mediciman, you are wrong for several reasons. In state government this sort of stuff is business as usual. I worked for a medium size state for 11 years and could not tell you how many times I saw stuff like this happen.
There is a fine line between being a bully and being chief administrator. If the HP administrator failed to reprimand or fire a bad actor, at the behest of the Governor, he should have been fired. Let me tell you what happened, the good ole boy was going to show the Gov just who was in charge of the patrol. He got his tit stuck in a roller and he paid the price.
Right now, where I live, the democrats have a similar sort of thing brewing with a popular police chief who resigned in disgrace. The mayor, reluctantly turned the mess over to the US Attorneys Office and hired a democratic law firm to sort out things out.
This stuff happens all the time, throughout the country, every day. Governor Palin has done no more or less than any other governor would have done. To say she is somehow tainted by this is wrong.