Half-baked Alaskan

Despite John McCain’s ongoing assurances that Sarah Palin was thoroughly vetted (and this is rather at odds with the fact that the vetters didn’t head up to Alaska until after he’d announced Palin as his running mate) interesting and disturbing news continues to emerge.

This is from the New York Times:

Shortly after becoming mayor, former city officials and Wasilla residents said, Ms. Palin approached the town librarian about the possibility of banning some books, though she never followed through and it was unclear which books or passages were in question.

Ann Kilkenny, a Democrat who said she attended every City Council meeting in Ms. Palin’s first year in office, said Ms. Palin brought up the idea of banning some books at one meeting. “They were somehow morally or socially objectionable to her,” Ms. Kilkenny said.

The librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, pledged to “resist all efforts at censorship,” Ms. Kilkenny recalled. Ms. Palin fired Ms. Emmons shortly after taking office but changed course after residents made a strong show of support … In 1996, Ms. Palin suggested to the local paper, The Frontiersman, that the conversations about banning books were “rhetorical.”

She also had an, um, interesting management style for the mayor of a teeny-weeny town of 5,000:

Anchorage Daily News (AK) – October 26, 1996

NEW WASILLA MAYOR ASKS CITY’S MANAGERS TO RESIGN IN LOYALTY TEST
The newly elected mayor of Wasilla has asked all of the city’s top managers to resign in order to test their loyalty to her administration. Mayor Sarah Palin sent the resignation requests Thursday to Police Chief Irl Stambaugh, public works director Jack Felton, finance director Duane Dvorak and Mary Ellen Emmons, the head of libraries. A fifth director — John Cooper, who oversaw the city museum — resigned earlier this month after Palin eliminated his position. Palin also…

Sarah Barracuda indeed.

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