I finally figured out why the U.S. is occupying Iraq

It's to rid the world of those gay little boy terrorists.

Sarah Palin's book

I'm sure lots of fools who believe in "rugged individualism" and routinely ignore whatever they don't like to create their own realities in their minds will eat it up.

The article seems long, but it's a quick, fun read in that "holy shit" kind of way. Each analysis will leave you wondering what else she wrote that could be on the same level as what you've just read.

Fuckin a man, people are so stupid. What a fucking pathetic culture we have.

FACT CHECK: Palin's book goes rogue on some facts

WASHINGTON – Sarah Palin's new book reprises familiar claims from the 2008 presidential campaign that haven't become any truer over time. Ignoring substantial parts of her record if not the facts, she depicts herself as a frugal traveler on the taxpayer's dime, a reformer without ties to powerful interests and a politician roguishly indifferent to high ambition.

Palin goes adrift, at times, on more contemporary issues, too. She criticizes President Barack Obama for pushing through a bailout package that actually was achieved by his Republican predecessor George W. Bush — a package she seemed to support at the time.

A look at some of her statements in "Going Rogue," obtained by The Associated Press in advance of its release Tuesday:

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PALIN: Says she made frugality a point when traveling on state business as Alaska governor, asking "only" for reasonably priced rooms and not "often" going for the "high-end, robe-and-slippers" hotels.

THE FACTS: Although travel records indicate she usually opted for less-pricey hotels while governor, Palin and daughter Bristol stayed five days and four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House luxury hotel (robes and slippers come standard) overlooking New York City's Central Park for a five-hour women's leadership conference in October 2007. With air fare, the cost to Alaska was well over $3,000. Event organizers said Palin asked if she could bring her daughter. The governor billed her state more than $20,000 for her children's travel, including to events where they had not been invited, and in some cases later amended expense reports to specify that they had been on official business.

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PALIN: Boasts that she ran her campaign for governor on small donations, mostly from first-time givers, and turned back large checks from big donors if her campaign perceived a conflict of interest.

THE FACTS: Of the roughly $1.3 million she raised for her primary and general election campaigns for governor, more than half came from people and political action committees giving at least $500, according to an AP analysis of her campaign finance reports. The maximum that individual donors could give was $1,000; $2,000 for a PAC.

Of the rest, about $76,000 came from Republican Party committees.

She accepted $1,000 each from a state senator and his wife and $30 from a state representative in the weeks after the two Republican lawmakers' offices were raided by the FBI as part of an investigation into a powerful Alaska oilfield services company. After AP reported those donations during the presidential campaign, she gave a comparative sum to charity.

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PALIN: Rails against taxpayer-financed bailouts, which she attributes to Obama. She recounts telling daughter Bristol that to succeed in business, "you'll have to be brave enough to fail."

THE FACTS: Palin is blurring the lines between Obama's stimulus plan — a $787 billion package of tax cuts, state aid, social programs and government contracts — and the federal bailout that Republican presidential candidate John McCain voted for and President George W. Bush signed.

Palin's views on bailouts appeared to evolve as McCain's vice presidential running mate. In September 2008, she said "taxpayers cannot be looked to as the bailout, as the solution, to the problems on Wall Street." A week later, she said "ultimately what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy."

During the vice presidential debate in October, Palin praised McCain for being "instrumental in bringing folks together" to pass the $700 billion bailout. After that, she said "it is a time of crisis and government did have to step in."

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PALIN: Says Ronald Reagan faced an even worse recession than the one that appears to be ending now, and "showed us how to get out of one. If you want real job growth, cut capital gains taxes and slay the death tax once and for all."

THE FACTS: The estate tax, which some call the death tax, was not repealed under Reagan and capital gains taxes are lower now than when Reagan was president.

Economists overwhelmingly say the current recession is far worse. The recession Reagan faced lasted for 16 months; this one is in its 23rd month. The recession of the early 1980s did not have a financial meltdown. Unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent, worse than the October 2009 high of 10.2 percent, but the jobless rate is still expected to climb.

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PALIN: She says her team overseeing the development of a natural gas pipeline set up an open, competitive bidding process that allowed any company to compete for the right to build a 1,715-mile pipeline to bring natural gas from Alaska to the Lower 48.

