Rep. Gabrielle Giffords shot at Tucson grocery store event

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ CD8) was shot this morning at an event at a Tucson grocery store, along with several other people.  The Tucson Citizen reports that she was "shot point blank in the head."  This brings to mind a previous gun incident at another Tucson event at a grocery store in August 2009.

The image below is from Sarah Palin's website, "Take Back the 20."  The lower right target sight image on Arizona is Congressional District 8, which was one of the "targets" for candidates who supported the Health Care Reform bill to be defeated.

UPDATE: CNN reports that an employee of a nearby business reported "15 to 20 gunshots" and 12 victims.

UPDATE: The Arizona Republic reports that at least four of the victims are dead.

UPDATE: NPR reports that Rep. Giffords is one of the dead and that the killer, a male in his teens or twenties, was apprehended at the scene.  The death toll is up to seven.

UPDATE: KOLD News-13 in Tucson says Giffords is not dead but is in surgery at University Medical Center.

UPDATE: Another version of Palin's "target map" explicitly called out Giffords as a target:

UPDATE (1 p.m. Arizona time): The Palin takebackthe20.com gunsight map has been removed.

UPDATE: In an MSNBC interview after her office was vandalized after her vote for Health Care Reform, Rep. Giffords said:

We need to realize that the rhetoric, and the firing people up and … for example, we’re on Sarah Palin’s ‘targeted’ list, but the thing is, the way she has it depicted, we’re in the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they’ve gotta realize that there are consequences to that action.

UPDATE (1:29 p.m.): Talking Points Memo reports that a federal judge was also one of the shooting victims. There will be a UMC press briefing at 1:30 p.m.

UPDATE: NBC reports that the federal judge is one of the dead.  That judge, John Roll, was chief judge  of the U.S. District Court for Arizona and received death threats last year over an immigration case.

Sarah Palin has deleted her tweet from March, below:

UPDATE: Correction, the tweet above has NOT been deleted from Sarah Palin's tweetstream.

UPDATE (1:54 p.m.): The shooter suspect in custody is named Jared Loughner. The Pima County Sheriff's Office reports 6 dead, 18 wounded.

UPDATE: A YouTube video from Jared Lee Loughner.  He was a student at Pima Community College and apparently a disturbed individual.  Here's an apparent sample of his writing:

Hello, and welcome my classified leak of information that's of the United States Military to the student body and you. Firstly, I want you to understand this from the start. Did you know grammar is double blind, listener? Secondly, if you want to understand the start of revelatory thoughts then listen to this video. I'll look at you mother fuckin Anarchists who have a problem with them illegal illiterate pigs. :-D If you're a citizen in the United States as of now, then your constitution is the United States. You're a citizen in the United States as of now. Thus, your constitution is the United States. Laugh. I'll let you in on their little cruel joke that's genocidal. They're argument is appeal to force on their jurisdiction with lack of proof of evidence. Each subject is in question for the location! The police don't quite get paid correctly with them dirty front runners under section 10? Their country's alliances are able to make illegal trades under section 10. Eh! I'm a Nihilist, not someone who put who put trust in god! What is section 10 you ask? If you make a purchase then it's illegal under section 10 and amendment 1 of the United States constitution. You make a purchase. Therefore, it's illegal under section 10 and amendment 1 of the United States constitution. We need a drum roll for those front runners in the election; those illegal teachers, pigs, and politicians of yours are under illegal authority of their constitution. Those dirty pigs think they know the damn year. Thirdly, tell them mother fuckers to count from 0 to whenever they feel a threat to stop their count. We can all hope they add new numbers and letters to their count down. Did you run out of breath around the trillions, listener? Well, B.C.E is yet to start for Ad to begin! What does this mean for a citizen in any country? Those illegal military personal are able to sign into a country that they can't find with an impossible date! How did you trust your child with them fraud teachers and front runners, listener? Did you now know that the teachers, pigs, and front runners are treasonous! You shouldn't jump to conclusion with your education plan. The constitution as of now, which is in use by the current power pigs, aren't able to protect the bill of rights! Do you now have enough information to know the two wars are illegal! What is your date of time, listener? Fourthly, those applications that are with background checks break the United States constitution! What's your riot name? I'll catch you! Top secret: Why don't people control the money system? Their Current Currency(1/1) / Your new infinite currency (1/~infinte) This is a selcte information of revoluntary thoughts! Section 10 - Powers prohibited of States No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility. No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress. No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay. Each subject is unlocatible!

