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The rocket scientists handling damage control for Sarah Palin have come up with yet another excuse . . . I mean defense . . . in the Troopergate scandal. Palin didn’t fire the state’s public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, because he refused to fire her former brother-in-law, they explain. Heaven forbid — nothing could be further from the truth.
No, the reason she fired Monegan was because he was overly zealous — to the point of insubordination — in insisting on pursuing federal funding to help with Alaska’s epidemic of sex offenses, including, in particular, sex crimes against children. Palin, it seems, had other priorities.
Wow, hell of a defense, Sarah, really — sort of like confessing to a murder in order to establish an alibi in a burglary trial.
Firing a law enforcement official because he was overly aggressive in seeking resources to fight sex crimes against children would be politically dicey under the best of circumstances: but for Palin this is anything but the best of circumstances. Remember, this is the same Sarah Palin who, as mayor of Wasilla, either acquiesced in or actively supported a requirement that rape victims pay for their own rape kits (used to collect evidence at the hospital).
Apparently this is that new face of right wing “feminism” we’ve been hearing so much about — contempt for the rights of rape victims combined with disinterest in fighting sexcrimes.
Sounds like a winner to me.
Now, given that this is about the fourth excuse Palin has offered for firing Monegan, there’s good reason to suspect it isn’t true anyway. Taking into account everything we’ve learned about her, including her long history of using the public trust to settle personal scores, it’s probably more likely that it was, in fact, Monegan’s refusal to play along with her vendetta against her sister’s ex that sealed the deal.
Still, the very fact that Palin and her minions thought that using Monegan’s alleged insubordination” in seeking federal funding to fight sex crimes would be a politically winning response to the charges leveled against her says something — something quite troubling — not only about her judgment, but also about her humanity.
This post was written by admin on October 12, 2008
