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Vendaval -> Governor Palin & church visits with state finances (10/11/2008 3:26:29 PM)
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Since McCain did not do a thorough or responsible job of vetting his VP choice, more and more unethical behavior keeps surfacing.
This whole campaign is resembling a disaster movie. Who survives? Or does the villian take them all down? Or is it more like Quarantine? The poison of hypocrisy and holier-than-thou-attitudes takes down all the puppets?
(Emphasis mine)
"As governor, Palin sometimes bonds church and state"
By GARANCE BURKE, Associated Press Writer
Sat Oct 11, 12:59 PM ET
"What she didn't tell worshippers gathered at the Wasilla Assembly of God church in her hometown was that her appearance that day came courtesy of Alaskan taxpayers, who picked up the $639.50 tab for her airplane tickets and per diem fees.
An Associated Press review of the Republican vice presidential candidate's record as mayor and governor reveals her use of elected office to promote religious causes, sometimes at taxpayer expense and in ways that blur the line between church and state.
Since she took state office in late 2006, the governor and her family have spent more than $13,000 in taxpayer funds to attend at least 10 religious events and meetings with Christian pastors, including Franklin Graham, the son of evangelical preacher Billy Graham, records show."
and there is more on her religious beliefs and anti-choice positions
An AP review of her time as mayor, from late 1996 to 2002, also reveals a commingling of church and state.
Records of her mayoral correspondence show that Palin worked arduously to organize a day of prayer at city hall. She said that with local ministers' help, Wasilla — a city of 7,000 an hour's drive north of Anchorage — could become "a light, or a refuge for others in Alaska and America."
"What a blessing that the Lord has already put into place the Christian leaders, even though I know it's all through the grace of God," she wrote in March 2000 to her former pastor. She thanked him for the loan of a video featuring a Kenyan preacher who later would pray for her protection from witchcraft as she sought higher office.
Maybe she thinks the video of this preacher will act to scare away evil?
In that same period, she also joined a grass-roots, faith-based movement to stop the local hospital from performing abortions, a fight that ultimately lost before the Alaska Supreme Court.
Palin's former church and other evangelical denominations were instrumental in ousting members of Valley Hospital's board who supported abortion rights — including the governor's mother-in-law, Faye Palin.
Alaska Right to Life Director Karen Lewis, who led the campaign, said Palin wasn't a leader in the movement initially. But by 1997, after she had been elected mayor, Palin joined a hospital board to make sure the abortion ban held while the courts considered whether the ban was legal, Lewis said."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081011/ap_on_el_pr/palin_church_and_state;_ylt=Ap9qT0qvA3suaDSPavLpNG9h24cA
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