. foreign policy that went beyond containment of the Soviet Union to rollback of recent Soviet influence in the Third World. The policy, which was strongly supported by Heritage Foundation foreign policy analysts and other conservatives, was ultimately embraced by Reagan's senior national security and foreign policy officials. Krauthammer's description of it as the "Reagan Doctrine" has since endured.

In "The Poverty of Realism" (New Republic, February 17, 1986), he developed the underlying theory "that the end of American foreign policy is not just the security of the United States, but what John Kennedy called 'the success of liberty'. That means, first, defending the community of democratic nations (the repository of the liberal idea), and second, encouraging the establishment of new liberal policies at the frontier, most especially in the Third World." The foreign policy, he argued, should be both "universal in aspiration", and "prudent in application", thus combining American idealism and realism. Over the next 20 years these ideas developed into what is now called "Democratic Realism".

Post–Cold War[link]

In the lead article in Foreign Affairs, titled "The Unipolar Moment"^[20] Krauthammer coined the term "unipolarity" to describe the world structure that was emerging with the fall of the Soviet Union. Conventional wisdom of the late 1980s was that the bipolar world of the Cold War would give way to a multipolar world in which the U.S. was one of many centers of power, co-equal to the European Union, Japan, China, and others. Krauthammer predicted that instead, a unipolar world would emerge dominated by the United States with a power gap between the most powerful state and the second-most powerful state that would exceed any other in history. He also suggested that American hegemony would inevitably exist for only a historical "moment", lasting at best for three or four decades.

Hegemony gave the United States the capacity and responsibility to act unilaterally if necessary, Krauthammer argued. Throughout the 1990s, however, he was circumspect about how that power ought to be used. He split from his neoconservative colleagues who were arguing for an interventionist policy of "American greatness". Krauthammer wrote that in the absence of a global existential threat the United States should stay out of "teacup wars" in failed states, and instead adopt a "dry powder" foreign policy of nonintervention and readiness.^[21]

Krauthammer opposed purely "humanitarian intervention" (with the exception of overt genocide). While he supported the 1991 Gulf War on the grounds of both humanitarianism and strategic necessity (preventing Saddam Hussein from gaining control of the Persian Gulf and its resources), he opposed American intervention in the Balkan wars on the grounds that America should not be committing the lives of its soldiers to purely humanitarian missions in which there is no American national interest at stake.^[22]

9/11, Iraq and the War on Terror[link]

He laid out the underlying principle of strategic necessity restraining democratic idealism in his controversial 2004 Kristol Award Lecture: "We will support democracy everywhere, but we will commit blood and treasure only in places where there is a strategic necessity—meaning, places central to the larger war against the existential enemy, the enemy that poses a global mortal threat to freedom."^[21]

The 9/11 attacks, Krauthammer wrote, made clear the new existential threat and the necessity for a new interventionism. On September 12, 2001 he wrote that, if the suspicion that al Qaeda was behind the attack proved correct, the United States had no choice but to go to war in Afghanistan.^[23] He supported the Iraq war on the "realist" grounds of the strategic threat the Saddam regime posed to the region as UN sanctions were eroding and of his alleged weapons of mass destruction; and on the "idealist" grounds that a self-sustaining democracy in Iraq would be a first step towards changing the poisonous political culture of tyranny, intolerance and religious fanaticism in the Arab world that had incubated the anti-American extremism from which 9/11 emerged.

In October 2002, he presented what he believed were the primary arguments for and against the war, writing, "Hawks favor war on the grounds that Saddam Hussein is reckless, tyrannical and instinctively aggressive, and that if he comes into possession of nuclear weapons in addition to the weapons of mass destruction he already has, he is likely to use them or share them with terrorists. The threat of mass death on a scale never before seen residing in the hands of an unstable madman is intolerable – and must be preempted."

"Doves oppose war on the grounds that the risks exceed the gains. War with Iraq could be very costly, possibly degenerating into urban warfare".

"I happen to believe that the preemption school is correct, that the risks of allowing Saddam Hussein to acquire his weapons will only grow with time. Nonetheless, I can both understand and respect those few Democrats who make the principled argument against war with Iraq on the grounds of deterrence, believing that safety lies in reliance on a proven (if perilous) balance of terror rather than the risky innovation of forcible disarmament by preemption."^[24]

On the eve of the invasion, Krauthammer wrote that "[r]eformation and reconstruction of an alien culture are a daunting task. Risky and, yes, arrogant."^[25] In February 2003, Krauthammer cautioned that "it may yet fail. But we cannot afford not to try. There is not a single, remotely plausible, alternative strategy for attacking the monster behind 9/11. It’s not Osama bin Laden; it is the cauldron of political oppression, religious intolerance, and social ruin in the Arab-Islamic world—oppression transmuted and deflected by regimes with no legitimacy into virulent, murderous anti-Americanism."^[21] Krauthammer in 2003 noted that the reconstruction of Iraq would provide many benefits for the Iraqi people, once the political and economic infrastructure destroyed by Saddam was restored: "With its oil, its urbanized middle class, its educated population, its essential modernity, Iraq has a future. In two decades Saddam Hussein reduced its GDP by 75 percent. Once its political and industrial infrastructures are reestablished, Iraq's potential for rebound, indeed for explosive growth, is unlimited."^[26]

In a speech to the Foreign Policy Association in Philadelphia, he argued that the "Arab Spring" that had brought the beginnings of democratization in the Arab world had been met in 2006 with a "fierce counterattack" by radical Islamist forces in Lebanon, Palestine and especially Iraq, which witnessed a major intensification in sectarian warfare.^[27] In late 2006 and 2007, he was one of the few commentators to support the surge in Iraq.^[28][29]

Ideology[link]

Within the American political spectrum, Krauthammer has been called a conservative.^[30][31] However, on domestic issues, Krauthammer is a supporter of legalized abortion;^[32][33][34] an opponent of the death penalty;^{[35][36][37][38]} an intelligent design critic and an advocate for the scientific consensus on evolution, calling the religion-science controversy a "false conflict;"^[39][40] a supporter of embryonic stem cell research using embryos discarded by fertility clinics with restrictions in its applications;^[41][42][43] and a longtime advocate of radically higher energy taxes to induce conservation.^{[44][45][46][47]} Meg Greenfield, editorial page editor for The Washington Post who edited Krauthammer's columns for 15 years, called his weekly column "independent and hard to peg politically. It's a very tough column. There's no 'trendy' in it. You never know what is going to happen next."^[3]

