And the judge agreed.This has come up before. At Palingates, Patrick has pulled up an October 2008 post by Andrew Halcro, about aspects of Troopergate that might have been part of why Levi Johnston made the statement about the vindictiveness of the Crazy Woman:
In 2005, Palin and her sister Molly went to the Palmer Courthouse while Mike Wooten was in Portland with his stepson. They convinced a judge to grant Molly a domestic violence restraining order against Wooten. This was done so Molly could retain full custody of the children.
When Wooten returned from Portland, he realized that there was a order prohibiting him from seeing his kids. Three weeks later, Wooten was granted an appearance in front of the couple's divorce judge.
In front of Judge Suddock, Molly testified that Wooten never hit her or never physically abused her or ever touched the children. She told the judge she was feeling pressure from her family to file the order.
Suddock immediately dissolved the order because there was no proof of any domestic violence and called the order an abuse of the legal system. He then scolded Palin's sister for keeping Wooten's kids away from him.
The Palins' "abuse of the legal system" may end up being one of the most enduring legacies of this family in Alaska.
All the Alaska media is glomping onto this newest episode of the Sarah Springer Show. As are our several Alaska or Palin-related blogs:
Anchorage Daily News
Alaska Dispatch
The Mudflats
The Immoral Majority
Bree Palin
Palingates
Andrew Sullivan
More Andrew Sullivan
More coverage as it develops hourly at memeorandum.
Coverage of this at Conservatives4Palin is typically myopic. Their initial reaction was to stomp on Levi Johnston:
Levi Seeks Publicity Instead of Tripp's Well-being
Their second reaction is to award Levi's son a new name:
Yesterday we learned that Bristol Palin, Governor Palin's eldest daughter, filed for sole custody of her son, Tripp E. Johnston-Palin, in early November of this year.
The child's name isn't Tripp E. Johnston-Palin, it is Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston. Just another example of the fictitious world in which many of Palin's last-ditch supporters reside. One of the most deluded commenters there, writes:
I worry that Obama or Emmanuel or Axelrod will lean on the judge to make a judgement in Levi's favor to try to further embarrass the Palin family.
Update I: C4P commenters no encouraging violence against Levi Johnston:
Thought Track is back from Iraq. Where I'm from cases like this are settled between men, you know what I mean.
And a comment at Andrew Sullivan's blog:
I am a family law attorney in NH. I find Bristol's statement about Palin's involvement in the case implausible. For starters, in about 100% of the cases involving custody of a child born to teen parents, the maternal grandparents are heavily involved. The teen mom about always lives at home, is very dependent on her parents for child care, and overall assistance with everything to do with the baby. And not the least, but reviewing the pleadings filed to date, serious money has already been shelled out-in the thousands I am certain. You can be sure that Sarah and Todd wrote those hefty retainer checks, not Bristol..