THE FACTS: Palin characterized the pipeline deal the same way before an AP investigation found her team crafted terms that favored only a few independent pipeline companies and ultimately benefited a company with ties to her administration, TransCanada Corp. Despite promises and legal guidance not to talk directly with potential bidders during the process, Palin had meetings or phone calls with nearly every major candidate, including TransCanada.

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PALIN: Criticizes an aide to her predecessor, Gov. Frank Murkowski, for a conflict of interest because the aide represented the state in negotiations over a gas pipeline and then left to work as a handsomely paid lobbyist for ExxonMobil. Palin asserts her administration ended all such arrangements, shoving a wedge in the revolving door between special interests and the state capital.

THE FACTS: Palin ignores her own "revolving door" issue in office; the leader of her own pipeline team was a former lobbyist for a subsidiary of TransCanada, the company that ended up winning the rights to build the pipeline.

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PALIN: Writes about a city councilman in Wasilla, Alaska, who owned a garbage truck company and tried to push through an ordinance requiring residents of new subdivisions to pay for trash removal instead of taking it to the dump for free — this to illustrate conflicts of interest she stood against as a public servant.

THE FACTS: As Wasilla mayor, Palin pressed for a special zoning exception so she could sell her family's $327,000 house, then did not keep a promise to remove a potential fire hazard on the property.

She asked the city council to loosen rules for snow machine races when she and her husband owned a snow machine store, and cast a tie-breaking vote to exempt taxes on aircraft when her father-in-law owned one. But she stepped away from the table in 1997 when the council considered a grant for the Iron Dog snow machine race in which her husband competes.

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PALIN: Says Obama has admitted that the climate change policy he seeks will cause people's electricity bills to "skyrocket."

THE FACTS: She correctly quotes a comment attributed to Obama in January 2008, when he told San Francisco Chronicle editors that under his cap-and-trade climate proposal, "electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket" as utilities are forced to retrofit coal burning power plants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Obama has argued since then that climate legislation can blunt the cost to consumers. Democratic legislation now before Congress calls for a variety of measures aimed at mitigating consumer costs. Several studies predict average household costs probably would be $100 to $145 a year.

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PALIN: Welcomes last year's Supreme Court decision deciding punitive damages for victims of the nation's largest oil spill tragedy, the Exxon Valdez disaster, stating it had taken 20 years to achieve victory. As governor, she says, she'd had the state argue in favor of the victims, and she says the court's ruling went "in favor of the people." Finally, she writes, Alaskans could recover some of their losses.

THE FACTS: That response is at odds with her reaction at the time to the ruling, which resolved the long-running case by reducing punitive damages for victims to $500 million from $2.5 billion. Environmentalists and plaintiffs' lawyers decried the ruling as a slap at the victims and Palin herself said she was "extremely disappointed." She said the justices had gutted a jury decision favoring higher damage awards, the Anchorage Daily News reported. "It's tragic that so many Alaska fishermen and their families have had their lives put on hold waiting for this decision," she said, noting many had died "while waiting for justice."

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PALIN: Describing her resistance to federal stimulus money, Palin describes Alaska as a practical, libertarian haven of independent Americans who don't want "help" from government busybodies.

THE FACTS: Alaska is also one of the states most dependent on federal subsidies, receiving much more assistance from Washington than it pays in federal taxes. A study for the nonpartisan Tax Foundation found that in 2005, the state received $1.84 for every dollar it sent to Washington.

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PALIN: Says she tried to talk about national security and energy independence in her interview with Vogue magazine but the interviewer wanted her to pivot from hydropower to high fashion.

THE FACTS are somewhat in dispute. Vogue contributing editor Rebecca Johnson said Palin did not go on about hydropower. "She just kept talking about drilling for oil."

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PALIN: "Was it ambition? I didn't think so. Ambition drives; purpose beckons." Throughout the book, Palin cites altruistic reasons for running for office, and for leaving early as Alaska governor.

THE FACTS: Few politicians own up to wanting high office for the power and prestige of it, and in this respect, Palin fits the conventional mold. But "Going Rogue" has all the characteristics of a pre-campaign manifesto, the requisite autobiography of the future candidate.

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AP writers Matt Apuzzo, Sharon Theimer, Tom Raum, Rita Beamish, Beth Fouhy, H. Josef Hebert, Justin D. Pritchard, Garance Burke, Dan Joling and Lewis Shaine contributed to this report.

