Until yesterday, I didn't know that it was "unethical" to fire someone you don't like if you have the power to do that. (At least, not in Alaska with an election pending.)

I guess that means Sarah Palin is unethical. The downside of this is that if she is elected, and is given the power to do it, she might in the future fire even more people she doesn't like.

So why am I not worried?

I guess the reason I'm not more worried is that if this case typifies Palin's "abuse," her "victims" are likely to be government careerists -- tax eaters who themselves have power over other people (in this case, lethal power), and who have themselves abused their power.

Call me an anarchistic anti-government sociopath, but I'm finding myself unable to empathize with such victims -- especially when they're "making threats and behaving erratically ... you know, tasering children." Via Glenn Reynolds, who also links a more detailed description of the "victim":

a proven child abuser (Tasered his own 10-year-old stepson on a lark) who's been conclusively determined by his own department to have also engaged in drinking and driving in his squad car, and to have used a deadly firearm to violate the very fish-and-game laws he himself was specifically assigned to enforce.

But guess what? After all this fuss, he hasn't even been fired!

"It is nearly certain," wrote Col. Julia Grimes, then then Director of the Alaska State Troopers Division of the Alaska Department of Public Safety, "that a civilian investigated under similar circumstances would have received criminal sanctions." The only real question in Tasergate remains why Trooper Mike Wooten is still not only uncharged for his confessed crimes, but carrying a badge and gun -- to the continuing shame of the good and decent people of Alaska.

Oh well.

It's just not my day to empathize with victims.