Hendrik Hertzberg, a former colleague of Krauthammer's at The New Republic during the 1980s, said that when the two first met in 1978, Krauthammer was "70 per cent Mondale liberal, 30 per cent 'Scoop Jackson Democrat,' that is, hard-line on Israel and relations with the Soviet Union;" while in the mid-1980s, he was still "50-50: fairly liberal on economic and social questions but a full-bore foreign-policy neoconservative." Hertzberg now calls Krauthammer a "pretty solid 90-10 Republican."^[48]

Krauthammer's major monograph on foreign policy, "Democratic Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World,"^[21] is critical both of the neoconservative Bush doctrine for being too expansive and utopian, and of foreign policy "realism" for being too narrow and immoral; instead, he proposes an alternative he calls "Democratic Realism." In a 2005 speech (later published in Commentary Magazine) he called neoconservatism "a governing ideology whose time has come." He noted that the original "fathers of neoconservatism" were "former liberals or leftists". More recently, they have been joined by "realists, newly mugged by reality," such as Condoleezza Rice, Richard Cheney, and George W. Bush, who "have given weight to neoconservatism, making it more diverse and, given the newcomers’ past experience, more mature." In "Charlie Gibson's Gaffe" in The Washington Post, September 13, 2008, Krauthammer elaborated on the changing meanings of the Bush Doctrine in light of Gibson's controversial questioning of Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin regarding what exactly the Bush Doctrine was, as if there was a single definition. Palin was criticized for her response. Krauthammer states in the article that "The Bush Doctrine" has had "four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of" the Bush Administration. Krauthammer states that the phrase "Bush Doctrine" originally referred to "the unilateralism that characterized the pre-9/11 first year of the Bush administration." He states that "There is no single meaning of the Bush Doctrine. He also states "the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of the Bush approach to foreign policy and the one that most clearly and distinctively defines the Bush years: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world."^[49]

Religion[link]

Krauthammer is Jewish but "not religious." In a Jerusalem Post interview he reflected on how he had been influenced by his study of Maimonides at McGill with Rabbi David Hartman, head of Jerusalem's Hartman Institute and professor of philosophy at McGill during Krauthammer's student days, to see the grandeur of Jewish culture.^[50]

Krauthammer is a critic of intelligent design, and wrote several articles in 2005 likening it to "tarted-up creationism."^[51]

He has received a number of awards for his commentary related to religion, including the People for the American Way’s First Amendment Award for his New Republic essay "America's Holy Wars"^[52] in 1985, and the Guardian of Zion Award of Bar-Ilan University in 2002.^[53]

Krauthammer opposed the Park51 Islamic community center project in Manhattan for “reasons of common decency and respect for the sacred. No commercial tower over Gettysburg, no convent at Auschwitz - and no mosque at Ground Zero. Build it anywhere but there.” ^[54]

Medicine[link]

President's Council on Bioethics[link]

Krauthammer was appointed to President George W. Bush's President's Council on Bioethics in 2002. He supported relaxing the Bush administration's limits on federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research.^[55] But he has opposed human experimentation, human cloning and euthanasia.^[56] He has warned that scientists were beginning to develop the power of "creating a class of superhumans." A fellow member of the Council, Janet D. Rowley, insists that Krauthammer's vision is still an issue far in the future and not a topic to be discussed at the present time.^[57] In March 2009, he was invited to the signing of the executive order by President Obama at the White House but declined to attend due to the "door being left open" as to the cloning of human embryos and the creation of normal human embryos solely for purposes of research. He also contrasted the "moral seriousness" of Bush's stem cell address of August 9, 2001 with that of Obama's address on stem cells.^[58]

End of life care[link]

Krauthammer is critical of the idea of living wills and the current state of end of life counseling in the U.S. He has written:

When my father was dying, my mother and brother and I had to decide how much treatment to pursue. What was a better way to ascertain my father's wishes: What he checked off on a form one fine summer's day years before being stricken; or what we, who had known him intimately for decades, thought he would want? The answer is obvious.^[59]

Miers nomination[link]

Krauthammer criticized President George W. Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to succeed Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. He called the nomination of Miers a "mistake" on several occasions. He noted her lack of constitutional experience as the main obstacle to her nomination.

On October 21, 2005, Charles Krauthammer published "Miers: The Only Exit Strategy,"^[60] in which he explained that all of Miers' relevant constitutional writings are protected by both attorney–client privilege and executive privilege. This presented a unique face-saving solution to the mistake: "Miers withdraws out of respect for both the Senate and the executive's prerogatives".^[61] Six days later Miers withdrew, employing that argument. She stated her respect for "the strength and independence of our three branches of government" and noted that the "protection of the prerogatives of the Executive Branch and continued pursuit of my confirmation are in tension." Therefore, "I have decided that seeking my confirmation should yield."^[62]

The same day, NPR noted that "Krauthammer's scenario played out almost exactly as he wrote."^[63] Columnist E.J. Dionne wrote that the White House was following Krauthammer’s strategy "almost to the letter."^[64] And a few weeks later, the New York Times reported that Krauthammer's "exit strategy" was "exactly what happened" and that he "has subsequently gotten credit for giving [the Bush administration] a plan."^[65]

Israel[link]

Krauthammer strongly opposed the Oslo accords, predicting that Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat would use the foothold it gave him in the West Bank and Gaza to continue the war against Israel which he had ostensibly renounced in the Israel – PLO Letters of Recognition. In a July 2006 essay in Time, Krauthammer asserted that the Israeli–Palestinian conflict was fundamentally defined by the Palestinians' unwillingness to accept compromise.^[66]

During the Israel–Lebanon war in 2006, Krauthammer wrote a column, "Let Israel Win the War," saying: "What other country, when attacked in an unprovoked aggression across a recognized international frontier, is then put on a countdown clock by the world, given a limited time window in which to fight back, regardless of whether it has restored its own security?"^[67] He later criticized the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's conduct, arguing that he "has provided unsteady and uncertain leadership. Foolishly relying on air power alone, he denied his generals the ground offensive they wanted, only to reverse himself later."^[68]