I'd love to slap these people around

Another Discover article, this one about dogs dying in the Iditarod race. 45 degrees below zero. Over a thousand miles.

Rookie musher Timothy Hunt received the coveted Red Lantern Award for winning the 2009 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race yesterday, but the mood wasn't entirely festive at the finish line. Officials continue to investigate why six dogs died during or shortly after the grueling 1,049-mile journey from Willow to Nome, Alaska.

An average of around three dogs die each year during the race, though five were lost in 1997.

Chas St. George, director of public relations for the Iditarod, told Discovery News, "we must go through a process to investigate the deaths, and that is still taking place."

"Our goal is no deaths," he added. "There is nothing worse than to lose a dog, and we are all very sad about the losses."...

It's suspected that two other dogs, Grasshopper and Dizzy, died from hypothermia in -45 degree Fahrenheit temperatures. Musher Lou Packer, who owned the dogs, told the Anchorage Daily News that he felt ice forming under the skin of at least one dog before it died, but he said there was nothing he could do to help the animal.

Fuck every one of these people.

I have an idea on what he could have done to "help the animal." LEAVE IT ALONE. Don't force it to pull your stupid ass through the snow. Assholes.

The twentieth anniversary of the Exxon Valdez crash/spill

March 24th, 1989 - the drunk captain of the oil tanker Valdez "left the bridge" of the ship under his command. The ship hit a reef and spilled 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound. Eleven million. 11,000,000. From Environment News Service, today:

The Exxon Valdez spill was one of the most worst environmental disasters in history. The spill covered over 10,000 square miles of Alaska’s coastline. Oil spread along 1,300 miles of shoreline, fouling a national forest, two national parks, two national wildlife refuges, five state parks, four state critical habitat areas, one state game sanctuary, and many ancestral lands for Alaska natives.

It killed hundreds of thousands of birds, marine mammals, fish, invertebrates; and disrupted the economy, culture, and livelihoods of coastal residents.

The cleanup took four summers and cost approximately $2 billion, according to a report by the state and federal governments...

In its newly issued 20th anniversary Status Report, the state and federal Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council lists only 10 of the 31 injured resources and services they monitor as “Recovered.” Ten more, including killer whales and sea otters are listed as "Recovering." Populations of Pacific herring and pigeon guillemots are listed as “Not Recovering.”

The most important species that is still experiencing significant problems is Pacific herring, an ecologically and commercially important species in Prince William Sound. They are central to the marine food web, providing food to marine mammals, birds, invertebrates, and other fish. Herring are also commercially fished for food, bait, sac-roe, and spawn on kelp.

Due to the decreased population, the Status Report states, the herring fishery in Prince William Sound has been closed for 13 of the 19 years since the spill and remains closed today.

So that's a bit of what the crash/spill did to the environment, as well as what it's still doing today.

What did it do to people? Ruined a lot of lives. What has Exxon done about that? Fought tirelessly to ensure that they do nothing to help anyone. About four months ago, they started paying out money to some of the 33,000 people who had sued them for remorselessly fucking up their lives. From the Anchorage Daily News, December 8th, 2008:

The millions of dollars Exxon Mobil Corp. has surrendered as punishment for the Prince William Sound oil spill have started hitting the streets, nearly 20 years after the disaster.

Several commercial fishermen who joined in the lawsuit against Exxon reported receiving direct deposits in their bank accounts Monday. Paper checks are expected to go out in the mail in the next week.

The payments mark the beginning of a process to distribute $383 million among nearly 33,000 commercial fishermen and other plaintiffs.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs and Exxon continue to battle in court over whether the oil company owes interest on the punitive damages award. If so, the interest could roughly double the total payout.

$383 million to 33,000 people. Well, that sounds like a lot, yeah? No. An average of $11,600. A piss in the fucking ocean, that is. From the New York Times, June 26, 2008:

“This decision is a giant cold slap in the face,” said Garland Blanchard, 59, a third-generation fisherman who said he lost his marriage along with his two fishing boats, house, cat and dog to financial pressures caused by the spill. Mr. Blanchard expects to receive less than $100,000 from the settlement, down from the $1.2 million he had previously expected.

