How Palin screwed the victims of rape (revisited)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

While Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, rape victims had to pay for their own rape kits.

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I wrote about this yesterday (from Feministing), and it's nice to see the media -- McClatchy and USA Today, for example -- pick up on what is surely one of the more disgusting stories about Palin's "executive experience."

Here's USA Today:

In 2000, Alaska lawmakers learned that rural police agencies had been billing rape victims or their insurance companies $500 to $1,200 for the costs of the forensic medical examinations used to gather evidence. They quickly passed a law prohibiting the practice.

According to the sponsor, Democrat Eric Croft, the law was aimed in part at Wasilla, where now-Gov. Sarah Palin was mayor. When it was signed, Wasilla's police chief expressed displeasure.

We need more of this. So far, the McCain campaign, Palin, and their surrogates have been largely successful in driving the narrative despite ever more revelations about Palin's past, despite ever more evidence that Palin is a liar, despite ever more proof of a massive disconnect between the truth on one hand and the the myth that is being spun about Palin on the other. The media admirably reported many of the revelations, evidence, and proof early on, but in recent days their love/lust affair with her, and with the sensation she has brought to the campaign, has not surprisingly gotten the better of them. (Last night, for example, around 11:30 pm ET, CNN was glowingly transfixed on her arrival back home in Alaska.)

Americans deserve to know the truth about Sarah Palin.

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For more on the rape-kit story, see Steve Benen, John Aravosis (and again), Kevin Hayden, Taylor Marsh, John Cole, and Jed (who rightly notes that Joe Biden has, with the Violence Against Women Act, done so much good in contrast to Palin).