Krauthammer supports a two-state solution to the conflict. Unlike many conservatives, he supported Israel's Gaza withdrawal as a step toward rationalizing the frontiers between Israel and a future Palestinian state. He believes a security barrier between the two states' final borders will be an important element of any lasting peace.^[69]

When Richard Goldstone retracted the claim in the U.N. report on the 2008 Gaza war that that Israel intentionally killed Palestinian civilians,^[70] including children, Krauthammer strongly criticized Goldstone, saying that "this weasel-y excuse-laden retraction is too little and too late" and "the original report [was a] blood libel ranking with the libels of the 19th century in which Jews were accused of ritually slaughtering children ... [Goldstone] should spend the rest of his life undoing the damage".^[71]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Krauthammer's Weekly Column in The Washington Post
• Krauthammer Archives at Jewish World Review
• Krauthammer's biography at The Washington Post Writers Group website
• C-SPAN Q&A interview with Krauthammer, May 1, 2005

Jonah Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg in February 2012.
Born	March 21, 1969 (1969-03-21) (age 43)
Citizenship	United States
Alma mater	Goucher College (1991)
Occupation	Journalist, author
Employer	National Review Online
Religion	Jewish[1]
Spouse	Jessica Gavora
Children	1 daughter
Parents	Sidney & Lucianne Goldberg

Jonah Jacob Goldberg (born March 21, 1969) is an American conservative syndicated columnist and author. Goldberg is known for his contributions on politics and culture to National Review Online, of which he is editor-at-large. He is the author of Liberal Fascism (2008), which reached #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list.

He appears on such television programs as Special Report with Bret Baier, Good Morning America, Nightline, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Real Time with Bill Maher, Larry King Live, Your World with Neil Cavuto and most recently the Glenn Beck Program and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. From 2006 to 2010 he was a frequent participant on bloggingheads.tv.

Early life and career[link]

Goldberg graduated from Goucher College in 1991. His was the second class at Goucher to admit men. He was active in student politics at Goucher and was the co-editor of the school newspaper,The Quindecim, for two years. He and Andreas Benno Kollegger were the first men to run the paper. He later interned for Scripps Howard News Service, United Press International, and other news organizations.^[when?] He also worked for Delilah Communications, a publishing house in New York.^[when?]

After graduation, he taught English in Prague for under a year before moving to Washington to take a job at the American Enterprise Institute.^[when?] While at AEI he worked for Ben J. Wattenberg. He was the researcher for Wattenberg’s nationally syndicated column and for Wattenberg's book, Values Matter Most. He also worked on several PBS public affairs documentaries, including a two-hour special hosted by David Gergen and Wattenberg.^{[citation needed]} Goldberg also served for three years on the Board of Trustees of Goucher College.^[when?]

In 1994, he was a founding producer for Wattenberg's Think Tank with Wattenberg. That same year he moved to New River Media, an independent television production company, which produced "Think Tank" as well as numerous other television programs and projects. Goldberg worked on a large number of television projects across the United States, as well as in Europe and Japan. He wrote, produced, and edited two documentaries, Gargoyles: Guardians of the Gate and Notre Dame: Witness to History.

He joined National Review as a contributing editor in 1998. By the end of that year he was asked to launch National Review Online (NRO) as a sister publication to National Review. He served as editor of NRO for several years and later became editor-at-large.^[when?]

Clinton–Lewinsky scandal[link]

Goldberg’s career as a pundit was launched following his mother Lucianne Goldberg's role in the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal, when he wrote about the “media siege” on his mother’s apartment in The New Yorker.^[2][3]

Goldberg has spoken of his mother and the Lewinsky scandal:

My mother was the one who advised Linda Tripp to record her conversations with Monica Lewinsky and to save the dress. I was privy to some of that stuff, and when the administration set about to destroy Lewinsky, Tripp, and my mom, I defended my mom and by extension Tripp... I have zero desire to have those arguments again. I did my bit in the trenches of Clinton's trousers.^[4]

These tapes became the focal point of the Lewinsky scandal. Goldberg was privy to the tapes and the conversations his mother had with Tripp because he served as a vice president of his mother's now-defunct literary agency. When the scandal broke, Goldberg defended his mother and Tripp during the ensuing media firestorm.^{[citation needed]}

Current work[link]

Goldberg has twice-weekly column at National Review Online, which is syndicated to numerous papers across the United States, and at Townhall.com. He also writes an occasional "Goldberg File" column at National Review that is typically longer, and more culture or interest oriented. Goldberg is also a frequent poster at the National Review Online blog "The Corner".

In other online media, in addition to appearances on Bloggingheads.tv, Goldberg is a frequent participant in programs produced by the center-right Web site Ricochet.com, including the weekly Ricochet Podcast and The Ricochet Roundtable, which features Goldberg, columnist Mark Steyn and Ricochet co-founder Rob Long.

Aside from being a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors, he has written for The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, The Public Interest, The Wilson Quarterly, The Weekly Standard, The New York Post, and Slate. The Los Angeles Times added Goldberg to its editorial lineup in 2005.

His book Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (ISBN 0-385-51184-1) was published in January 2008. It reached #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list of hardcover nonfiction in its seventh week on the list.^[5] While in preparation, the book had a number of different subtitles, including "The Totalitarian Temptation From Hegel to Whole Foods" and "The Totalitarian Temptation From Mussolini to Hillary Clinton". After being published in paperback, the subtitle was changed to The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Change. Some historians have denounced the book as being "poor scholarship," ^[6] "propaganda," ^[7] and not "scholarly." ^[8] Other reviewers described the book as "provocative"^[9] and "a wealth of challenging insights, backed up by thorough research".^[10]

Commentary[link]

Frequent topics[link]