“Our lives and businesses have been destroyed, and we get basically nothing,” he said. “It’s pathetic.”

Local radio stations were just breaking news of the decision as Alicia Jensen opened the Killer Whale Café in Cordova, Alaska, at 6:30 Wednesday morning. Just as it has nearly every day for two decades, the spill and the legal case dominated customers’ conversations.

“This has been the primary focus of this town for most of my life,” said Ms. Jensen, 33, who owns the cafe. “I’m glad that it’s over, and everybody can get on with our lives.”

The City of Homer was prepared to place the $4 million to $5 million it was to receive in an endowment to help pay for social services, said Walt Wrede, the city manager. Now the city will receive a fraction of that amount.

Originally, Exxon was ordered to pay $5 billion, back in 1994. But their army of heartless lawyers worked very hard with corporate sympathizing judges to put off actually doing anything and have succeeded in continually reducing the payment to $383 million. I'm sure they feel like they lost, since they have to pay any amount at all. From the Anchorage Daily News, August 27th, 2008:

The Exxon case has been the source of soaring hopes and dashed dreams ever since an Anchorage jury in 1994 determined Exxon should pay $5 billion in punitive damages for the nearly 11 million-gallon oil spill.

Ever since the jury verdict, lawyers for the plaintiffs and Exxon have engaged in an marathon, ping-pong legal battle that went to the highest court in the land. Along the way, thousands of original plaintiffs have died waiting for payment.

Exxon argued all along that it paid billions of dollars to clean up the spill and compensate fishermen for their actual damages, and that billions in punitive damages weren't warranted.

Hey, Exxon already PAID money, man! Why are you trying to make them pay more, huh Karl Marx?? From the Anchorage Daily News, December 8th, 2008:

Exxon long held that it didn't owe punitive damages, arguing it already had spent $3.4 billion as a result of the spill including compensatory payments, cleanup payments, settlements and fines.

First, you cannot put a price on the destruction of the planet. You cannot put a price on ruined lives. You cannot put a price on direct responsibility for death. Those fucks should have been taken for all they had. Fuck this sham legal system. Who has been served here? Corporate capitalist interests, big fucking surprise.

Second, Exxon made $45.2 billion last year, destroying its own record for highest ever corporate profit, which it set way back in 2007, pulling in $40.6 billion.

The only reason this has happened is because we let them sleep safely.

Two trillion tons of land ice melted since 2003

but it will not move us. We're too busy staring at screens. Our heads, buried in digital sand. I guess we won't notice the world we made running us over then. It should be less painful that way. Here's an excerpt of the article laying out what has happened, as found on the Discovery Channel's site:

Scientists studying sea ice will announce that parts of the Arctic north of Alaska were 9 to 10 degrees warmer this past fall, a strong early indication of what researchers call the Arctic amplification effect. That's when the Arctic warms faster than predicted, and warming there is accelerating faster than elsewhere on the globe.

As sea ice melts, the Arctic waters absorb more heat in the summer, having lost the reflective powers of vast packs of white ice. That absorbed heat is released into the air in the fall. That has led to autumn temperatures in the last several years that are six to 10 degrees warmer than they were in the 1980s, said research scientist Julienne Stroeve at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.

That's a strong and early impact of global warming, she said.

"The pace of change is starting to outstrip our ability to keep up with it, in terms of our understanding of it," said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Centerin Boulder, Colo., a co-author of the Arctic amplification study.

Two other studies coming out at the conference assess how Arctic thawing is releasing methane -- the second most potent greenhouse gas. One study shows that the loss of sea ice warms the water, which warms the permafrost on nearby land in Alaska, thus producing methane, Stroeve says.

A second study suggests even larger amounts of frozen methane are trapped in lakebeds and sea bottoms around Siberia and they are starting to bubble to the surface in some spots in alarming amounts, said Igor Semiletov, a professor at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. In late summer, Semiletov found methane bubbling up from parts of the East Siberian Sea and Laptev Sea at levels that were 10 times higher than they were in the mid-1990s, he said based on a study this summer.

The amounts of methane in the region could dramatically increase global warming if they get released, he said.

That, Semiletov said, "should alarm people."

It won't.

Sarah Palin Pardons Turkey - While others killed behind her

Wonderful.

Joe Six-Pack

Sarah Palin is repping for a mythical figure named "Joe Six-Pack."

