Alaska Official in 2000: ‘I Have Not Found Any Police Agency That Has Ever Billed a Victim.’

On the home page, I have a piece looking at the much-discussed Wasilla policy on rape kits, looking at the minutes of the six separate state legislative hearings on the legislation that banned the practice of charging victims for the kits. The minutes revealed three surprising, and greatly clarifying pieces of information.

1. Despite frequent claims from Democrats that the legislation was designed to change policy in Sarah Palin’s hometown, Wasilla was not mentioned in any hearing. In fact, a legislator reported a statement from a rape victim describing the practice in the much larger city of Juneau.
2. In preparation to attend a hearing and support the bill, one of the state’s top law-enforcement officials could find no case of a rape victim ever being charged.
3. Three times lawmakers were told by supporters of the legislation that hospital administrators, not police agencies, were responsible for the charges to the victims. If the bill was sent directly from a private hospital to the victim, it makes Palin’s claim to never have encountered the policy much more plausible. As mayor, Palin had no administrative jurisdiction over local hospitals, and it would not have come to her attention.
It will come as an enormous surprise to you that liberal bloggers like Pandagon and Feministing continue to attack wildly, letting no new facts or information disrupt their preconceived notions.
Pandagon writes “state law was passed specifically to counteract Wasilla’s ass-backwards policy” while Feministing declares, “stood out state-wide as something Wasilla was specifically stubborn about.” The only assertions we have to back up that claim is from Democratic lawmakers eight years later, after Palin was named McCain’s running mate. If Wasilla had triggered the legislation, one would think it would have been mentioned at least once during the six separate state legislative hearings, in which several times the lamakers specifically discussed which jurisdictions were charging victims.
The overall evidence of these minutes, and the lack of corroborating paperwork to be found in Wasilla strongly suggests that no rape victim in Wasilla was ever charged for a rape kit.
But when you’re a liberal blogger, who cares? It’s just smear and move on, no research or fact-gathering needed. They’ve got a job to do – destroying those who disagree with them — and to hell with the truth.
As with the controversy on the sex-education ad, consider which side is actually gathering facts about the issue at hand and which side is pounding the table.