Some frequent topics of his articles include censorship, meritocracy, liberty, federalism and interpretation of the Constitution, his attacks on the ethics and morals of liberals and Democrats, and his disagreements with libertarians also appear often in his writings. He is a supporter of the Iraq War and has advocated for American military intervention elsewhere in the world. He has defended historical colonialism in places such as Africa as more beneficial than it is generally given credit for; in one column, he suggested that U.S. imperialism on the continent could help solve its persistent problems.^[11] When he wrote in October 2006 that invading Iraq was a mistake, he called it a "noble" mistake and still maintained that liberal opponents to the war policy wanted America to fail: "In other words, their objection isn't to war per se; it's to wars that advance U.S. interests... I must confess, one of the things that made me reluctant to conclude that the Iraq war was a mistake was my distaste for the shabbiness of the arguments on the antiwar side."^[12]

He popularized and expanded on a commentary by the late Time writer William Henry III. Henry had written on the subject of multiculturalism and cultural equality, stating that "[i]t is scarcely the same thing to put a man on the moon as to put a bone in your nose." Goldberg stated that "[m]ulticulturalism — which is simply egalitarianism wrapped in rainbow-colored paper — has elevated the notion that all ideas are equal, all systems equivalent, all cultures of comparable worth."^[13]

Francophobia and anti-Europeanism[link]

Goldberg has publicly admitted to disliking France or, as he writes, being in the "frog-bashing business", using the derogatory term "frog" to designate the French: "the frog-bashing business has changed a lot since I first started just a few years ago".^[14] He has also called for "the total destruction of France"; he later clarified his statement as meaning "the destruction of France as an idea".^[15] Some commentators, like Brian Dunaway, consider that Goldberg's attitude towards the French is francophobic: "The poor souls that visit Goldberg’s columns know that he has made Francophobia a favorite pastime".^[16] Other commentators, such as Timothy Garton Ash, explain Goldberg's attitude, among others, by a deeply rooted "anti-Europeanism" in the United States.^[17]

Relations with other writers and public figures[link]

On the political left, Goldberg has publicly feuded with Juan Cole over U.S. Iraq policy and Air America Radio commentators such as Janeane Garofalo, who has accused him of being a chickenhawk on the Iraq War. On February 8, 2005, Goldberg offered Cole a wager of $1,000 "that Iraq won't have a civil war, that it will have a viable constitution, and that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years time, agree that the war was worth it".^[18] Cole refused to accept and the wager was never made.^[19] Goldberg later conceded that if Cole had accepted the bet, Cole would have won.^[20]

Goldberg and Peter Beinart of The New Republic for a time hosted a conservative vs. liberal webtv show, What's your Problem?, which originally could be found on National Review Online^[22] but has appeared on Bloggingheads.tv^[21] as of 2008.

Goldberg and others at National Review Online (including editor Rich Lowry) broke with conservative writer Ann Coulter over statements she made about the September 11, 2001 attacks that they considered irresponsible. Coulter stopped writing for National Review Online after the publishing of her column on September 13, 2001, opining that "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity".^[23]

Media[link]

Regarding Fox News, Goldberg said, "Look, I think liberals have reasonable gripes with Fox News. It does lean to the right, primarily in its opinion programming but also in its story selection (which is fine by me) and elsewhere. But it's worth remembering that Fox is less a bastion of ideological conservatism and more a populist, tabloidy network."^[24]

Goldberg has criticized liberals for disliking Fox News, claiming they have no "problem with the editorializing of MSNBC's Keith Olbermann or Chris Matthews, they think it's just plain wrong for conservatives to play that game."^[24] Goldberg has referred to Olbermann as "MSNBC’s answer to a question no one asked."^[25]

Humor and lighter topics[link]

The "Goldberg File" frequently involves humor, often at the expense of liberals. Alec Baldwin, who Goldberg insinuates cannot read, has been a frequent target of such jibes. Goldberg also makes occasional allusions to Star Trek.^[26] More recently, Battlestar Galactica has become a favorite topic.^[27] Goldberg also likes to link to "timewaster" online games in his postings at "The Corner".

Family[link]

Jonah Goldberg is married to Jessica Gavora, former chief speechwriter and a senior policy adviser to former Attorney General John Ashcroft,^[28] and they have a daughter. Their dog Cosmo,a.k.a. "Snowball", "of indeterminate parentage and upbringing", also contributes articles to National Review.^[29]

Goldberg's brother, Joshua Goldberg, died on February 10, 2011, from injuries he sustained in a fall. Their late father, Sidney Goldberg (1931–2005), was Jewish, and their mother, Lucianne Goldberg, is Episcopalian.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jonah Goldberg

• Goldberg's syndicated column (at Townhall.com)
• Goldberg's National Review Online biography
• Liberal Fascism: The Blog
• Some Goldberg quotes
• Salon.com Interview
• Video discussions/debates in which Goldberg has taken part on Bloggingheads.tv
• Hudson Institute Washington, D.C. January 30, 2008 on Fora.tv
• In Depth interview with Goldberg, November 7, 2010

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Sarah Palin
Palin speaking at the 2012 CPAC in Washington, D.C.
9th Governor of Alaska
In office December 4, 2006 – July 26, 2009
Lieutenant	Sean Parnell
Preceded by	Frank Murkowski
Succeeded by	Sean Parnell
Chairperson of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission
In office February 19, 2003 – January 23, 2004
Governor	Frank Murkowski
Preceded by	Camille Oechsli Taylor[1]
Succeeded by	John K. Norman[1]
Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska
In office October 14, 1996 – October 14, 2002
Preceded by	John Stein
Succeeded by	Dianne M. Keller
Member of the Wasilla City Council from Seat E
In office October 19, 1992 – October 14, 1996
Preceded by	Dorothy Smith
Succeeded by	Colleen Cottle
Personal details
Born	Sarah Louise Heath (1964-02-11) February 11, 1964 (age 48)[2] Sandpoint, Idaho, U.S.
Nationality	American
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Todd Palin (m. August 29, 1988)
Children	Track (b. 1989) Bristol (b. 1990) Willow (b. 1994) Piper (b. 2001) Trig (b. 2008)[3]
Residence	Wasilla, Alaska
Alma mater	University of Idaho - (B.S., 1987)[4]
Occupation	Local news sportscaster Commercial fisherman Politician Author Political commentator[5]
Religion	Non-denominational Christian[6][7]
Signature

	This article is part of a series about Sarah Palin	Sarah Palin
McCain–Palin campaign, 2008 Governorship of Alaska, 2006–2009 Early political career of Sarah Palin, 1992–2005 Political positions · Electoral history Public image · Saturday Night Live parodies Resignation of Sarah Palin Going Rogue: An American Life Sarah Palin's Alaska

Sarah Louise Palin ⁱ/ˈpeɪlɨn/ (née Heath; born February 11, 1964) is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and first Republican woman nominated for the vice presidency. Her book Going Rogue has sold more than two million copies. Since January 2010, she has provided political commentary for Fox News, and hosted a television show, Sarah Palin's Alaska. Five million viewers tuned in for the first episode, a record for The Learning Channel.

