The things you learn these days. So it turns out that Alaska is the forcible rape capital of the United States, by some distance in fact, with 76 instances per 100,000 inhabitants. The state-by-state list from the FBI is here.
So today ABCNews.com moves a piece by Justin Rood reporting that the Palin administration has done very little about this. The governor did increase funding for victim assistance by 2% this year. But a larger and much more comprehensive anti-rape effort put together by the state's Department of Public Safety stalled when it reached the governor's office last summer.
Why? Because Palin famously didn't like the man who headed the department:
Days later, Palin fired [the proposal's] chief proponent, Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, after he declined to dismiss a state trooper Palin accused of threatening her own family members. Palin has said she fired Monegan because she wanted to move his department in a "new direction," and he was not being "a team player on budgeting issues." The dismissal is now at the center of a hotly-contested investigation by the state legislature.
The status of the plan, which would have "fast-tracked" sex crime cases via a dedicated group that included specially-trained investigators, judges and prosecutors, is unknown. "I'd ask the governor," said one official with knowledge of the plan. Numerous inquiries to Palin's campaign spokeswoman went unreturned.
Seems to me that moderate women voters may be interesting in knowing about this.
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Read more from Michael at The Guardian
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