Sarah Palin never banned any books from her local library. But she did look into the matter- with the backing of her church- and fired a librarian that was shocked Palin would ask about such a thing (the librarian was rehired after a public outcry). There’s an implication that if there hadn’t been an outcry over the firing, some books might have slipped off the shelves and into a bonfire. 

Via Steve Benen: 

Yesterday, ABC News’ Brian Ross moved the ball forward a bit, with an interesting report.

Ross emphasized an angle I previously hadn’t heard much about. Palin was elected mayor thanks in large part to the strong backing of her church, the Wasilla Assembly of God, which, right around the time Palin took office, “began to focus on certain books available in local stores and in the town library, including one called ‘Go Ask Alice,’ and another one written by a local pastor, Howard Bess, called ‘Pastor, I am Gay.’”

Palin became mayor, her church was interested in censorship, and soon after, Palin asked a “rhetorical” question about how books might be excluded from the public library. When the librarian resisted, she was, at least initially, fired.

Sarah Palin suffers from a severe oral allergy to the truth. She’s also being used by the McCain campaign to try and refuel the internal Democratic Party fire between Obama and Clinton supporters. But the one thing that her brief political career and vice presidential nomination comes down to is religion. 

I mentioned last week that it is well known that John McCain wanted Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge as his running mate. But both of those men are pro-choice. The Christian conservatives of the Republican party were livid at that prospect. John McCain was essentially forced into choosing Sarah Palin at the last minute because she was pro-life and a fundie in her own right. That’s why the vetting was so poorly done. He’d never planned on choosing her. 

That is the Christian fundamentalist mindset in a nutshell. For them, it is fine for an unscrupulous, grossly underqualified politician to be next in line to the most powerful job in the country solely because she’s pro-life. If John McCain won the presidency and died, our nation would be run by someone who found out about the Iraq surge on television. By someone who has goverened a state smaller than many cities for a mere two years. By someone who would surely walk us to the brink of complete disaster if not push us over that precipice. Thousands of lives would be ruined. It could take the country years- decades- to recover. 

But that’s fine as long as she makes women keep their babies.

Being pro-life should come with a caveat that you must care about the life of that baby once it exits the womb. Far too many pro-life supporters fail this test.  If concern about that baby ends once it takes a breath in this world, then that concern was never really about the baby. It was about the mother. It was about control.

Although he has women in his family, there’s no reason John McCain should particularly concern himself with the Christian fundamentalist agenda towards reproductive rights. But their need for control should ring a familiar tone in the back of his mind. They have him right where they want him- boxed in and without a choice.