More Troopergate and Palin's Apathy to Sex Crimes

Yesterday, I noted the bitter irony that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin had punished Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan by firing him and shelving the "ambitious, multi-million-dollar initiative to seriously tackle sex crimes in the state" of which he was the chief proponent and champion because he refused to re-open an investigation of a man alleged to be a threat to her own sister.

It almost seems impossible that someone could be so vindictive that they would sacrifice thousands of women to sexual assault out of spite, though that's certainly what appears to have happened.

But the McCain campaign now says nope—it wasn't because Palin was being vengefully malicious; it's because she just doesn't give a fuck about victims of sex crimes.

The last straw, the McCain campaign said, was in July, when Monegan planned to travel to Washington to seek federal money for a plan to assign troopers, judges and prosecutors who could exclusively handle sexual assault cases — one of the state's most intractable crime problems.

In a July 7 e-mail, John Katz, the governor's special counsel, noted two problems with the trip: The governor hadn't agreed the money should be sought, and the request was "out of sequence with our other appropriations requests and could put a strain on the evolving relationship between the Governor and Sen. (Ted) Stevens."

Four days later, Monegan was fired. He said he had kept others in the administration fully apprised of his plans to go to Washington.

Did you get that? Governor Sarah Palin was so resolutely apathetic to dealing with a sex crime problem even she agreed was epidemic that her Public Safety Commissioner made a trip to Washington on his own to try to secure funds to combat it. And instead of praising his initiative or thanking him for his service, she shitcanned him—because she didn't want that money, and because it might have damaged her relationship with the corrupt Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, whom Palin had previously publicly criticized because she's all mavericky and shit. So why on earth would her relationship with Ted Stevens be more important than securing funds to combat a sex crime epidemic?

That stinks like 7,000 acres of cow shit.

And even if it were true, it still means that Palin is shockingly indifferent to rape and domestic violence in her own state and contemptuous of the people who don't share her indifference—and, weirdly, the McCain campaign appears to believe that's somehow more palatable than Palin having simply fired Monegan for insubordination because she wasn't getting what she wanted from a public servant on her personal family matter.

That's quite an amazing calculation.

Of course, given how little attention has been paid to her policy of making rape victims pay for their own rape kits, it might be a calculation that pays off in the end.

[H/T to Shaker Lena.]