Josh Marshall goes into a great deal of detail about Sarah Palin and the Troopergate story, and it really paints a new light on the story. If you haven’t read it, go and do so now. It’s pretty fascinating.

In the end, there are a few important impressions that come from this. The first is that Palin is vindictive, and not afraid to inappropriately use her power to carry out vendettas against people she doesn’t like. As I laid out yesterday, after being elected mayor of Wasilla, she fired the librarian and police chief, both of whom had supported her opponent. That may be legal, but it’s considered improper at best and corrupt at worst.

In the Troopergate story, that impression is only sharpened. Trooper Wooten was in a messy divorce with Palin’s sister, but more significantly, there was a custody battle. Those can get incredibly vicious, and accusations of wrongdoing are commonly manufactured in an attempt to paint the other party as an improper parent for the children. Before becoming governor, Palin and her family submitted a list of 14 accusations against, of which only 5 had any credence. The police acted on that, and suspended Wooten for 10 days, later reduced to 5. After being elected governor, Palin then exerted huge pressure on the Public Safety Commissioner (the state’s top police official, and popular at that) to fire Wooten–and when he didn’t, Palin fired the commissioner.

So Palin is pretty vindictive, willing to abuse her power to settle scores. That’s the first impression.

The second impression is that she’s a liar, and a pretty bad one. When confronted with the fact that she’d terminated the librarian and police chief in Wasilla, she flat-out lied, saying it hadn’t happened. Then the police chief produced a letter she had written and signed, saying she was terminating him. So she writes, signs, and delivers a letter then lies about not having sent it?

Similarly, in the Wooten story, Palin initially denied having put any pressure on the commissioner. When a recording was released showing one of her deputies had quite plainly done so, she lied again and said she hadn’t known about any such effort. Except now the former commissioner claims that not only Palin, but her husband as well contacted him on numerous occasions, pressuring him to fire Wooten–and he even has emails from Palin herself.

So she has lied at least three times about these matters, but more surprisingly, she has lied repeatedly when there is correspondence from Palin herself proving she’s lying. Either she has a bad memory, or she’s not very smart.

Altogether, you can see Marshall’s point: this is not just a woman protecting her sister, it’s a public official carrying out vendettas and lying repeatedly.

Maybe Democrats will still be nervous about attacking her, but let me point something out: had Obama nominated her as his VP pick, the Republicans would be tearing into her with unrepentant glee. Maybe they can get away with that better than the Democrats can, but in this case, it shouldn’t be hard for the Dems to construct a way of going after her. Simply start asking questions about her conduct in office, not about trying to fire Wooten, but about firing the commissioner–and the lies. Don’t say she lied, simply ask why her prior statements don’t jibe with new evidence. Don’t attack, just question, and if criticized, respond, “Hey, we’re only asking. The American people deserve to know everything about this candidate. If there’s nothing wrong here, then just prove it. We’ll stop asking questions when we hear a credible answer.”

When I first heard that Palin might not make it to election day, I was rather dubious. Now, I’m not so sure. It boggles the mind that McCain didn’t vet Palin–the commissioner claims that McCain’s people never contacted him, and others in Alaska who should have been contacted report that there was no vetting they heard about. McCain seems to have chosen Palin completely blindly–and it could wind up hurting him very badly. The question is, will either the Democrats or the media pick up on these stories?