She was elected to Wasilla City Council in 1992 and became mayor of Wasilla in 1996. In 2003, after an unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor, she was appointed Chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, responsible for overseeing the state's oil and gas fields for safety and efficiency. The youngest person and first woman to be elected Governor of Alaska, Palin held the office from December 2006 until her resignation in July 2009. She has since endorsed and campaigned for the Tea Party movement, as well as several candidates in the 2010 midterm elections. From the time of her Vice Presidential nomination in 2008, Palin was considered a potential candidate for the 2012 presidential election until she announced in October 2011 that she would not run.

Early life and family[link]

Palin was born in Sandpoint, Idaho. She is the third of four children (three daughters, one son) born to Charles R. "Chuck" Heath, a science teacher and track and field coach, and Sarah "Sally" (née Sheeran), a school secretary. Palin's siblings are Chuck Jr., Heather, and Molly.^{[8][9][10][11][12]} Palin is of English, Irish, and German ancestry.^[13]

When Palin was a few months old, the family moved to Skagway, Alaska,^[14] where her father received his teaching job.^[15] They relocated to Eagle River in 1969, and finally settled to Wasilla in 1972.^[16][17]

Palin played flute in the junior high band, then attended Wasilla High School where she was the head of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes,^[7] and a member of the girls' basketball and cross country running teams.^[18] During her senior year, she was co-captain and point guard of the basketball team that won the 1982 Alaska state championship, earning the nickname "Sarah Barracuda" for her competitive streak.^[19][20][21]

College[link]

After graduating from high school, Palin enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.^[22] Shortly after arriving in Hawaii, Palin transferred to Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu for a semester in the fall of 1982, and then to North Idaho College, a community college in Coeur d'Alene, for the spring and fall semesters of 1983.^[23] (In June 2008, the Alumni Association of NIC gave her its Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award.)^[23][24]

In 1984, Palin won the Miss Wasilla beauty pageant.^[25][26] She finished third in the Miss Alaska pageant,^[27][28] playing flute in the talent portion of the contest,^[29] and receiving both the Miss Congeniality award and a college scholarship.^[19]

She attended the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho, in late 1984 and early 1985, and Matanuska-Susitna College in Alaska in late 1985. Palin returned to the University of Idaho in the spring of 1986, and received her bachelor's degree in communications with an emphasis in journalism in 1987.^{[23][30][31][32]}

Early career and marriage[link]

After graduation, she worked as a sportscaster for KTUU-TV and KTVA-TV in Anchorage,^[33][34] and as a sports reporter for the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman,^[35][36] fulfilling an early ambition.^[37]

On August 29, 1988, she eloped at age 24 with her high school sweetheart, Todd Palin. Following the birth of their first child, she helped in her husband's commercial fishing business.^[38]

Early political career[link]

City council[link]

Palin was elected to the Wasilla City Council in 1992 winning 530 votes to 310.^[39][40] Throughout her tenure on the city council and the rest of her political career, Palin has been a Republican since registering in 1982.^[41]

Mayor of Wasilla[link]

Concerned that revenue from a new Wasilla sales tax would not be spent wisely,^[42] Palin ran for mayor of Wasilla in 1996, defeating incumbent mayor John Stein^[43] 651 to 440 votes.^[44] Her biographer described her campaign as targeting wasteful spending and high taxes;^[19] her opponent, Stein, said that Palin introduced abortion, gun rights, and term limits as campaign issues.^[45] The election was nonpartisan, though the state Republican Party ran advertisements for Palin.^[45] Palin ran for re-election against Stein in 1999 and won, 909 votes to 292.^[46] In 2002, she completed the second of the two consecutive three-year terms allowed by the city charter.^[47] She was elected president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors^[48] in 1999.^[49]

First term[link]

Palin had a contretemps with the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, a local newspaper, and became involved in personnel challenges and "a thwarted attempt to pack the City Council" during her first year in office.^[50] Using income generated by a 2% sales tax that had been approved by Wasilla voters in October 1992,^[51] Palin cut property taxes by 75% and eliminated personal property and business inventory taxes.^[43][52] Using municipal bonds, she made improvements to the roads and sewers, and increased funding to the Police Department.^[45] She also oversaw new bike paths and procured funding for storm-water treatment to protect freshwater resources.^[43] At the same time, she shrank the local museum's budget and deterred talk of a new library and city hall.^[43]

Soon after taking office in October 1996, Palin eliminated the position of museum director^[53] and asked for updated resumes and resignation letters from "city department heads who had been loyal to Stein,"^[54] including the police chief, public works director, finance director, and librarian.^[55] Palin stated this request was to find out their intentions and whether they supported her.^[55] She temporarily required department heads to get her approval before talking to reporters, saying that they first needed to become acquainted with her administration's policies.^[55] She created the position of city administrator,^[45] and reduced her own $68,000 salary by 10%, although by mid-1998 this was reversed by the city council.^[56]

In October 1996, Palin asked library director Mary Ellen Emmons if she would object to the removal of a book from the library if people were picketing to have the book removed.^[57] Emmons responded that she would, and others as well.^[57] Palin explained that she not been proposing censorship but had been discussing many issues with her staff that were "both rhetorical and realistic in nature."^[57] No attempt was made to remove books from the library during Palin's tenure as mayor.^[58]

