The return of Walt Monegan!

Courtesy of Alaska Dispatch News:  

Gov. Bill Walker announced Monday that he had accepted the resignation of Alaska’s corrections commissioner after the release of a scathing report detailing widespread failures and dysfunction that may have led to deaths in Alaska jails. 

Walker said he received the resignation of Ron Taylor on Sunday. At an 11 a.m. Monday news conference following the report’s release, Walker said Walt Monegan, the former Anchorage police chief and state commissioner of public safety, would temporarily take over Alaska’s prison system during a search for a replacement. 

Walker had ordered the outside review in August after a string of highly publicized prisoner deaths that stirred public outcry and drew some lawmakers’ attention. 

“It’s clear as a result of this that the system is broken,” Walker said at the news conference. “And we’re going to fix it.”

Well if Governor Walker wants the prison system in Alaska fixed, he could probably not do much better than putting Walt Monegan on the job. 

For those of you who have been reading here since 2008, I do not need to explain who Walt is, and why this is a big deal.

For those of you who have not heard of Walt Monegan, here is his Wikipedia page, and at the bottom of the Dispatch link there is an explanation as well.

However for those looking for a brief synopsis, it goes like this:

Then Governor Sarah Palin hated Trooper, and former brother-in-law, Mike Wooten.

She and her husband tried to convince then Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan to fire him.

Walt could find no reason to do so, and explained that their personal vendetta against the guy was not just cause.

In retaliation, Palin fired Monegan.

There was an investigation into the firing, which after much public pressure was finally released as the Branchflower Report.

That report exonerated Monegan of any wrong doing, and instead revealed the pettiness, and retaliatory nature of Palin and her husband.

And yes all of this happened WHILE Palin was running as John McCain's VP.

On a personal note I once interviewed Walt when he was running for mayor of Anchorage, which you can read here, and when I was being threatened and harassed after my now notorious Splitsville post I reached out to him and he gave me some good advice.

In short Walt is an incredibly honest and ethical man, who I have no doubt will serve our Governor well, just like he once tried to do for a certain half term loser too ignorant to take his advice.

President Obama is going to prison. Before you conservatives get all excited you should know he is just visiting.

Photo courtesy of Politico

Courtesy of The Christian Science Monitor:  

On Thursday, President Obama will become the first sitting president to visit a federal prison. 

Mr. Obama will travel to Oklahoma's El Reno Correctional Institution, home to Jason Hernandez – a prisoner convicted on drug charges who had his life sentence commuted by Obama in 2013, reports Vice News. 

The trip, which will be recorded for a Vice documentary airing on HBO this fall, comes amidst the Obama administration’s broader efforts towards creating what it sees as a fairer US criminal justice system, mostly in response to tougher drug laws that disproportionately imprisoned minorities. 

The New York Times reports that in the coming weeks, Obama is expected to issue orders freeing dozens of federal prisoners locked up on nonviolent drug offenses, possibly taking the total number of commutations under his presidency to more than 80. 

This will mean he will probably commute more sentences at one time than any president has in nearly half a century. 

Good for President Obama. 

We may in fact have just about the least fair justice system on the planet, and minorities often get longer sentences than whites, and are locked up for increasingly minor offenses.

If President Obama could actually have a significant impact on our correctional system that alone would lock down his legacy. Not that the man who ended two wars, saved the economy, and brought health care to millions necessarily needs another feather in his cap.