UPDATE: Another video shows someone, apparently Loughner, burning a U.S. flag.  His YouTube profile says:

Name: Jared Lee Loughner
Channel Views: 271
Joined: October 25, 2010
Website: http://Myspace.com/fallenasleep
Hometown: Tucson
Country: United States
Schools: I attended school: Thornydale elementary,Tortolita Middle School, Mountain View Highschool, Northwest Aztec Middle College, and Pima Community College.Interests: My favorite interest was reading, and I studied grammar. Conscience dreams were a great study in college!
Movies: (*My idiom: I could coin the moment!*)
Music: Pass me the strings!
Books:
I had favorite books: Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Wizard Of OZ, Aesop Fables, The Odyssey, Alice Adventures Into Wonderland, Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, To Kill A Mockingbird, We The Living, Phantom Toll Booth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Pulp,Through The Looking Glass, The Communist Manifesto, Siddhartha, The Old Man And The Sea, Gulliver's Travels, Mein Kampf, The Republic, and Meno.

UPDATE: Someone who knew him in 2007 says his politics then were left-wing.  Looks like a flag-burning nihilist kook, perhaps schizophrenic.

UPDATE: The Arizona Daily Star has fairly detailed background on Loughner, who would interrupt his pre-algebra class with "nonsensical outbursts" and was barred from class.

UPDATE: A New York Times profile of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, titled "A Passionate Politician with a Long List of Friends."

UPDATE (January 9): The federal complaint against Loughner.  Loughner was good enough to leave clear evidence of premeditation at his home.

UPDATE: A "second suspect" turned out to be the cab driver who drove Loughner to the Safeway, who came inside as Loughner had to get change to pay him.  He has been cleared as to any involvement in the shooting.

UPDATE (January 10): The Daily Beast points out, via the Southern Poverty Law Center, that Loughner's rants closely resemble the writings of Milwaukee-based David Wynn Miller, in talk about grammar and mind control--which brings us back to right-wing nutcases.

UPDATE (January 11): CNN is still saying it can find no link between Loughner and any groups, while Boingboing has posted further comparison to the insanity of David Wynn Miller.  It's amazing that this guy has people buying into his nonsense and trying to use it in court (always unsuccessfully, of course).

UPDATE: The DC points out that Loughner was a commenter at the UFO/conspiracy website AboveTopSecret--where his fellow commenters found him difficult to understand, considered him to be crazy, and asked him to get help before he hurt himself or someone else.  Despite mental health programs in Arizona that allowed anyone in contact with him to report him, and Pima Community College's recognition that he had mental problems, no one reported him to the state for evaluation.

How Twitter got compromised

TechCrunch has published "The Anatomy of the Twitter Attack," a detailed account of how "Hacker Croll" used people's password-selection habits, use of multiple online applications, publicly available online information about people, and flawed "I forgot my password" mechanisms to gain access first to individuals' personal webmail accounts and then to Twitter's internal systems.

It's a good idea to use randomly generated passwords, stored in a password safe, so that they're different with every service you use. It's also a good idea to split personal and corporate accounts. Lately I've taken to using randomly generated information for my "I forgot my password" answers, as well, and keeping that in my password safe just like another password.

The "secret questions" for password recovery are a vulnerability when so much personal information is being shared on the Internet. That's how Sarah Palin's email account was compromised last year, as well.

Behind the scenes during the election process

Newsweek reports some interesting tidbits from behind the scenes of the election process in both the McCain and Obama campaigns:

• Both the McCain and Obama campaigns had computers compromised by "a foreign entity or organization [which] sought to gather information on the evolution of both camps' policy positions." And that entity was successful in collecting such data, apparently.
  
• Palin's shopping spree was more extensive and expensive than has previously been reported: "While publicly supporting Palin, McCain's top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards." The spending was allegedly tens of thousands of dollars more than reported.
  
• McCain rarely spoke to Palin during the campaign, and although she wanted to speak in Phoenix along with McCain for his concession speech, this was vetoed by McCain's campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt.
• The Secret Service reported "a sharp and disturbing increase in threats to Obama in September and early October, at the same time that many crowds at Palin rallies became more frenzied."
• Palin attacked Obama about his connection to William Ayers before the campaign had finalized its plan about that issue--McCain had not given his approval, and a top advisor was resisting it.
• Hillary Clinton was on much better terms with McCain than with Obama, and McCain feared that Hillary Clinton would be named as Obama's VP, and was glad when he chose Biden.

