News from the other day in the apparently soon to be derailed Troopergate investigation is that a McCain ally,
one State Rep. John Coghill R (North Pole) is pushing to get Rep. Hollis French D off the investigation.

A few choice things about Coghill to make you question McCain's judgment:

1) Coghill is up to his neck in VECO issues.  According to the MySpace page of Alaska Young Democrats, he received over $10K in contributions from VECO about which he refuses to comment.  This is the same VECO oil services company that appears likely to derail Ted Steven's career in the US Senate. 

2) Coghill is virulently anti-gay.  In response to a partners' rights bill eventually vetoed by Sarah Palin, he
offered the following, as cited by Alaska Daily News columnist Michael Carey in a Jan. 4, 2007 op-ed: 

The temperature has fallen below zero in Fairbanks, cold enough for Reps. Mike Kelly and John Coghill to freeze their brains. Kelly and Coghill are so unhinged by the state paying benefits to same-sex couples, they're preparing to make war on the Alaska Supreme Court and state employees. Kelly suggests Gov. Sarah Palin should be ready to enter jail rather than obey the court and pay. A constitutional crisis is fine with him, he insists. Coghill says he will introduce legislation stripping benefits from, in the words of a Fairbanks Daily News-Miner story, "everyone, including the spouses of married state employees, and make them pay their own way."

It takes a brave man to demand a woman don prison garb to vindicate his principles. It takes a rare man to punish thousands of workers because he loathes a handful of them.
......
Unnatural? What's truly unnatural is the hysterical fear of gay people exhibited by Coghill and Kelly, a fear that apparently has shaken them to the core.

3) He is unafraid to stand up for his rights as an oil company supporter.  In response to a call for those who would vote against an increase in the oil tax in the state,
Coghill said this:

It was a bad night for opponents of raising the oil tax. They were on the defensive as soon as the House floor session began. Kodiak Republican state Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux, who is running for Congress, argued that some of them shouldn't even get to vote.

    "It is absolutely essential to restore the public trust," LeDoux said in a speech on the House floor. "One way we can do that is if people with clear ties to the oil industry recuse themselves from voting."

    It's tradition in the Legislature to require lawmakers who declare a conflict of interest to vote anyway. House Rules Chairman John Coghill, a North Pole Republican, rose and said it's a citizen Legislature and everyone has conflicts on one issue or another.

    "Just because somebody works in a particular industry, I don't know if you can paint them ... as an industry shill, if you will," he said.

4) Finally, although I don't believe in guilt by association, Coghill's father is one Jack Coghill, who ran for Governor on the Alaskan Independence Party ticket in 1994, the same year that apparently Sarah Palin was present, then absent from the convention of the AIP, and clearly a very exciting year in AIP history. 

I don't know why an ethical reformer like McCain would choose to ally himself with someone who would take $$$ from oil companies to carry forward legislation favoring those companies, support that kind of action in the legislature, work against human rights, and carry the name of one of the most famous standard bearers of the Alaskan Independence Party. 

What? He may not be an ethical reformer?  And that is why he is trying to shut down this investigation?