"I think they're just not used to someone coming in from the outside saying, 'You know what? It's time that normal Joe Six-Pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency,' and I think that that's kind of taken some people off-guard," she said in a radio interview with conservative host Hugh Hewitt.

Sarah Palin is deeply ignorant

These interviews are long, but fucking worth it. Jesus fucking christ is she provincial. She literally cannot name a nationally-distributed newspaper or magazine. Not kidding.

- She'll have to get back to you.

- The causes of global warming don't matter.

- With great relief, I can report that she does not support jailing women who have abortions. It's cause she's a feminist.

Sarah Palin endeavoring to ruin a bit more of Alaska

She wants to build a road through a wildlife preserve, a road that next to no one would even use.

Hating nature rules. What a maverick.

Sarah Palin Is a Vindictive, Calculating would-be Autocrat

Here is a lengthy article from the New York Times detailing Sarah Palin's rise to power and what she did once she got there - banning books, firing and hiring people at will, trying to destroy what's left of Alaska's wilderness - it's all there. It also lays bare all the "reform" she undertook. Fuck her. She is a traitor woman.

I want to make clear that I've been holding off on posting all this Palin-related shit, not wanting to jump into the stupid fray of bipartisan politics. I've been accumulating it for a few weeks, and it's just too much to not post. It's fucked. I feel like with John McCain, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, people have some idea as to what kinds of pieces of shit they are, as they have much more public faces, having served at the federal level for varying amounts of time. Sarah Palin is unknown and she and her handlers are trying to get her by on her small town "charm," essentially.

This has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans. Fuck them both. This has to do with malevolence, intolerance, ignorance and stupidity.

Sarah Palin Supports Charging Women for Rape Examinations

because she fucking hates women. She hates them. She is a filthy traitor woman.

Palin's town charged women for rape exams

• Story Highlights
• While Sarah Palin was mayor, Wasilla charged victims for their rape exams
  
• Interviews, review of records show no evidence Palin knew victims were charged
  
• Former state representative says it seems unlikely Palin was not aware of issue
  

From Jessica Yellin
CNN

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (CNN) -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's hometown required women to pay for their own rape examinations while she was mayor, a practice her police chief fought to keep as late as 2000.

A former Alaskan lawmaker says it seems unlikely that Gov. Sarah Palin was unaware of Wasilla's policy.

Former state Rep. Eric Croft, a Democrat, sponsored a state law requiring cities to provide the examinations free of charge to victims. He said the only ongoing resistance he met was from Wasilla, where Palin was mayor from 1996 to 2002.

"It was one of those things everyone could agree on except Wasilla," Croft told CNN. "We couldn't convince the chief of police to stop charging them."

Alaska's Legislature in 2000 banned the practice of charging women for rape exam kits -- which experts said could cost up to $1,000.

Palin, the Republican nominee for vice president, often talks about her experience running Wasilla, population approximately 7,000, and that has prompted close scrutiny of her record there. Wasilla's practice of charging victims for their rape exams while she was mayor has gotten wide circulation on the Internet and in the mainstream media. Watch CNN's Jessica Yellin check the facts in Wasilla »

Some supporters of Palin say they believe she had no knowledge of the practice. But critics call it "outrageous" and question Palin's commitment to helping women who are the victims of violence.

For years, Alaska has had the worst record of any state in rape and in murder of women by men. The rape rate in Alaska is 2.5 times the national average.

Interviews and a review of records turned up no evidence that Palin knew that rape victims were being charged in her town. But Croft, the former state representative who sponsored the law changing the practice, says it seems unlikely Palin was not aware of the issue.

"I find it hard to believe that for six months a small town, a police chief, would lead the fight against a statewide piece of legislation receiving unanimous support and the mayor not know about it," Croft said.

During the time Palin was mayor of Wasilla, her city was not the only one in Alaska charging rape victims. Experts testified before the Legislature that in a handful of small cities across Alaska, law enforcement agencies were charging victims or their insurance "more than sporadically."

One woman who wrote in support of the legislation says she was charged for her rape exam by a police department in the city of Juneau, which is hundreds of miles from Wasilla.

But Wasilla stood out. Tara Henry, a forensic nurse who has been treating rape victims across Alaska for the last 12 years, told CNN that opposition to Croft's bill from Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon was memorable.

