Seeing as the police chief she appointed argued to keep the law, and the Alaskan Government was forced to prevent it from happening specifically because of Wasilla and they did so while Palin was there, I would say yes, it did have an effect in the town.

It would have been such a quick fix for her, but she didn't fix it....

P.S. There is a town down south that still has this silly law that says that blacks and whites can't marry. No one 'enforces' it, so it's fine for that law to be in place, no?

Naturally. All these things seem to "bother" the Obama supporters.

I agree with the premises that the "rape kit" inspection at a hospital is part of evidence collection and ideally the government should pick up the tab. Mrs. Palin evidently agrees with this. The fact that it was once policy in her town not to is hardly enough to impact my vote for the President -- a position for which she isn't even running.

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It naturally bothers me because it was incredibly stupid and harmful on crime enforcement and vilely immoral on personal morality. It should bother anyone with common sense and a moral compass.

Ideally government should pick up the tab....right. It's State's evidence in a crime. You'll get the criminal vote every time with that.

Ms Palin's boilerplate denial doesn't match the facts of what happened and she refused to answer questions on the subject.

Whom you vote for is your business. I come here to discuss issues, enjoy punditry on strategies, etc. Pom-pomming for tickets here is like fishing in the Sahara. It's a waste of time.

When you vote for a VP, you are voting for a POTUS, just a contingent one. Moreover, there is also a federal law aimed at stopping any practice of charging victims for rape kit evidence that Biden sponsored but McCain has been consistently against by voting against it in 1994 and voting to defund it in 2007.

All these issues will become an issue given the Dems will certainly make it one.

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From DailyKos of all places:

It's not clear from this what all was included in this budget line item, so nothing much can be determined from it. It looks like contingency funding to account for unexpected expenses.

What is clear is the new Police chief started the policy sometime in 1998 or 1999.

Fannon, the chief at the center of this controversy, isn't exactly a honest broker.

Source

Until someone shows me something compelling I'm left to conclude the Chief was off the reservation.

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Andy
Cynical Optimist

"Vilely immoral"?!? OK. Either you throw around the term "vilely" loosely or one of us is lacking a moral compass. Still, glad to see the good folks of Alaska are getting state-sponsored rape kits -- Ms. Palin's best efforts to the contrary, I'm sure.

No one votes for a VP anymore. It's a package deal. And I think it's a poor strategy to make Ms. Palin the focus as Democrats seem to be doing now ... particularly when it exposes that she's the same sort of candidate their Presidential candidate is -- an inexperienced "rockstar" type who's popular based on charisma rather than accomplishment.

I'm sure they'll try to. Vocal support for government funding of rape kits should settle the matter quickly. Unless the Democrats don't want to make the campaign about issues.

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Greetings and Felicitations,

I think vilely "immoral" is the idea that any rape victim be faced with the idea of having to pay to collect data to capture the person that violated them.

It was settled. It was settled by federal law. The resolution of that issue was addressed in the original post:

And here with the actual documentation of the federal law.
http://www.uspoliticsonline.com/1290152-post12.html

Sincerely Yours,
C. David Neely

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Only a complete douchebag would say something as ignorant as "rape doesn't happen in little towns".

Rape happens everywhere. Domestic violence happens everywhere. And drug use is just as prevalent in small towns as in big cities.

Get with it folks. Our problems are everywhere. Not just the big cesspools, but the small one's too.

This is why I hate what the far right is doing to America, depending on divisions to win instead of trying to heal things. Going on and on about so-called "Small Town Values" is propaganda made precisely to attract the most easily deceived among us to believe that somehow small towns have fewer problems than big cities.

I had no idea that charging rape victims was something that was being done in America. That you would actually have to write a law preventing it says something about just how stupid we've become, like it doesn't go without saying that rape victims should not have to pay for being raped. What fucking nonsense.

Color me surprised. While most posters are actually discussing the law and the whys associated with it, you take this opportunity to spout your typical "Americans are stupid" rhetoric. What makes it even sadder is the fact that most intellectuals rarely, if ever, even imply this type of ignorant generalization that is so much your style. Although certainly they would have reason to be that pretentious, pretentious is a label they try to avoid most times. I suppose actors just aren't capable of comprehending this fundamental habit of the intelligensia. Or, perhaps it's due to their lack of exposure.

You are obviously misinformed about life in small towns. I live in a town about 1/2 the size of Wasilla, AK. While I agree that there COULD be a rape here, there hasn't been one in anybodys memory. Murders happen, assaults, certainly. But, crime is very rare. Our biggest crime problem is burglary, due mostly to the fact that criminals from outside the town see it as an easy target because of sparse population. Many, however, realize that same fact means there is a good probability that they would be shot if caught. See, we rely on state or county police here. So, I'd venture to guess that 99% of the citizens here are armed, because it's no secret that we can not rely on the police to protect us, if needed. But, I'm getting away from the point.

Yes, bad things happen everywhere. But, in small towns, they are very, very rare. A murder would be talked about for years. In your big cities, it happens all the time. Some don't even get a mention on the local news.