There are lots of other interesting bits in the article, as well.

Palin "going rogue"

There are reports that Sarah Palin is "going rogue" by continually going off message and clashing with key McCain aides. One McCain aide reports:

"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone," said this McCain adviser. "She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.

"Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom."

This is not the kind of person who should be in a position of political leadership in a representative democracy--perhaps in a banana republic, but not a first-world nation.

(I do agree with her that "robocalls"--prerecorded political advertisements--are extremely annoying.)

Palin declines to call abortion clinic bombers terrorists

Sarah Palin says that Bill Ayers counts as a domestic terrorist for setting off bombs, but declines to apply the term to those who set off bombs to blow up abortion clinics:

WILLIAMS: Are we changing -- it's been said that to give it a vaguely post-9/11 hint, using that word that we don't normally associate with domestic crimes. Are we changing the definition? Are the people who set fire to American cities during the '60s terrorists in -- under this definition? Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist under this definition, Governor?

PALIN: There's no question that Bill Ayers, via his own admittance, was one who sought to destroy our U.S. Capitol and our Pentagon. That is a domestic terrorist. There's no question there. Now, others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or facilities that it would be unacceptable to -- I don't know if you're going to use the word terrorist there, but it's unacceptable, and it would not be condoned, of course, on our watch. But I don't know -- if what you're asking is if I regret referring to Bill Ayers as an unrepentant domestic terrorist, I don't regret characterizing him as that.

WILLIAMS: No, I'm just asking what other categories you would put in there, abortion clinic bombers, protesters in cities where fires were started, Molotov cocktails were thrown, people died?

PALIN: I would put in that category of Bill Ayers anyone else who would seek to campaign, to destroy our United States Capitol and our Pentagon and would seek to destroy innocent Americans.

I agree with her that Bill Ayers' actions constituted domestic terrorism. But so do those of abortion clinic bombers, which is why they are considered an appropriate target for the FBI's counterterrorism efforts. The RAND Corporation's terrorism incident database is no longer available via the web, but when I last looked at it, bombing incidents by abortion opponents was one of the largest categories of U.S. domestic terrorism, along with actions by animal rights activists and environmental activists.

Video:

Bigoted and ignorant McCain/Palin supporters in Ohio

This is no doubt not a representative cross-section of McCain and Palin supporters, but it's a disturbingly ugly set of them. It's fortunate that most of the worst comments are from the older generation--I hope that younger people are less likely to hold such views. McCain has shot down such remarks from supporters when they've been made in his presence, to his credit. (And yes, this is from Aljazeera.)



UPDATE: Here are more bigoted McCain and Palin supporters in Johnstown, Pennsylvania:


UPDATE (October 20, 2008): Sarah Palin says if she heard such bigoted comments she'd shut them down:

"What we have heard through some mainstream media is that folks have hollered out some atrocious and unacceptable things like kill him,' " Palin said, referring to a Washington Post story two weeks ago about angry supporters at a Palin rally in Florida. "If I ever were to hear that standing up there at the podium with the mike, I would call them out on that, and I would tell these people, no, that's unacceptable."

She goes on to break with McCain by supporting a U.S. Constitutional amendment to oppose gay marriage and claim that "Faith in God in general has been mocked through this campaign, and that breaks my heart and that is unfair for others who share a faith in God and choose to worship our Lord in whatever private manner that they deem fit."

UPDATE (October 21, 2008): And here's another video, from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (same link provided by Hume's Ghost in the first comment), of McCain and Palin supporters entering Lehigh University (the school where intelligent design advocate Michael Behe is a professor):



UPDATE (October 22, 2008): And be sure to check out this woman's reasons for voting for McCain, at the Secular Web.

UPDATE: And more videos of McCain supporters heckling early voters (most of whom were from an Obama rally) in West Virginia.

Bush and Palin anti-intellectualism

Radley Balko on Palin's performance in the VP debate:

Palin was rambling, didn’t answer the questions she was asked, and the folksy stuff felt contrived. I suppose Palin did okay in that she didn’t come off like the train wreck she was in her Katie Couric interview, but Jesus, is that the standard? Is the bar that low for vice president of the United States? That seems to be the way the conventional wisdom is playing out. Oddly, the Couric interview may have actually helped her, then.