"Several municipal law enforcement agencies in the state did have trouble budgeting and paying for the evidence collection for sexual assault victims," Henry said. "What I recall is that the chief of police in the Wasilla police department seemed to be the most vocal about how it was going to affect their budget."

Croft has a similar memory. He said victims' advocates suggested he introduce legislation as a way to shame cities into changing their practice, and Wasilla resisted.

"I remember they had continued opposition," Croft said. "It was eight years ago now, but they were sort of unrepentant that they thought the taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for that."

He does not recall discussing the issue with then-Mayor Palin.

The bill, HB270, was before the legislature for six months. In testimony, one expert called the practice of billing the victim "incomprehensible." Others compared it to "dust[ing] for fingerprints" after a burglary, only "the victim's body is the crime scene."

During a rape exam, the victim removes her clothing and a medical professional gathers DNA evidence from her body. There is also a medical component to assess her injuries. That component has led some law enforcement agencies to balk at paying.

Henry, the forensic nurse, said charging victims "retraumatizes them."

"Asking them to pay for something law enforcement needs in order to investigate their case, it's almost like blaming them for getting sexually assaulted," she said.

The Alaska Legislature agreed. The bill passed unanimously with the support of the Alaska Department of Public Safety, the Alaska Peace Officers Association and more than two dozen co-sponsors.

After it became law, Wasilla's police chief told the local paper, The Frontiersman, that it would cost the city $5,000 to $14,000 a year -- money that he'd have to find.

"In the past, we've charged the cost of the exams to the victim's insurance company when possible," Fannon was quoted as saying. "I just don't want to see any more burden on the taxpayer."

He suggested the criminals should pay as restitution if and when they're convicted. Repeated attempts to reach Fannon for comment were unsuccessful.

Judy Patrick, who was Palin's deputy mayor and friend, blames the state.

"The bigger picture of what was going on at the time was that the state was trying to cut their own budget, and one of the things that they were doing was passing on costs to cities, and that was one of the many things that they were passing on, the cost to the city," said Patrick, who recalls enormous pressure to keep the city's budget down.

But the state was never responsible for paying the costs of local investigations. Patrick was also a member of Wasilla City Council, and she doesn't recall the issue coming before council members, nor does she remember discussing the issue with Palin.

She does recall Palin going through the budget in detail. She said Palin would review each department's budget line by line and send it back to department heads with her changes.

"Sarah is a fiscal conservative, and so she had seen that the city was heading in a direction of bigger projects, costing taxpayers more money, and she was determined to change that," Patrick said.

Before Palin came to City Hall, the Wasilla Police Department paid for rape kits out of a fund for miscellaneous costs, according to the police chief who preceded Fannon and was fired by Palin. That budget line was cut by more than half during Palin's tenure, but it did not specifically mention rape exams.

In a statement, Jill Hazelbaker, communications director for Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign, said that "to imply that Gov. Palin is or has ever been an advocate of charging victims for evidence gathering kits is an utter distortion of reality."

"As her record shows, Gov. Palin is committed to supporting victims and bringing violent criminals to justice," Hazelbaker said. "She does not, nor has she ever believed that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence gathering test."

Those who fought the policy are unconvinced.

"It's incomprehensible to me that this could be a rogue police chief and not a policy decision. It lasted too long and it was too high-profile," Croft said.

The rape kit charges have become an issue among Palin critics who say as governor she has not done enough to combat Alaska's epidemic problem of violence against women. They point to a small funding increase for domestic violence shelters at a time when Alaska has a multibillion-dollar budget surplus. Victims' advocates say that services are lacking and that Palin cut funding for a number of programs that treat female victims of violence.

In the past week, Alaska's challenges with sexual assault have been in the spotlight again -- in connection with an ongoing inquiry into whether Palin abused her power by firing the head of Alaska's Department of Public Safety. Palin's office released e-mails showing that one area of disagreement between her and Department of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan was his lobbying in Washington for $30 million to fund a new program of sexual assault response teams.

The McCain-Palin campaign insists that fighting domestic violence and sexual assault are priorities for Palin. And they say she has been looking at other programs to support. As governor, Palin approved a funding increase for domestic violence shelters -- $266,200 over two years. And she reauthorized a Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault.