Oh Todd

Come on down.

Alaska lawmakers voted Friday to subpoena the husband of Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate, in a move that transformed a messy state personnel issue into a national campaign controversy.

The lawmakers acted at the request of Stephen Branchflower, who is in the midst of an investigation into the governor's dismissal of the state's director of public safety.

Branchflower said he also wants to interview the governor, but omitted her from the 13-person list of subpoena targets he presented to the lawmakers overseeing his investigation.

Todd Palin has an unusually large role for an unelected spouse in the affairs of state government. He gets copies of numerous emails from the governor. What other spouse gets that kind of treatment? I don't know how valuable it is to even mention Todd Palin a lot politically, but from my perspective it is very unsettling to have an unelected center of power here.

Meanwhile, this is much better than I expected in terms of the investigation into Troopergate. The legislature is doing its job thus far. Of course, we'll see how it unfolds.