Palin seems to have crammed just enough so she could toss out key phrases here and there to give the veneer that she’s informed. But it’s pretty clear she was in way over her head for most of the debate. Pick her apart with follow-up questions, as Couric and Gibson did, and she falls to pieces.

This growing anti-intellectualism on the right is alarming. It isn’t that Palin is dumb. I don’t think she is. It’s that she has no interest in learning, no interest in reading or experiencing anything that might challenge what she already knows she believes. She thinks with her gut, as Steven Colbert might put it. She’s a female W. And they seem to love her for it. The GOP has gone populist. Knowledge, worldliness, and learning are to be shunned, swept aside as East Coast elitism. It’s all about insularity, earthy values, and simpleness. Remember the beating John Kerry took in 2004 for daring to use the word “nuance?” There’s no room for complexity on the right anymore. It’s good and evil. Black and white. Us and them.

Maybe a good butt-kicking this November will bring about some soul searching.

And Ed Brayton on Bush, quoting this ABC News story:

After some more give and take, Sen. Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, presents a five-page list of 192 economists and business school professors who oppose the plan. Bush isn't impressed. "I don't care what somebody on some college campus says," Bush says.

He might as well have said, "I ain't never had no need for book learnin'."

I agree with Balko--Palin seems exactly like a female "W" in this respect.

Sam Harris on Sarah Palin and elitism

Sam Harris has a great op-ed piece at Newsweek:

The problem, as far as our political process is concerned, is that half the electorate revels in Palin's lack of intellectual qualifications. When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. "They think they're better than you!" is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. "Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!" Yes, all too ordinary.

We have all now witnessed apparently sentient human beings, once provoked by a reporter's microphone, saying things like, "I'm voting for Sarah because she's a mom. She knows what it's like to be a mom." Such sentiments suggest an uncanny (and, one fears, especially American) detachment from the real problems of today. The next administration must immediately confront issues like nuclear proliferation, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and covert wars elsewhere), global climate change, a convulsing economy, Russian belligerence, the rise of China, emerging epidemics, Islamism on a hundred fronts, a defunct United Nations, the deterioration of American schools, failures of energy, infrastructure and Internet security … the list is long, and Sarah Palin does not seem competent even to rank these items in order of importance, much less address any one of them.

...

What doesn't she know about financial markets, Islam, the history of the Middle East, the cold war, modern weapons systems, medical research, environmental science or emerging technology? Her relative ignorance is guaranteed on these fronts and most others, not because she was put on the spot, or got nervous, or just happened to miss the newspaper on any given morning. Sarah Palin's ignorance is guaranteed because of how she has spent the past 44 years on earth.

...

What is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which she represents—and her supporters celebrate—the joyful marriage of confidence and ignorance. Watching her deny to Gibson that she had ever harbored the slightest doubt about her readiness to take command of the world's only superpower, one got the feeling that Palin would gladly assume any responsibility on earth:

"Governor Palin, are you ready at this moment to perform surgery on this child's brain?"

"Of course, Charlie. I have several boys of my own, and I'm an avid hunter."

"But governor, this is neurosurgery, and you have no training as a surgeon of any kind."

"That's just the point, Charlie. The American people want change in how we make medical decisions in this country. And when faced with a challenge, you cannot blink."

Read the rest at Newsweek.

UPDATE: A letter written to The Economist (September 20, 2008, p. 26) from Sue Crane of Johns Creek, Georgia, expresses the anti-elitist pride in ignorance Harris condemns, when she writes:

Sir - Lexington (September 6) lapsed into the same mode of thinking that exists in the powdered-wig political salons and among the media twitterati in his assessment of Sarah Palin, which stopped him from understanding why she strikes a chord with America's heartland. Mrs. Palin connects with voters because she is one of us, not some elite politician entrenched in Washington's ways. John McCain had a problem with energising the Republican base, hence his choice of Mrs. Palin. I, along with many other Republicans, was prepared to sit this contest out had he chosen either Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge.