Palin said she fired Police Chief Irl Stambaugh because he did not fully support her efforts to govern the city.^[59] Stambaugh filed a lawsuit alleging wrongful termination and violation of his free speech rights.^[60] The judge dismissed Stambaugh's lawsuit, holding that the police chief served at the discretion of the mayor, and could be terminated for nearly any reason, even a political one,^[61][62] and ordered Stambaugh to pay Palin's legal fees.^[61]

Wasilla City Hall

Location of Wasilla, Alaska

Second term[link]

During her second term as mayor, Palin proposed and promoted the construction of a municipal sports center to be financed by a 0.5%^[45] sales tax increase and $14.7  million bond issue.^[63] Voters approved the measure by a 20 vote margin and the Wasilla Multi-Use Sports Complex (later named the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center) was built on time and under budget. However, the city spent an additional $1.3 million because of an eminent domain lawsuit caused by the failure to obtain clear title to the property before beginning construction.^[63] The city's long-term debt grew from about $1 million to $25 million due to $15 million for the sports complex, $5.5 million for street projects, and $3 million for water improvement projects. The Wall Street Journal characterized the project as a "financial mess."^[63] A city council member defended the spending increases as being caused by the city's growth during that time.^[64]

Palin also joined with nearby communities in hiring the Anchorage-based lobbying firm of Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh to lobby for federal funds. The firm secured nearly $8 million in earmarks for the Wasilla city government,^[65] including $500,000 for a youth shelter, $1.9 million for a transportation hub, and $900,000 for sewer repairs.^[66]

In 2008, Wasilla's current mayor credited Palin's 75 percent property tax cuts and infrastructure improvements with bringing "big-box stores" and 50,000 shoppers per day to Wasilla.^[39]

State-level politics[link]

In 2002, Palin ran for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor, coming in second to Loren Leman in a five-way Republican primary.^[67] Following her defeat, she campaigned throughout the state for the nominated Republican governor-lieutenant governor ticket of Frank Murkowski and Leman.^[68] Murkowski and Leman won, Murkowski resigned from his long-held U.S. Senate seat in December 2002 to assume the governorship. Palin was said to be on the "short list" of possible appointees to Murkowski's U.S. Senate seat,^[68] but Murkowski ultimately appointed his daughter, State Representative Lisa Murkowski, as his successor in the Senate.^[69]

Governor Murkowski offered other jobs to Palin, and in February 2003, she accepted an appointment to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which oversees Alaska's oil and gas fields for safety and efficiency.^[68] While she had little background in the area, she said she wanted to learn more about the oil industry, and was named chair of the commission and ethics supervisor.^[1][68][70] By November 2003 she was filing non-public ethics complaints with the state attorney general and the governor against a fellow commission member, Randy Ruedrich, a former petroleum engineer and at the time the chair of the state Republican Party.^[68] He was forced to resign in November 2003.^[68] Palin resigned in January 2004 and put her protests against Ruedrich's "lack of ethics" into the public arena^[19][68] by filing a public complaint against Ruedrich,^[71] who was then fined $12,000. She also joined with Democratic legislator Eric Croft^[72] in complaining that Gregg Renkes, then the attorney general of Alaska,^[73] had a financial conflict of interest in negotiating a coal exporting trade agreement.^[74][75] Renkes also resigned his post.^[19][70]

From 2003 to June 2005, Palin served as one of three directors of "Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.," a 527 group designed to provide political training for Republican women in Alaska.^[76] In 2004, Palin told the Anchorage Daily News that she had decided not to run for the U.S. Senate that year against the Republican incumbent Lisa Murkowski because her teenage son opposed it. Palin said, "How could I be the team mom if I was a U.S. Senator?"^[77]

Governor of Alaska[link]

Palin visits soldiers of the Alaska National Guard, July 24, 2007.

In 2006, running on a clean-government platform, Palin defeated incumbent Governor Frank Murkowski in the Republican gubernatorial primary.^[78][79] Her running mate was Sean Parnell, who since leaving the state senate in 2001 had worked as a corporate lobbyist.^{[citation needed]}

In the November election, Palin was outspent but victorious, defeating former Democratic governor Tony Knowles by a margin of 48.3% to 40.9%.^[19] She became Alaska's first female governor, and, at the age of 42, the youngest governor in Alaskan history, the state's first governor to have been born after Alaska achieved U.S. statehood, and the first not to be inaugurated in Juneau (she chose to have the ceremony held in Fairbanks instead). She took office on December 4, 2006, and for most of her term was very popular with Alaska voters. Polls taken in 2007 showed her with 93% and 89% popularity among all voters,^[80] which led some media outlets to call her "the most popular governor in America."^[72][80] A poll taken in late September 2008 after Palin was named to the national Republican ticket showed her popularity in Alaska at 68%.^[81] A poll taken in May 2009 showed Palin's popularity among Alaskans was at 54% positive and 41.6% negative.^[82]

Palin declared that top priorities of her administration would be resource development, education and workforce development, public health and safety, and transportation and infrastructure development. She had championed ethics reform throughout her election campaign. Her first legislative action after taking office was to push for a bipartisan ethics reform bill. She signed the resulting legislation in July 2007, calling it a "first step", and declaring that she remained determined to clean up Alaska politics.^[83]

Palin frequently broke with the Alaskan Republican establishment.^[84][85] For example, she endorsed Parnell's bid to unseat the state's longtime at-large U.S. Representative, Don Young,^[86] and she publicly challenged then-U.S. Senator Ted Stevens to come clean about the federal investigation into his financial dealings. Shortly before his July 2008 indictment, she held a joint news conference with Stevens, described by The Washington Post as intended to "make clear she had not abandoned him politically."^[76]

Palin promoted the development of oil and natural-gas resources in Alaska, including drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Proposals to drill for oil in ANWR have occasioned national debate.^[87]

In 2006, Palin obtained a passport^[88] and in 2007 traveled for the first time outside of North America on a trip to Kuwait. There she visited the Khabari Alawazem Crossing at the Kuwait–Iraq border and met with members of the Alaska National Guard at several bases.^[89] On her return journey she visited injured soldiers in Germany.^[90]

Budget, spending, and federal funds[link]

Palin in Germany, July 2007

In June 2007, Palin signed a record $6.6 billion operating budget into law.^[91] At the same time, she used her veto power to make the second-largest cuts of the capital budget in state history. The $237 million in cuts represented over 300 local projects, and reduced the capital budget to $1.6 billion.^[92]

