.
(AP) – The last straw, the McCain campaign said, was in July, when Monegan planned to travel to Washington to seek federal money for a plan to assign troopers, judges and prosecutors who could exclusively handle sexual assault cases — one of the state’s most intractable crime problems.
In a July 7 e-mail, John Katz, the governor’s special counsel, noted two problems with the trip: The governor hadn’t agreed the money should be sought, and the request was “out of sequence with our other appropriations requests and could put a strain on the evolving relationship between the Governor and Sen. (Ted) Stevens.”
Four days later, Monegan was fired.
A recent Justice Center examination of sexual assault case processing shows that close to 60 percent of cases referred by the Anchorage Police Department to the Alaska Department of Law result in a conviction on some charge–although not necessarily the original charge. The number of cases referred, however, is less than 20 percent of those reported.
Anchorage has a very high incidence of reported rape. Between 2000 and 2003, the rate of reported forcible rape in Anchorage was 163 percent higher than in the U.S. as a whole. Over the past twenty years, Anchorage has been consistently at or near the top of U.S. metropolitan statistical areas for rates of reported forcible rape.
On Tuesday, three state representatives and two state senators sued Democratic Sen. Hollis French, who is overseeing the investigation; Juneau Democratic Sen. Kim Elton, who heads the Legislative Council; independent investigator Steve Branchflower; and the Legislative Council itself.
The lawsuit seeks to either delay the investigation until after the Nov. 4 general election or remove French and Elton.
“There is no nonpartisan reason to complete this investigation until after the election,” said Anchorage attorney Kevin G. Clarkson. “We just want to take the politics out of it and bring fairness back into it.”
Clarkson said he and a nonprofit legal firm in Texas, Liberty Legal Institute, were donating their work on the suit. A phone message for French was not immediately returned.
The Legislative Council, made up of four Democrats and eight Republican, voted unanimously to investigate the circumstances of Monegan’s dismissal.
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Americans can’t ignore how Sarah Palin might steer the country on divisive social issues. Others showed up to raise concerns about Palin’s hard-line conservative stances on social issues and to express their fears about whether she would, as vice president and potentially president, blur the lines of separation between church and state.
“Sarah Palin is asking Americans to elect a vice president who is an extreme social conservative. She opposes abortion rights. She favors the teaching of creationism. She preaches abstinence-only sex education. She is open to the possibility of banning books from public libraries. She opposes gay marriage. She personally opposes benefits for gay partners of public employees.”
“(If) she becomes president,” the Anchorage Daily News warned, “Palin will have plenty of time and a national platform to promote measures that turn her personal stands on social issues into mandates for all Americans. Religious conservatives may insist that she do so. Will she? Her past statements suggest she would.”
Palin’s Revelations. Repent! The End is Near.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."but I recently read reports on her protesting abortion clinics (pre-governorship, I think) and also lots of reports on her town, under her control, being the only town in Alaska that forced rape victims to pay for rape testing kits. (Victims of burglary aren’t charged for fingerprint kits, in contrast.)
She’s all over creepy towards women.
read here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/15/62252/3231/830/599218
and rape testing kits:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-alperinsheriff/sarah-palin-instituted-ra_b_125833.html
She’d rather pay $24,000 for her shiny new SUV, but rape testing kits are too expensive? the hell? yuck!
rape kits, suv’s, pshaw…she’s a woman of the people, just like all her lipstick wearing pit bull hockey moms, shes got her very own tanning bed at the gov’s manse…probably another at home.
gotta keep that healthy outdoorsy look over those long alaskan winters.
can you, [or is it caribou…BANG!]…say empty skirt?…l knew you could.
well yeah. that’s because shiny new SUVs don’t come with emergency contraception, which wackos like Sarah Palin believe is the same as abortion, just like the Bush Adminsitration.
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I couldn’t find a link between attorney Gabriel Nathan Schwartz and AIPAC, however his statements about bombing Iran and the Denver Republicans does provide a surprising connect, or not.
“I have Jewish friends who believe in free markets, are deeply suspicious of big government, view the general bag of leftist ideas as callow if not dangerous, yet would sooner tuck into a large plate of pigs’ feet than vote for a Republican for president. They just can’t bring themselves to do it.”
For those Jewish Republicans who wish to persuade themselves that they’re not alone, the local Denver group meets at the East Side Kosher Deli this Thursday at 6:30 PM, and we’ll be hearing from the rather impressive Claire Schwartz, who heads up AIPAC out here.