This contrasts with a letter on the same page from Michael Golay, professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, who writes:

Sir - Alaska is very different from the rest of the United States, and this difference affects the fitness of Mrs Palin to be vice-president. Fundamentally, Alaska is a pre-modern welfare state, where the economy is almost purely extractive (with the exception of defense and tourism). If you don't kill it, dig it or cut it down you don't get it. From that perspective "bridges to nowhere" are simply further extractions, or tokens for transfer payments from the rest of us, as are the annual payments to residents from North Slope oil revenues.

Not surprisingly Alaska is largely an innovation-free zone. It is also the only world that Mrs Palin has known. Along with her chronological and career inexperience this background renders her unprepared to lead the country.

In the same issue of The Economist, the Lexington column, "Richard Milhous McCain," points out that the McCain strategy in selecting Palin "is perfectly designed to create a cycle of accusation and counter-accusation. The 'liberal media' cannot do its job without questioning Mrs Palin's qualifications, which are astonishingly thin; but they cannot question her qualifications without confirming the Republican suspicion that they are looking down on ordinary Americans." It attributes this strategy to Richard Nixon, who "recognised that the Republicans stood to gain from 'positive polarisation': dividing the electorate over values."

Palin's Christianity

I've previously written to critique claims that Sarah Palin is a Christian reconstructionist or dominionist, or that she's a young-earth creationist or tried to put creationism in the public schools.

I still stand behind the former argument, but I think there is now some evidence that she is a young-earth creationist and supported Mat-Su Borough School Board candidates who aimed to put creationism in the public schools, but never got a majority on the school board. There's also now evidence that Palin is an advocate of pushing an allegedly secularized version of principles from Bill Gothard's Institute in Basic Life Principles, which I previously wrote about here when serial killer Matthew Murray blamed them for his problems.

Palin's Creationism
David Talbot's article at Salon.com about Sarah Palin's clashes with Rev. Howard Bess over his book about how churches should deal with homosexuality contained a passage that stated that she is a young-earth creationist:

Another valley activist, Philip Munger, says that Palin also helped push the evangelical drive to take over the Mat-Su Borough school board. "She wanted to get people who believed in creationism on the board," said Munger, a music composer and teacher. "I bumped into her once after my band played at a graduation ceremony at the Assembly of God. I said, 'Sarah, how can you believe in creationism -- your father's a science teacher.' And she said, 'We don't have to agree on everything.'

"I pushed her on the earth's creation, whether it was really less than 7,000 years old and whether dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. And she said yes, she'd seen images somewhere of dinosaur fossils with human footprints in them."

Munger said the same thing on his own blog:

In June 1997, both Palin and I had responsibilities at the graduation ceremony of a small group of Wasilla area home schoolers. I directed the Mat-Su College Community Band, which played music, and she gave the commencement address. It was held at her [former -jjl] church, the Wasilla Assembly of God.

Palin had recently become Wasilla mayor, beating her earliest mentor, John Stein, the then-incumbent mayor. A large part of her campaign had been to enlist fundamentalist Christian groups, and invoke evangelical buzzwords into her talks and literature.

As the ceremony concluded, I bumped into her in a hall away from other people. I congratulated her on her victory, and took her aside to ask about her faith. Among other things, she declared that she was a young earth creationist, accepting both that the world was about 6,000-plus years old, and that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time.

I asked how she felt about the second coming and the end times. She responded that she fully believed that the signs of Jesus returning soon "during MY lifetime," were obvious. "I can see that, maybe you can't - but it guides me every day."

I spoke with Philip Munger by telephone on September 17, hoping to be able to find others who could confirm Palin's creationist views. Unfortunately, he said that there weren't other witnesses to his conversation, but he did give me a lot of background information about Palin's political career. He said that the Wasilla government had been dominated by Democrats until 1994, when it shifted to Republicans and John Stein became mayor. Stein was Palin's original political mentor, but she decided to run against Stein in 1996, under the tutelage of Alaska State Rep. Victor Kohring, Republican representative from Wasilla, who began a 3.5-year prison term for corruption in July. Munger described Kohring, a member of the Christian Businessman's Association, as a member of the religious right. Stein, while a Republican, was vulnerable to attack as being not sufficiently conservative, due to the fact that his wife is a pro-choice Democrat who hasn't taken his last name.

Munger told me that Palin also supported a slate of religious right candidates for the Mat-Su Borough School Board, including Cheryl Turner, who he described as a creationist. But he said that the creationists didn't win a majority on the school board, and as a result made no attempt to push that agenda.

