Governor Palin has had some legal difficulties stemming from her efforts to get her ex-brother-in-law fired from the Alaska State Troopers. Normally, I love seeing Republicans caught by their own corruption, but on this issue, I’m conflicted.

I’ve read about the case, and it sounds disturbingly familiar. Mike Wooten, Palin’s ex-brother-in-law, was a violent man who probably shouldn’t have been in a job that allowed him to indulge his violence. Just because he was never officially convicted of abusing his authority as a trooper doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. Similarly, his ex-wife, Palin’s sister, has been faulted for not bringing charges against him until the divorce proceedings started.

I used to have a sister who was married to a violent man, and she also never brought charges against him until her day in divorce court. She also told us how he harassed her, but never in ways that he could be caught; and he didn’t even have the advantage of being a state trooper. She was told by the law and her lawyer just to put up with it. Don’t provoke him, and everything will be all right. As if it was her provocation that made him become violent towards her.

You’ll notice that I said I used to have this sister. That man killed her 6, almost 7 years ago as I write this, in spite of her giving in to all his demands in the divorce proceedings, giving in to his wishes as to the dispensation of their children, giving in to his provocations. He killed her because she was powerless to stop him, and the law stood behind him and practically gave him a shove.

So, in this one instance, I don’t fault Governor Palin for doing everything she could to protect her sister. I don’t begrudge her using her power to take away the power of a man doing violence to someone she loved. In this one instance, I totally understand why she did it, and I wish, as so many others in our position do, that I, too, had possessed the same power.