Wonkette: GOP Delegate Robbed Blind By Sexy Hero Gal
≈ Cross-posted from BooMan’s diary — GOP A-Hole Gets Drugged and Robbed ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
Grant Wacker, an expert in Pentecostalism at Duke Divinity School in Durham, N.C., said he can understand why. He said the McCain campaign likely doesn’t want Palin associated with the best-known Pentecostal to ever hold public office, former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, an active member of the Assemblies of God.
“Though Pentecostals are diverse and rapidly mainstreaming themselves, the public still perceives them as sectarian and uncompromising, and those traits will not help Palin’s image,” Wacker said.
Palin was baptized as a teenager in Alaska at the Wasilla Assembly of God, which she and her family attended until 2002.
“The fact is she has grown up and has associated with one of our Assemblies of God churches, which is a Pentecostal church, for years,” said the Rev. Bill Welch, superintendent of the denomination’s Alaska District. “Pentecostalism is bound to have some kind of impact and influence on her.”
Pentecostals are conservative in their reading of the Bible and, often, culture.
The Rev. Ed Kalnins, senior pastor at Wasilla Assembly of God since 1999, once questioned in a sermon whether people who voted for Democratic Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election would get into heaven.
Unlike most other Christians — including most evangelicals — Pentecostals believe in “baptism in the Holy Spirit.” That can manifest itself through speaking in tongues, modern-day prophesy and faith healing.
The Assemblies of God teaches that spirit baptism must be accompanied by speaking in tongues. Still, some churchgoers never have the experience.
Before running for Alaska governor, Palin also frequented Wasilla’s Church on the Rock, an independent Pentecostal church, senior pastor David Pepper said in a statement.
About six years ago, the Palins began attending their current church home, Wasilla Bible Church, an independent evangelical congregation of truck drivers, executives and teachers, pastor Larry Kroon said.
It’s a “simple community church,” Kroon said, that is not Pentecostal. Still, Palin has remained close to the Pentecostal community.
Her pastor for most of her time at Wasilla Assembly of God, Paul Riley, said he gave the invocation at Palin’s inauguration. As governor, she renamed the church’s street “Riley Avenue” for him.
Lying to bend the truth..
≈ Cross-posted from Arthur Gilroy’s diary — Palin And Her Demon-Possessed Witchunters ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Does anyone have information on where Palin stands on the recent effort to reclassify some forms of birth control as abortion? Some of the worst language was stripped from the finalized draft which was published in the Federal Register on Aug 26th, the rule continues to allow doctors, nurses, and nearly anyone else employed in a health care setting to deny women access to birth control, based on their own personal belief that birth control is immoral. (all but the original question cribbed from the NOW site. I have a few friends who are thinking of voting for her & I need ammunition.)
what she really thinks about anything. But there are some clues:
She’s a member of Feminists for Life. And boy are they excited at the prospect of her being at the ready for that 1 in 3 chance that a President McCain would die in office….
From their website:
I take that to mean they don’t want to admit what their real agenda is because then it would be obvious that they were an extremist group, and as a dog whistle for their fellow ‘believers’.
Someone over at the big orange did a diary on this subject as well: LINK
Thanks, CabinGirl.. Palin is, IMHO, one scary woman..
She really frightens me when I think of the possibility of her being president.
irregardless of their particular religious persuasion.
as francis bacon noted many years ago:
this particular barracuda is seriously dangerous.
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Palin Had Direct Role In Charging Rape Victims For Exams
(Huffington Post) – Despite denials by the Palin campaign, new evidence proves that as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin had a direct hand in imposing fees to pay for post-sexual assault medical exams conducted by the city to gather evidence.
Under Sarah Palin’s administration, Wasilla cut funds that had previously paid for the medical exams and began charging victims or their health insurers the $500 to $1200 fees.
Palin, as mayor, fired police chief Irl Stambaugh and replaced him with Charlie Fannon, who with Palin’s knowledge, slashed the budget for the exams and began charging the city’s victims of sexual assault. The city budget documents demonstrate Palin read and signed off on the new budget.
(Huffington Post) – Does she believe that giving a rape victim a “morning after” pill is committing murder? Does Palin believe that the taxpayers shouldn’t pay for this or that police shouldn’t offer this as a matter of course? Does she really believe that a woman should have to bear the child of her rapist?
We already know that’s what she would want for her daughter.
During her successful gubernatorial campaign in 2006, Palin declared that she would not choose an abortion for her daughter — then 14 years old — even if the girl was raped and became pregnant. “I would choose life,” Palin said.
Sarah Palin on Civil Liberties
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
this revelation about Sarah …
I
Sarah Palin flipped the Republican presidential ticket around this week when she spoke about things the “Palin and McCain administration” would do in office.
Palin also referred to McCain as “my running mate” Friday in Green Bay, Wis., as she did twice in Iowa the day before.
Who is John McCain anyway?
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."