Munger said that he called in a question to Sarah Palin when she appeared on the Don Fagan program around October of 2006, and he asked her if her views on creationism had moderated since the Dover case. Her response indicated that her views had not changed, and that she had no idea what the Dover case was. Munger offered to explain it to her in detail if she contacted him, but she never did. He said that she didn't say anything to explicitly endorse creationism, instead resorting to the same tactics suggested by the Discovery Institute of protecting academic freedom, allowing "both" views to be taught, teaching the controversy, etc.

My impression is that Palin is likely a young-earth creationist, but not one who knows much about it or has it high on her agenda for political change. She's probably smart enough to see that such could be a liability for her future political career and so will avoid questions about it or answer in generalities.

Palin and Bill Gothard
Sarah Posner has a new article at Salon.com titled "Sarah Palin, faith-based mayor." This article points out that the Wasilla City Council passed a resolution in April 2000 at her direction declaring Wasilla to be a "City of Character" and a supporter of the International Association of Character Cities, run by Steven Menzel. This organization promotes a secularized version of the principles from Bill Gothard's Institute in Basic Life Principles, which is a sort of Christianity-lite cult that promotes the prosperity gospel and a whole lot of craziness like this:

Wives who work outside the home are to be compared to harlots — Bill Gothard

It is a total insult in Scripture to be called uncircumcised, and the only moral choice parents can make is to have their sons circumcised in order to follow in the footsteps of Jesus — Bill Gothard

“Unmerited favor” is a “faulty definition” of grace. Grace for sanctification is merited as we humble ourselves before God — Bill Gothard

Females who enjoy horseback riding have a problem with rebellion — Bill Gothard, from testimonies of people who use their real names who have heard him say this in person

Unbiblical submission taught — Abigail was WRONG to do what she did in saving Nabal and his servants — Bill Gothard

Tamar was partially at fault for being raped, because she wasn’t spiritually alert and didn’t cry out — Bill Gothard

Rock music is evil because it is evil — Bill Gothard

Cabbage Patch dolls are demonized — Bill Gothard

Palin learned about the IACC at a conference held at Gothard's IBLP International Training Center in Indianapolis in April 2000, a conference at which speakers included Bill Gothard and crackpot pseudohistorian David Barton, who argues that the separation of church and state is a myth.

It appears that the IACC features actually implemented in Wasilla are pretty mild and unobjectionable--giving out certificates of good character to citizens who do things like return lost wallets, as an example given by the executive assistant to Wasilla's current mayor.

Palin's also clearly no hardcore advocate of Gothard, at least with respect to the first rule listed above about women not working outside of the home. And I still don't think the fears of theocracy, dominionism, and Christian reconstruction have any substance. But what is concerning about her IBLP involvement is that she looks very much like another George W. Bush. As Posner's article notes, Gothard promotes the idea of "confidence that what I have to say or do is true and just and right in the sight of God," which seems to promote the idea of moving confidently forward in decisions with blinkered ignorance and disastrous consequences that are simply ignored. Palin seems to have governed Alaska in such a manner, acting above the law in "Troopergate" with her husband refusing to show up to testify and claiming to support the environment while implementing policies that have left both lakes in Wasilla devoid of life. She also seems to be submissive to her husband in ways which do not seem appropriate for a governor, such as allowing him to play a role in making government decisions, adding some real substance to the concerned questions raised at Debunking Christianity:

• Is it now your view that God can call a woman to serve as president of the United States? Are you prepared to renounce publicly any further claim that God's plan is for men rather than women to exercise leadership in society, the workplace and public life? Do you acknowledge having become full-fledged egalitarians in this sphere at least?

• Would Palin be acceptable as vice president because she would still be under the ultimate authority of McCain as president, like the structure of authority that occurs in some of your churches? Have you fully come to grips with the fact that if after his election McCain were to die, Palin would be in authority over every male in the USA as president?

• If you agree that God can call a woman to serve as president, does this have any implications for your views on women's leadership in church life? Would you be willing to vote for a qualified woman to serve as pastor of your church? If not, why not?

• Do you believe that Palin is under the authority of her husband as head of the family? If so, would this authority spill over into her role as vice president?

• Do you believe that women carry primary responsibility for the care of children in the home? If so, does this affect your support for Palin? If not, are you willing to change your position and instead argue for flexibility in the distribution of child care responsibilities according to the needs of the family?

