USA Today, in a story about how, while Sarah Palin was mayor of the town, Wasilla billed rape victims for needed evidence-gathering medical examinations.
Palin spokeswoman Maria Comella said in an e-mail that the governor "does not believe, nor has she ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test."
"Gov. Palin's position could not be more clear," she said. "To suggest otherwise is a deliberate misrepresentation of her commitment to supporting victims and bringing violent criminals to justice."
Of course, the problem is that whether she "believed" in it or not, the Wasilla policy when she was mayor was to bill rape victims between $500 and $1200 for the needed exams. Some members of the Alaska state legislature were appropriately mortified, and the state passed a law forbidding it -- and they had Wasilla directly in mind when the law was proposed. There's been absolutely no question about any of that. Given that it gained the attention of the state legislature, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that Mayor Sarah Palin didn't know about the policy that even her own state government was decrying. (Especially considering that it seems the policy was instituted on her watch.) I don't care how many librarians you're trying to fire, or how many loyalty tests you've instituted in your small-town government, when the then-governor of the state has to sign a law specifically against one of your town policies, it's something that is going to come up in conversation. And come up it did: her appointed police chief in fact decried the new law, calling it a "burden put on the taxpayer."
In addition to being just another example of the McCain/Palin campaign lying through their teeth about issue after issue -- in the full knowledge that everybody knows they're lying -- I can't help but point out that this is a masterful example of Bushism itself, of the sort we've been exposed to for the last eight years.
Bush says, in a State of the Union speech, "my administration really values such-and-such". Cue a month later, when, like clockwork, "such-and-such" finds itself on the list of budget cuts. Bush says "we don't torture": turns out he means we just don't call it torture when we do it. And so on, and so on. It's something a bit more flagrant than even an lie -- it's a dismissal of facts that everyone can see, plainly, right in front of them. An Orwellian belief that denials of plain fact will create "new facts" that people will have to believe in, instead of the old.
So Palin's policy is probably exactly what her spokesman says it is. She does not "believe" that rape victims should have to pay for evidence gathering. But as mayor, her town had a policy that rape victims had to pay for evidence gathering, and her police chief complained when the state prevented the town from continuing the practice. A conflict of realities? Of course not -- since Palin doesn't "believe" in doing what she, in actual fact, did, that makes it all OK. Kind of like how not "believing" in gravity means you can fly, or not "believing" that you ran someone over in your black Corvette means they're probably fine and you can get on with your day.
Add another lie to the pile, for a campaign that has been already called out extensively for all their other lies -- but doesn't care.