On the September 2 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, Fox News contributor Dick Morris said of the media attention surrounding Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin: “A man would never have had to go through this. ... [T]hat her husband with DWI 20 years ago, that her daughter is having a kid, that there's a fight going on between her sister and her husband and the husband tasered the kid. ... It would never be asked about a man. It's the deep sexism that runs through our society.” But contrary to Morris' characterization, issues raised by the “fight going on between her sister and her husband” are not merely issues of family discord; Palin has been accused of misusing her office in allegedly pressuring Alaska public safety commissioner Walter Monegan to fire Palin's sister's former husband, a state trooper, which Monegan, who was subsequently fired, refused to do.

As Media Matters for America has noted, The New York Times reported on August 29 that Palin recently became the subject of an ethics investigation, authorized by a bipartisan panel of state legislators, “into whether Ms. Palin had fired a top law enforcement official [Monegan] in her administration because he had failed to dismiss a state trooper who was involved in a divorce with Ms. Palin's sister.” According to the Times, “The inquiry by the Legislature centers on what Mr. Monegan later described as pressure from members of Ms. Palin's administration and her husband, Todd, to fire Mr. [Mike] Wooten [Palin's former brother-in-law]. The governor herself also raised the subject of Mr. Wooten with him, Mr. Monegan has said.” The Times reported that Palin “initially denied there had ever been pressure applied to Mr. Monegan,” but later “disclosed [that] there had been more than two dozen inquiries from members of her staff to the public safety department about” Wooten. Palin said that she fired Monegan because, according to the Times, “she had wanted to take the department in a different direction.”

From the September 2 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes:

HANNITY: Well, I got to tell you, one of the things that has emerged in this campaign, in my view, is -- Sarah Palin has been now in the public spotlight for five days. There have been tougher and harder questions that have been asked relentlessly by a biased news media about her daughter than about Barack Obama, who's been running for 19 months.

MORRIS: A man would never have had to go through this. That his husband -- that her husband with DWI 20 years ago, that her daughter is having a kid, that there's a fight going on between her sister and her husband and the husband tasered the kid.

HANNITY: Right.

MORRIS: It would never be asked about a man. It's the deep sexism that runs through our society.

HANNITY: What is going to be the net result of that?

MORRIS: Well, right now, the whole election hangs in the balance. If McCain has to get rid of Palin, get rid of McCain. He's dead.