(As I've already noted here, there are some evangelicals who oppose Sarah Palin because they don't think a woman should be in such a position of authority, which is more consistent with Gothard.)

UPDATE (September 24, 2008): David Talbot's "Mean Girl" at Salon.com confirms several things that Munger told me, including Palin's betrayals of former mentors and (something I didn't write about here) her allusions that John Stein wasn't really a Christian, but a Jew, as part of her campaign to defeat him as mayor of Wasilla.

UPDATE (November 19, 2009): Palin's book shows that she's certainly a creationist.

Sarah Palin and the John Birch Society

Orcinus has an interesting article about Sarah Palin, prompted by the finding of a 1995 photograph of Palin at her Wasilla city council desk with an article from the March 1995 issue of the John Birch Society's New American in front of her. Ben Smith at Politico has a more balanced piece on the same subject, which points out that there were lots of copies of that particular article sent out, and that Birchers themselves don't appear to be particularly impressed with Palin.

Sarah Palin's Yahoo account hacked

Sarah Palin has apparently been using a personal email account for State of Alaska business (perhaps following Republican precedent on how to avoid subpoenas?), and it's been compromised.

Wikileaks has the documents.

UPDATE (September 19, 2008): The screenshots used by the attacker showed that he used ctunnel as his web proxy, and contained enough information to identify his source IP in ctunnel's logs.

As pointed out by commenter Schtacky, it looks like they've identified the culprit, who used some Google research and Yahoo's password recovery feature to change the password on the account to break in.

This shows the problem with choosing "security questions" for password recovery that have answers which are easily publicly available.

I hope that this kid's actions don't sabotage the corruption case against Palin that may have been supported by evidence in her Yahoo email, evidence that is now tainted by the fact that it was compromised (and subsequently deleted).

The Religious Right's Religious Right

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars discusses those right-wing Christians who oppose Sarah Palin because God doesn't want women to hold leadership positions or even vote.

He lays out some choice quotes from Covenant News, the website promoting these extreme views, and observes that this website is the home to contributors such as Gary North and Ron Paul.

McCain and Palin lie about factcheck.org

A McCain-Palin ad cites factcheck.org to claim that Obama has made false attacks on Palin--but the attacks haven't come from Obama. McCain and Palin are appealing to factcheck.org's accurate content in order to lie about Obama, and factcheck.org calls them on their dishonesty.

Palin falsely claims Alaska produces 20% of U.S. energy

Sarah Palin said in an interview with Charlie Gibson that Alaska "produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy."

Not true.

Alaska produces 14% of the oil from U.S. wells (not 14% of oil consumed), produces 3.5% of domestically produced U.S. energy, about 2.4% of U.S. energy consumed.

McCain repeated the same falsehood to Gibson, saying "[Palin's] been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply."

(Via factcheck.org.)

If they keep repeating this claim, they are liars. There's already good evidence that they are bullshitters.

Palin collected per-diem from Alaska while at home

Yahoo reports:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has charged her state a daily allowance, normally used for official travel, for more than 300 nights spent at her home, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

An analysis of travel statements filed by the governor, now John McCain's Republican running mate, shows she claimed the per diem allowance on 312 occasions when she was home in Wasilla and that she billed taxpayers $43,490 for travel by her husband and children.

Per diem payments are meant for meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business. State officials told The Post her claims — nearly $17,000 over 19 months — were permitted because her "duty station" is Juneau, the capital, and she was in Wasilla 600 miles away.

Palin spends little time at the governor's mansion in Juneau, especially when the Legislature is out of session, and instead prefers to live in Wasilla and commute to her office in Anchorage.

I think the travel to and from Wasilla is arguably reasonable, depending on frequency, but per diem for meals and incidentals in Wasilla seems as wrong as if she were taking the per diem for meals and incidentals while staying in the governor's mansion.

UPDATE (September 15, 2008): The Palins haven't yet released their tax records, and it may be that she owes taxes on those per diems.

Factcheck.org on bogus Palin claims

Factcheck.org has a section up on "Sliming Palin." Check it before forwarding on emails, and reply to the authors who are spreading falsehoods.

Palin didn't cut Alaska's "special needs" education budget by 62% (she tripled it), she didn't ask for any books to be banned, she was never a member of the Alaskan Independence Party (though her husband was), she didn't endorse Patrick Buchanan for president in 2000 (she wore a Buchanan button as a courtesy when Buchanan visited Wasilla, but worked for Steve Forbes' campaign), and she hasn't tried to put creationism in schools.

