Michael Palin Would Have Been A Better Pick

Palin and LGBT Rights: The Straight Dope

By: Duncan Osborne of Gay City News

Republican Senator John McCain has selected Sarah Palin, Alaska's governor and a little-known conservative with a slim record on gay and AIDS issues, to be his running mate in the 2008 presidential race.

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"She's fairly socially conservative, she's fairly anti-choice," said Jeffrey A. Mittman, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska (ACLU).

Palin became governor in 2006 after serving as a councilwoman and then mayor of a small Alaskan town. She made an unsuccessful run at becoming Alaska's lieutenant governor in 2002. Palin has confronted a single piece of gay rights legislation in that time.

In 2005, Alaska's highest court ruled, in a case brought in 1999 on behalf of nine couples, that the state could not deny benefits to the domestic partners of state government employees. The court ordered the state to implement that ruling in late 2006.

The ruling was seen by right wingers as conflicting with a 1998 amendment to the Alaska Constitution, passed by voters in a ballot referendum, that defined marriage as solely between one man and one woman. The Republican-dominated State Legislature passed a bill that barred the state's administrative agency from implementing the ruling. Palin vetoed it.

"The Department of Law advised me that this bill... is unconstitutional given the recent court order... mandating same-sex benefits," Palin said in a statement. "With that in mind, signing this bill would be in direct violation of my oath of office."

The statement added, "The governor's veto does not signal any change or modification to her disagreement with the action and order by the Alaska Supreme Court. It is the governor's intention to work with the Legislature and to give the people of Alaska an opportunity to express their wishes and intentions whether these benefits should continue."

Eight days before signing the veto, Palin signed another bill that called for a "statewide advisory vote" regarding the ruling from Alaska's high court, saying in a statement, "We may disagree with the rationale behind the ruling, but our responsibility is to proceed forward with the law and follow the Constitution... I disagree with the recent court decision because I feel as though Alaskans spoke on this issue with its overwhelming support for a Constitutional Amendment in 1998 which defined marriage as between a man and woman. But the Supreme Court has spoken and the state will abide."

The ACLU's Mittman framed the way the bill calling for the statewide advisory played out in the ongoing controversy about the high court's order.

"Then what happened was the anti-gay forces came up with what they called an advisory vote," he said. "It was essentially a way for anti-LGBT people to try and rally public opinion to try and move their agenda forward."

In 2007, the state spent an estimated $1 million to hold that vote and Alaskans expressed their opposition to the court ruling by a narrow margin. The vote did not have the effect of making law.

The McCain campaign has very effectively spun the veto to show Palin, 44, as sympathetic toward the gay and lesbian community.

Palin opposes same sex marriage.

A 2006 Anchorage Daily News story, said of Palin: "She's not out to judge anyone and has good friends who are gay, but that she supported the 1998 constitutional amendment."

Some press reports following the McCain campaign announcement have repeated that right-wing rhetorical flourish that has Palin declaring that she has gay friends. That softer image is not what some Alaskans saw.

"That's just completely wrong," said Allison E. Mendel, the attorney who brought the 1999 case. "She spoke on radio programs all throughout the campaign saying, 'I want a constitutional amendment, I think these things are only for a man and a woman.' ... I don't think she's ever said a friendly word about gay people, that they ought to have health benefits like other people do or anything along those lines."

On AIDS issues, Palin simply has no record at all.

"There is not a lot to speak of for AIDS policy because she hasn't done much," said Trevor Storrs, executive director of the Alaskan AIDS Assistance Association. "She's never been given the opportunity to address our situation here because it has never been put before her."

With roughly 1,200 AIDS cases, Alaska is a "low incidence state," Storrs said, and most of its HIV funds come from the federal government.

Then Palin's 20 months in the governor's office have been taken up with the state's oil and gas industry. Health issues generally, such as substance abuse or mental health, have not received much attention, Storrs said.

"She has done very little to address the major epidemics," he said.

(From Digby's Hullabaloo by dday)

There's quite a lot to say about Sarah Palin. There's actually quite more to say about Barack Obama's magnificent speech, but John McCain kicked the soccer ball and the media herd is chasing it. So we'll go with Palin for now and come back to Obama's speech on the weekend.

What's striking to me is what has happened in Alaska since Palin was swept into office as a reformer. In 2006, sitting governor Frank Murkowski finished third out of four in the primary due to corruption scandals. A good chunk of the Republicans in the state legislature are either under indictment or under suspicion. Ted Stevens will go to court in September. Palin offered a new direction from that culture of corruption.

And then she came into office and did the same thing as every other Republican in Alaska. The most prominent scandal, for which she is currently under an ethics review, concerns her trying to get her sister's ex-husband fired as a state trooper.

Gov. Sarah Palin, a rising young GOP star mentioned as a possible running mate for John McCain, could see her clean-hands reputation damaged by a growing furor over whether she tried to get her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper.

A legislative panel has launched a $100,000 investigation to determine if Palin dismissed Alaska's public safety commissioner because he would not fire the trooper, Mike Wooten. Wooten went through a messy divorce from Palin's sister.

Palin has denied the commissioner's dismissal had anything to do with her former brother-in-law. And she denied orchestrating the dozens of telephone calls made by her husband and members of her administration to Wooten's bosses.

There's actually tape of a Palin aide pressuring the Public Safety Department to fire Wooten. And when the Public Safety Commissioner wouldn't, she fired him and replaced him with someone who would. Someone who had a history of sexual harrassment and is now the PUBLIC SAFETY commissioner.

That's shades of Archibald Cox and Elliot Richardson and William Ruckleshaus. I understand that the state trooper and her sister had a messy divorce, and he's been alleged to have done all sorts of terrible things to the sister and the kids, but firing people who refuse to carry out your wishes - well, that's good for Woodward and Bernstein's career, but not for the country.

And there's more.

Siun reports that Palin broke the law to ensure that Alaskan water would stay dirty:

It is against the law for the governor to officially advocate for or against a ballot measure; however, Palin took what she calls "personal privilege" to discuss one of this year's most contentious initiatives, which voters will decide Tuesday.

Along with taking a position on the big mine's side, Palin's administration apparently used state Department of Natural Resources resources to lobby for defeat of the Clean Water Initiative under the pretense of creating a state run website to "educate" citizens. The citizen group Alaskans for Clean Water responded by filing “a complaint against DNR for a recently-launched state website meant to clarify the issue for voters. “

The complaint alleges that the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) improperly attempted to influence the outcome of an election by publishing information against the initiative on its website. It also alleges that DNR failed to report to APOC the expenditures, including employee time, related to creation of the information.

“It has become clear to us that the Department of Natural Resources is working hand-in-hand with the industry, and that the state is inappropriately making efforts to influence voters on this ballot initiative,” said Art Hackney, a co-sponsor of Ballot Measure #4.

Now, this reflects Nixon as much as it reflects our current White House resident. When the laws constrain you, use a "personal privilege" or make a signing statement. The point of similarity is contempt for the rule of law and a belief in the expansion of executive power.

There are a lot of ways to talk about Palin. She is a creationist-loving anti-choice, environment-despoiling gift to the fundie right who's resume is so thin that she doesn't really know what the Vice President does. It's clear that McCain, who has only met Palin a few times, sees the election as an uphill climb and tried to use the pick to command the news cycle with a surprise. Maybe that works for a day, but over time this could backfire heavily. Like Eagleton heavy.

Not to mention that she is completely in line with Fourthbranch Cheney and Spiro Agnew and the rest of the Corruptocrats on the issue of abuse of power. The Anchorage Daily News put it best:

She can look you in eye and tell you black is white.

Especially when there's oil involved.