I was very surprised to learn that the small town of Wasilla had 10 rapes in 5 years. That's incredible!

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"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have." -Thomas Jefferson

Which brings forth another possibility that fits with all the available facts, or at least the ones I've seen posted here. Perhaps Wasilla had a serial rape-victim. Bad break-up? Have 'one last time for old time's sake' then charge him with rape. Or whatever vaguely similar scenario(s) might apply. After however many times of hearing her cry wolf, the chief says "Fine, but you have to pay for the tests, cuz these things are getting expensive." The mayor may or may not known, and either way would not be out of line for not crying foul.

Again, I'm not saying Palin is an angel. Perhaps she's even the cold-hearted wench this thread implies she is. My point continues to be that we don't have enough details to tell one way or the other.

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Today's forecast: Government corruption.

Tomorrow's forecast: 100% chance of more 'politics as usual'

Maybe it's finally time to vote Libertarian

Simply because there is a case where a woman abuses the system is no reason to throw out a just policy. We've seen case like this before (the Duke Lacrosse case comes to mind), but I don't see other municipalities making all victims of rape pay for forensic tests for the crimes against them.

Also, it is starting to look like there was another chief of police in place when Palin took office. And it seems that this policy of making women pay for evidence gathering for crimes against them was NOT a policy under that chief.

Palin becomes mayor and changes the chief to one who now wants to charge women for rape kits. That's beyond fishy. No amount of fiscal responsibility justifies this policy. It's penny wise and pound foolish.

I find that extraordinarily unlikely, given the nature of the crime and the probability that someone who would do something like that could simply be charged with filing a false police report, leaving a very easily found paper trail.

I don't throw it around loosely, only rarely and deservedly. It bothers me on its own standing merit and I'd lodge that strong objection no matter who did something like that.

I think the Dems would be better focused to return to the other issues and McCain, but given Palin has given the ticket a bounce, strategically they should knock her down if they can. VPs do matter. Bush 43's experience is telling of that. He helped unify the GOP libertarian and social conservatives as Reagan's VP and made the ticket very strong and winning for 2 terms. He then won himself, but part of the reason he lost his re-election bid was a weak VP, Quayle. Insofar as McCain's ticket, I'd wager most of his bounce pickups and extra energised base is precisely because of her, and not McCain, of whom many have not been happy.

Moreover, the rape kit issue is an issue. She can send lobbyists to Washington DC to get and spend millions of pork barrel cash on projects in Wasilla, but charges raped women hundreds to collect the rape evidence from them. People may judge that very harshly on fairness, wisdom, judgement, value system, etc.

And McCain has his hands quite smelled up here too, given he has been voting against the federal law repeatedly that seeks to prevent charging raped women for rape kit evidence. And Biden sponsored the law.

I'm not so sure about that. It's pretty hard to credibly reverse engines when the record is the other way like that. People are going to ask why they were against it when it mattered, and only now for it because it's been detected and they don't want to be held accountable for it. McCain not only earlier voted against the federal act on the subject but voted again to to kill it off in 2007, so it's not even ancient history.

Recalling Bush 43, Dukakis got knocked off his early lead much the same way because of his earlier prison furlough programme that led to the Willie Horton ads, etc. Bush's commercials on that were devastating to Dukakis. This issue has, if employed effectively and repeatedly, 'Willie Horton' hitting power IMO. If Obama's camp has half a brain, they would maximise this issue given it's the kind of issue--especially as it concerns serious violence and violation of women--that can land hard on women and others. And given Biden sponsored the federal bill that McCain voted against twice, it packs even more punch. In fact, I suspect it would be Biden who will try to elevate his much quieter exposure by making the charges on the issue to focus the spotlight on it and bring bounce to him and against them.

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It must be me who lacks the moral compass then. I'll have to re-investigate my views on killing people, I guess.

The attacks have been petty, mean and insulting to others, which can actually energize voters. For example, all the looking-down-their-noses at Ms. Palin's religion and small town status only reinforces the negative impact of Obama's prior comments about people in small towns "clinging" to guns and religion because they're bitter. I'll bet a growing number of these bitter folks would love to see Obama taken down a notch on election day. Watching this develop has been amazing. It's almost like McCain picked her just to set Obama up for the rope-a-dope, and he's walking right into it.

I'll believe it when I see it.

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Strawman. You initially inferred that the matter did not really bother me but was pretextual. I stated otherwise because it bothers me on crime enforcement and moral grounds on its own merit alone.

And that's also been a strawman. The 'cling' stuff was a 'gotcha' taken intentionally out of context and Ms Palin reciting it at the RNC--citing my former city of residence--was likewise. Obama has never made 'small towns,' 'religion,' 'sexism,' or other nonsense a wedge. In fact, he has long taken the opposite approach with these matters. They self-created strawmans by his political opponents claiming he did when he didn't in order to trigger them. Indeed, these strawmans can be effective with some people because there are plenty of hypersensitive and 'angry' types looking for any excuse to scratch that itch. It doesn't have to be based on reality, which they aren't.

Well, the answer will reveal itself one way or another if they raise it and I guess that's all there is to it because it will indeed speak for itself.

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