UPDATE (September 16, 2008): Apparently one of the books that Palin had inquired about how to challenge and remove from the library was a book by a local Palmer, AK pastor named Rev. Howard Bess titled, Pastor, I am Gay. It does appear that there were some particular books that caught her attention which is why she made the inquiry.

UPDATE (September 16, 2008): Philip Munger of Wasilla says that Palin is definitely a young-earth creationist:

In June 1997, both Palin and I had responsibilities at the graduation ceremony of a small group of Wasilla area home schoolers. I directed the Mat-Su College Community Band, which played music, and she gave the commencement address. It was held at her church, the Wasilla Assembly of God.

Palin had recently become Wasilla mayor, beating her earliest mentor, John Stein, the then-incumbent mayor. A large part of her campaign had been to enlist fundamentalist Christian groups, and invoke evangelical buzzwords into her talks and literature.

As the ceremony concluded, I bumped into her in a hall away from other people. I congratulated her on her victory, and took her aside to ask about her faith. Among other things, she declared that she was a young earth creationist, accepting both that the world was about 6,000-plus years old, and that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time.

I asked how she felt about the second coming and the end times. She responded that she fully believed that the signs of Jesus returning soon "during MY lifetime," were obvious. "I can see that, maybe you can't - but it guides me every day."

Surely there must be other witnesses besides Munger to her creationist views who can provide confirmation.

Pundits are more honest when they think they're off the air

Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy say what they really think about Sarah Palin. Why couldn't they be honest about it on the air?

Sarah Palin, promoter of pork barrel spending

Before Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, the town received no federal funds. As mayor, she hired the Anchorage law firm of Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh, to help the town obtain federal funds. The Wasilla account was handled by Steven W. Silver, a partner in the firm and former chief of staff to indicted-for-corruption Sen. Ted Stevens, who helped secure $67 million in federal earmarks for the town of 6,700 residents--$4,000 per person.

(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)

Palin has stood up to corruption, blowing the whistle on unethical behavior by the chairman of the Alaska Republican Party despite taking a lot of heat for it. But she's also gotten into some trouble of her own, and it almost seems that she fell into her anti-corruption role by accident.

A description of Palin from her fellow Wasilla, Alaska resident Anne Kilkenny is well worth reading. (Kilkenny is also quoted regarding Palin in this New York Times story.) For further perspective, here's another close-up view of Palin as she's seen in Alaska.

UPDATE (September 4, 2008): As governor of Alaska, Palin asked for $550 million in earmarks in her first year in office, and for 31 federal earmarks totaling $198 million so far this year. Oink!

John McCain has long been a critic of earmarks. Turns out he has specifically been critical of earmarks requested by Sarah Palin.

Palin Christian heritage declaration misquotes, misrepresents

Last year, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin declared "Christian Heritage Week" in Alaska from October 21-27, 2007, with a proclamation that misquoted and misrepresented various Founding Fathers, at least two of whom would have opposed just such a proclamation (Jefferson and Madison).

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars steps through her proclamation and corrects the misinformation.

Palin lies about the bridge to nowhere

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars shows that McCain's VP nominee, Sarah Palin, didn't take long to utter her first falsehood as candidate. Near the beginning of her acceptance speech, she said:

And I championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress -- I told Congress, "Thanks, but no thanks," on that bridge to nowhere.

(APPLAUSE)

If our state wanted a bridge, I said we'd build it ourselves.

But in fact, she actually did the opposite. During her 2006 gubernatorial campaign, here's how she answered a question about the bridge when addressing an audience of Alaskans:

5. Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?

Yes. I would like to see Alaska's infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now--while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.

She went on to seek other projects not out of a desire for self-reliance and avoiding wasteful federal spending, but because she couldn't get enough federal funding:

"Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329 million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it's clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island," Governor Palin added. "Much of the public's attitude toward Alaska bridges is based on inaccurate portrayals of the projects here. But we need to focus on what we can do, rather than fight over what has happened."

See the full story and references at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan's blog reposts this photo that shows Palin's support for the "bridge to nowhere."

UPDATE (September 14, 2008): Some Alaskans are not happy with Palin's claiming that she doesn't support what she told them she supported.