It Just Keeps Coming, Folks

Sarah Palin is cute and perky. She's also a serial liar. It's going to catch up with her. Just give it a little time.

Senator John McCain recently told reporters that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has “learned that earmarks are bad.”

But not that bad, apparently. According to a “summary of requests for federal appropriations” posted to her budget office’s website earlier this year, Palin requested millions of federal dollars for everything from improving recreational halibut fishing to studying the mating habits of crabs and the DNA of harbor seals.

It’s a position at odds with her recasting as an anti-earmarking champion, and with the tone of the biting scorn she’s employed toward the budgetary practice this week.

[snip]

Palin wrote an op-ed in a local newspaper outlining her not-so-reticent posture on earmarks.

“My role at the federal level is simply to submit the most well-conceived earmark requests we can,” she wrote.

Obama's campaign has responded by challenging Palin's reform credentials.

"Senator McCain said Governor Palin ‘learned that earmarks are bad’, but in 2008 alone Gov. Palin requested $256 million in earmarks for Alaska, and her state received more earmarks per person that any other state," said spokesman Tommy Vietor. "The fact is that Governor Palin isn’t just good at getting pork projects, she’s one of the most successful pork barrel politicians in history."

Alaska has indeed been spectacularly successful in getting earmarks, largely through the efforts of its senior senator, Ted Stevens, who is now fighting corruption charges. (Stevens’ requests include far more than those listed by Palin.) And Palin’s office has actively backed some of its legislators’ requests, according to the document, which covers requests for the fiscal years of 2008 and 2009.

Her campaign didn’t respond directly to the question of whether Palin still supports those specific earmarks, or how she would defend them.

All this, and more here.