In 2008, Palin vetoed $286 million, cutting or reducing funding for 350 projects from the FY09 capital budget.^[93]

Palin followed through on a campaign promise to sell the Westwind II jet, a purchase made by the Murkowski administration for $2.7 million in 2005 against the wishes of the legislature.^[94] In August 2007, the jet was listed on eBay, but the sale fell through, and the plane later sold for $2.1 million through a private brokerage firm.^[95]

Gubernatorial expenditures[link]

Palin lived in Juneau during the legislative session and lived in Wasilla and worked out of offices in Anchorage the rest of the year. Since the office in Anchorage is 565 miles from Juneau, while she worked there, state officials said she was permitted to claim a $58 per diem travel allowance, which she took (a total of $16,951), and to reimbursement for hotels, which she did not, choosing instead to drive about 50 miles to her home in Wasilla.^[96] She also chose not to use the former governor's private chef.^[97] Republicans and Democrats have criticized Palin for taking the per diem and $43,490 in travel expenses for the times her family accompanied her on state business.^[98][99] In response, Palin's staffers said that these practices were in line with state policy, that her gubernatorial expenses are 80% below those of Murkowski, her predecessor,^[98] and that "many of the hundreds of invitations Palin receives include requests for her to bring her family, placing the definition of 'state business' with the party extending the invitation."^[96] In February 2009, the State of Alaska, reversing a policy that had treated the payments as legitimate business expenses under the Internal Revenue Code, decided that per diems paid to state employees for stays in their own homes will be treated as taxable income and will be included in employees' gross income on their W-2 forms.^[100] Palin herself had ordered the review of the tax policy.^[101]

In December 2008, an Alaska state commission recommended increasing the Governor's annual salary from $125,000 to $150,000. Palin stated that she would not accept the pay raise.^[102] In response, the commission dropped the recommendation.^[103]

Federal funding[link]

In her State of the State address on January 17, 2008, Palin declared that the people of Alaska "can and must continue to develop our economy, because we cannot and must not rely so heavily on federal government [funding]."^[104] Alaska's federal congressional representatives cut back on pork-barrel project requests during Palin's time as governor; despite this, in 2008 Alaska was still the largest per-capita recipient of federal earmarks, requesting nearly $750 million in special federal spending over a period of two years.^[105]

While there is no state sales tax or income tax in Alaska, royalty revenues from the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field (consisting mostly of state-owned lands) have funded large state budgets since 1980, with the exact amounts largely dependent upon the prevailing price of petroleum. As a result, state revenues doubled to $10 billion in 2008. For the 2009 budget, Palin gave a list of 31 proposed federal earmarks or requests for funding, totaling $197 million, to Alaska's senior U.S. Senator Ted Stevens.^[106][107] Palin has stated that her decreasing support for federal funding was a source of friction between her and the state's congressional delegation; Palin requested less in federal funding each year than her predecessor Frank Murkowski requested in his last year.^[108]

Bridge to Nowhere[link]

In 2005, before Palin was elected governor, Congress passed an omnibus spending bill that contained a $442-million earmark for constructing two Alaska bridges. The Gravina Island Bridge, intended to provide a link between the Ketchikan airport on Gravina Island and the city of Ketchikan at a cost of $233 million in Federal grant money, received nationwide attention as a symbol of pork-barrel spending. As the island only has a population of 50, the bridge became known as the "Bridge to Nowhere." The public furor led to Congress removing the earmarks, but retaining the allotted funds to Alaska as part of its general transportation fund.^[109]

Palin holding a t-shirt while visiting Ketchikan during her Gubernatorial campaign in 2006; the ZIP code for the area is 99901.

In 2006, Palin ran for governor with a "build-the-bridge" plank in her platform,^[110] saying she would "not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project ... into something that's so negative."^[111] Palin criticized the use of the word "nowhere" as insulting to local residents^[110][112] and urged speedy work on building the infrastructure "while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist."^[112]

As governor, Palin canceled the Gravina Island Bridge in September 2007, saying that Congress had "little interest in spending any more money" due to "inaccurate portrayals of the projects."^[113] Alaska did not return the $442 million in federal transportation funds.^[114]

In 2008, as a vice-presidential candidate, Palin characterized her position as having told Congress "thanks, but no thanks, on that bridge to nowhere." A number of Ketchikan residents said that the claim was false and a betrayal of Palin's previous support for their community.^[114] Some critics said that her statement was misleading, as she had expressed support for the spending project and kept the federal money after the project was canceled.^[115] Palin was criticized for allowing construction of a 3-mile access road, built with $25 million in federal transportation funds set aside as part of the original bridge project, to continue. A spokesman for Alaska's Department of Transportation said that it was within Palin's power to cancel the road project, but noted that the state was still considering cheaper designs to complete the bridge project, and that in any case, the road would open up the surrounding lands for development.^[116][117]

Gas pipeline[link]

In August 2008, Palin signed a bill authorizing the State of Alaska to award TransCanada Pipelines — the sole bidder to meet the state's requirements — a license to build and operate a pipeline to transport natural gas from the Alaska North Slope to the continental United States through Canada.^[118] The governor also pledged $500 million in seed money to support the project.^[119] It is estimated that the project will cost $26 billion.^[118] Newsweek described the project as "the principal achievement of Sarah Palin's term as Alaska's governor."^[120] The pipeline faces legal challenges from Canadian First Nations.^[120]

Predator control[link]

In 2007, Palin supported a 2003 Alaska Department of Fish and Game policy allowing the hunting of wolves from the air as part of a predator control program intended to increase moose and caribou populations for subsistence-food gatherers and other hunters.^[121][122] In March 2007, Palin's office announced that a bounty of $150 per wolf would be paid to the 180 volunteer pilots and gunners, to offset fuel costs, in five areas of Alaska. 607 wolves had been killed in the prior four years. State biologists wanted 382 to 664 wolves to be killed by the end of the predator-control season in April 2007. Wildlife activists sued the state, and a state judge declared the bounty illegal on the basis that a bounty would have to be offered by the Board of Game and not by the Department of Fish and Game.^[121][123] On August 26, 2008, Alaskans voted against ending the state's predator control program.^[124]

Public Safety Commissioner dismissal[link]

Palin dismissed Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan on July 11, 2008, citing performance-related issues, such as not being "a team player on budgeting issues"^[125] and "egregious rogue behavior."^[126] Palin attorney Thomas Van Flein said that the "last straw" was Monegan's planned trip to Washington, D.C., to seek funding for a new, multimillion-dollar sexual assault initiative the governor hadn't yet approved.^[127] Monegan said that he had resisted persistent pressure from Palin, her husband, and her staff, including state Attorney General Talis J. Colberg, to fire Palin’s ex-brother-in-law, Alaska State Trooper Mike Wooten; Wooten was involved in a child custody battle with Palin’s sister after a bitter divorce that included an alleged death threat against Palin's father.^[128][129] At one point Sarah and Todd Palin hired a private investigator to gather information, seeking to have Wooten officially disciplined.^[130] Monegan stated that he learned an internal investigation had found all but two of the allegations to be unsubstantiated, and Wooten had been disciplined for the others — an illegal moose killing and the tasering of his 11-year-old stepson, who had reportedly asked to be tasered.^[129] He told the Palins that there was nothing he could do because the matter was closed.^[131] When contacted by the press for comment, Monegan first acknowledged pressure to fire Wooten but said that he could not be certain that his own firing was connected to that issue;^[129] he later asserted that the dispute over Wooten was a major reason for his firing.^[132] Palin stated on July 17 that Monegan was not pressured to fire Wooten, nor dismissed for not doing so.^[125][131]

Monegan said the subject of Wooten came up when he invited Palin to a birthday party for his cousin, state senator Lyman Hoffman, in February 2007 during the legislative session in Juneau. "As we were walking down the stairs in the capitol building she wanted to talk to me about her former brother-in-law," Monegan said. "I said, 'Ma'am, I need to keep you at arm's length with this. I can't deal about him with you.^[133] She said, 'OK, that's a good idea.'"^[129]

Palin said there was "absolutely no pressure ever put on Commissioner Monegan to hire or fire anybody, at any time. I did not abuse my office powers. And I don't know how to be more blunt and candid and honest, but to tell you that truth. To tell you that no pressure was ever put on anybody to fire anybody." Todd Palin gave a similar account.^[134]

On August 13 she acknowledged that a half dozen members of her administration had made more than two dozen calls on the matter to various state officials. "I do now have to tell Alaskans that such pressure could have been perceived to exist, although I have only now become aware of it," she said.^{[131][133][135]} Palin said, "Many of these inquiries were completely appropriate. However, the serial nature of the contacts could be perceived as some kind of pressure, presumably at my direction."^[125][136]

Chuck Kopp, whom Palin had appointed to replace Monegan as public safety commissioner, received a $10,000 state severance package after he resigned following just two weeks on the job. Kopp, the former Kenai chief of police, resigned July 25 following disclosure of a 2005 sexual harassment complaint and letter of reprimand against him. Monegan said that he did not receive a severance package from the state.^[125]

Legislative investigation[link]

On August 1, 2008, the Alaska Legislature hired an investigator, Stephen Branchflower, to review the Monegan dismissal. Legislators stated that Palin had the legal authority to fire Monegan, but they wanted to know whether her action had been motivated by anger at Monegan for not firing Wooten.^[137][138] The atmosphere was bipartisan and Palin pledged to cooperate.^{[137][138][139]} Wooten remained employed as a state trooper.^[130] She placed an aide on paid leave due to a tape-recorded phone conversation that she deemed improper, in which the aide, appearing to act on her behalf, complained to a trooper that Wooten had not been fired.^[140]

Several weeks after the start of what the media referred to as "troopergate", Palin was chosen as John McCain's running mate.^[138] On September 1, Palin asked the legislature to drop its investigation, saying that the state Personnel Board had jurisdiction over ethics issues.^[141] The Personnel Board's three members were first appointed by Palin’s predecessor, and Palin reappointed one member in 2008.^[142] On September 19, Todd Palin and several state employees refused to honor subpoenas, the validity of which were disputed by Talis Colberg, Palin's appointee as Alaska's Attorney General.^[143] On October 2, a court rejected Colberg's challenge to the subpoenas,^[144] and seven of the witnesses, not including Todd Palin, eventually testified.^[145]

Branchflower Report[link]

On October 10, 2008, the Alaska Legislative Council unanimously voted to release, without endorsing,^[146] the Branchflower Report, in which investigator Stephen Branchflower found that firing Monegan "was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority," but that Palin abused her power as governor and violated the state's Executive Branch Ethics Act when her office pressured Monegan to fire Wooten.^[147] The report stated that "Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates to advance a personal agenda, to wit: to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired."^[148] The report also said that Palin "permitted Todd Palin to use the Governor's office [...] to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired."^[148][149]

On October 11, Palin's attorneys responded, condemning the Branchflower Report as "misleading and wrong on the law."^[150] One of Palin's attorneys, Thomas Van Flein, said that it was an attempt to "smear the governor by innuendo."^[151] Later that day, Palin did a conference call interview with various Alaskan reporters, where she stated, "Well, I’m very, very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing... Any hint of any kind of unethical activity there. Very pleased to be cleared of any of that."^[152]

Alaska Personnel Board investigation and report[link]

The bipartisan State of Alaska Personnel Board reviewed the matter at Palin's request.^[153] On September 15, the Anchorage law firm of Clapp, Peterson, Van Flein, Tiemessen & Thorsness filed arguments of "no probable cause" with the Personnel Board on behalf of Palin.^[154][155] The Personnel Board retained independent counsel Timothy Petumenos, a Democrat, as an investigator. On October 24, Palin gave three hours of depositions with the Personnel Board in St. Louis, Missouri.^[156] On November 3, 2008, the State of Alaska Personnel Board reported that there was no probable cause to believe Palin or any other state official had violated state ethical standards.^{[157][158][159][160][161]} The report further stated that the Branchflower Report used the wrong statute in reaching its conclusions, misconstrued the available evidence and did not consider or obtain all of the material evidence required to properly reach findings in the matter.^[157]