[Palin] effectively redefined "terrorist" as "Bill Ayers", and then asserted to judge whether anyone else is a terrorist exclusively by how closely they hew to what defines Ayers as a terrorist. Thus, only if one campaigns to destroy public buildings and innocent Americans (we'll come back to that one) are they in the same "category of Bill Ayers". That's a wonderfully convenient way of defining terrorism for Palin, who wants desperately to smear her opponent as a terrorist sympathiser – not so great a method for the rest of us, who don't have any investment in defining terrorists singularly by their resemblance to Ayers.Read the whole thing. (There's video and a transcript of the interview here, if you missed it.)
Second, she makes a careful note about the destruction of "innocent Americans" – a caveat that seems drawn specifically to provide an exception for people ("real Americans", perhaps) who blow up buildings full of not-so-innocent Americans.
Like, say, women getting abortions.
Palin's Selective Terrorism Definition
I've got a new piece at The Guardian's Comment is free America about Sarah Palin's refusal to identify abortion clinic bombers as terrorists.
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