Troopergate Update

So after weeks of stonewalling, obstructionism, relaying to aides and staffers to avoid subpoenas, Sarah Palin is ready to cooperate in the Troopergate investigation. Sort of.

Attorneys for Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin met with a special investigator for the Alaska Personnel Board earlier today to broker her cooperation with the panel's own probe of the scandal now known as "Troopergate," according to sources close to the matter.

Except the Alaska Personnel Board is not running the current investigation. That's the investigation Palin wants in charge of things, not the investigation headed by Alaska state legislature. After she gained the nomination for Vice President, she decided to file a complaint against herself to wrest control of the investigation from the legislature and to this Personnel Board. So Palin isn't cooperating with a damn thing. And this paragraph gets to the heart of it.

"Their goal has been to obstruct the legislative investigation," said Alaska State Rep. Les Gara, D-Anchorage. "The whole thing has been aimed to obstruct until after the election." The legislative probe is expected to wrap up in mid-October; Gara said he expected the Personnel Board investigation would not release findings until after the election. Petumenos did not respond to an inquiry.

And basically, they won this battle. The legislative investigation will go on and the findings will be presented in October, but by denying access to top staff and the First Dude Todd, it'll be hard to render anything approaching a judgment from it. The probe has effectively been delayed, and I'm not sure the McCain campaign paid all that much of a price for the obstruction, though I could be wrong. We will have to see what comes out of the Branchflower report.