For Alaskans who have been enjoying the blood sport that Sarah Palin's weaving and bobbing to avoid accountability in the Troopergate investigation has generated, last week there were two noteworthy new developments.

As America now knows, Troopergate is the local Alaska name for the investigation that the Alaska Legislature (by a unanimous vote of both Republicans and Democrats) directed the Judiciary Committee of the Alaska Senate to initiate to find out whether Sarah and the Palinistas who work for her in the Governor's Office tried (unsuccessfully as it turned out) to pressure Walt Monegan, the Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Public Safety, to violate civil service laws and the State's contract with the State Troopers' union by firing Trooper Mike Wooten, Sarah's ex-brother-in-law. Alaska Governor Palin welcomed the Troopergate investigation. Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Palin now wants nothing to do with it.

To try to weasel out of cooperating, Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Palin instructed Talis Colberg, Alaska Governor Palin's attorney general, to have the Alaska Department of Law hire a journeyman Anchorage attorney named Tom Van Flein to try to discredit the Troopergate investigation. For the past two weeks Van Flein's legal strategy - if you can call it a legal strategy - has been two-pronged. The first prong has been to try to publicly trash the professional reputations of Hollis French, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Steve Branchflower, the attorney the Committee hired to interview witnesses, gather documents, and then piece together the Troopergate story. The second prong has been to try to impede the investigation by encouraging the witnesses Branchflower needs to interview to refuse to cooperate.

Unfortunately for Van Flein, inside the Alaska Legislature, Hollis French, who is a thoroughly decent guy and was a prosecutor himself before he was elected to the Alaska Senate, is liked and respected. Steve Branchflower, a veteran of the Anchorage District Attorney's Office is a seasoned and perseverant former prosecutor. And, most importantly, despite the arm-twisting (or worse) to which he has been subjected by the McCain presidential campaign, Charlie Huggins, a conservative Republican who represents Wasilla, Sarah Palin's hometown, in the Alaska Senate, and who is the swing vote on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has continued to stand with Hollis. As a consequence, rather than shutting down the Troopergate investigation, Van Flein's absolutely shameful performance has accelerated it.

Which brings me to the first new development: the decision by the McCain presidential campaign to fly a New York City attorney named Edward O'Callaghan into Anchorage to elbow Tom Van Flein aside and assume command of Sarah Palin's effort to run out the clock on the Troopergate investigation until after the November election.

The website of the New York State Bar Association lists O'Callaghan as an employee of the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. But the end of July he resigned and moved to the McCain presidential campaign. When O'Callaghan appeared last week at an Anchorage news conference Michael Isikoff of Newsweek Magazine reported: "O'Callaghan told Newsweek that he and another McCain campaign lawyer (whom he declined to identify) are serving as legal ‘consultants' to Thomas Van Flein, the Anchorage lawyer who at state expense is representing Palin and her office in the [Troopergate] inquiry. ‘We are advising Thomas Van Flein on this matter to the extent that it impacts on the national campaign,' O'Callaghan said. ‘I'm helping out on legal strategy.'"

I am impressed by that candor. But, for O'Callaghan, describing so brazenly what John McCain sent him to Anchorage to do here creates a not so minor problem because Edward O'Callaghan is not a member of the Alaska Bar. I just checked. I am. He's not.

The pickle O'Callaghan's wagging tongue has gotten its owner into is that, pursuant to Alaska Statute 8.08.230, a person who is not a member of the Alaska Bar who while physically present in Alaska "engages in the practice of law" is guilty of a class A misdemeanor. And in Alaska the "practice of law" includes "rendering legal consultation or advice".