As you may know, while Sarah Palin was the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, her town was one of the few in Alaska to charge rape victims for their own forensic exams – i.e., for the medical exams necessary to gather evidence to catch the rapists. At the time, Palin’s own police chief said the town didn’t want to pay for the exams because it would be a “burden” on taxpayers (i.e., tax cuts were more important than women who were raped). Others suspect that Palin didn’t want to pay for the exams because they often include emergency contraception (conservatives think emergency contraception is abortion), and Palin believes that women should be forced to carry their rapist’s baby to full term (ask her, it’s true).

Palin’s spokesman only gave one brief quote saying how outrageous this story is. Yes, it is outrageous. Then, we heard nothing from Palin. Not that Sarah Palin refusing to talk about anything is news. John McCain would like nothing better than for us to put Sarah Palin a 72-year-old-with-serious-cancer’s one heartbeat away from the presidency without knowing a single thing about this woman’s credentials for being president (other than that she wears lipstick and can see Russia from her kitchen window).

So, let’s give Sarah Palin the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume that as mayor Sarah Palin was so clueless, so hands-off, so out of it and in over her head that she had no idea what her underlings were doing, she had no idea that her hand-picked police chief was charging rape victims for their own exams, and even that she had no idea that her police chief was doing interviews with the local paper defending that policy – her city’s own policy – in a very public battle with the state legislature.

Let’s give Sarah Palin all of that, and just assume that she was a blithering idiot as mayor of Wasilla.

Let Sarah Palin come forth and say publicly that she is in favor of public funding for rape kits that include emergency contraception. John McCain voted against Biden’s legislation that would have, among other things, required funding for such exams. Let Palin and McCain publicly endorse rape kits including emergency contraception, and then we’ll put this story to rest.