Sometimes I think the BBC tries to stir controversy with its Africa desk. This one certainly caught my eye:

Nsaba Buturo told journalists in Kampala that wearing a miniskirt was like walking naked in the streets.

“What’s wrong with a miniskirt? You can cause an accident because some of our people are weak mentally,” he said.

That is the Ugandan ethics and integrity minister explaining how to regulate safety.

I have a better idea. Anyone who causes an accident and blames it on simple distractions like the normal appearance of another person — the dress on a woman — should lose his/her license for a year.

A more radical idea would be to mandate everyone wear miniskirts so that drivers become more accustomed to them (e.g. “learn” so they aren’t “weak mentally”) and drive without distraction. Safety first… and bonus is you’ll find out why a miniskirt is not the problem.

One of Palin’s personal email accounts on Yahoo! was compromised.

It seems the attack was from someone motivated to demonstrate that she disregards the law and principles of good governance by blurring use of personal and official email accounts.

Was the administration trying to get around the public-records law through broad exemptions or private e-mail accounts?

Activists, still fighting to obtain hundreds of e-mails that were withheld from public-records requests earlier this year, say that’s what it looks like.

The governor’s Yahoo account is “the most nonsensical, inane thing I’ve ever heard of,” said Andree McLeod, who is appealing the administration’s decision to withhold e-mails.

Regardless of the attack motive, I am convinced this woman is a complete self-serving hypocrite who has no clue about security.

The Associated Press reports:

Hackers broke into the Yahoo! e-mail account that Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin used for official business as Alaska’s governor, revealing as evidence a few inconsequential personal messages she has received since John McCain selected her as his running mate.

I think we should all take a minute to examine Palin’s heartless policy that charged rape victims for investigation kits. In that context I hope the Secret Service and Yahoo! bill her personally for materials and time that they spend on investigations.

“This is a shocking invasion of the governor’s privacy and a violation of law. The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these e-mails will destroy them,” the McCain campaign said in a statement.

I bet they hope all evidence is destroyed, especially state business records. It is more shocking that Palin has advocated use of personal email accounts for official business communication, making them a matter of public record, but now expects some kind of privacy for her accounts.

On the one hand she shows a flagrant disregard for the law and regulations, and then she has the nerve to accuse others of violating the law?

When it comes to rape it is the victim’s fault, right Sarah? Why did you let someone hack your account? Why did you make your account so attractive to them, and so easy to breach?

Palin’s hacker was challenged to guess where Alaska’s governor met her husband, Todd. Palin herself recounted in her speech at the Republican National Convention that the pair began dating two decades ago in high school in Wasilla, a town near Anchorage.

“I found out later though (sic) more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on ‘Wasilla high’,” the person wrote.

Wow. She really does not understand security.

To use her own logic, taxpayers should not have to pay for her promiscuous use of email.

If she follows her own advice, she will spend her own dime on any investigation and cleaning up the accounts.

Disclaimer: I worked for Yahoo! security and these views are my own.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has posted a note called Governor Palin’s Reading List:

Fascist writer Westbrook Pegler, an avowed racist who Sarah Palin approvingly quoted in her acceptance speech for the moral superiority of small town values, expressed his fervent hope about my father, Robert F. Kennedy, as he contemplated his own run for the presidency in 1965, that “some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies.”

It might be worth asking Governor Palin for a tally of the other favorites from her reading list.

I agree. Who else does she follow? From where does she gather her teachings and philosophy?

In a similar vein, Seth Colter Walls reports “Palestinian Attack In Israel Part of God’s Judgment, Said Recent Guest At Palin’s Church”. Would she also say that 9/11 was God’s Judgment on America, like Fred Phelps, the homophobic and arguably insane fundamentalist from Kansas? Even Phelps has some redeeming qualities, but he has become an embarrassment to his home state and America. His personal vendetta style of preaching sounds very familiar. Tell me again the basis of Troopergate — vendetta? Is this what her followers identify with?

She referenced Pegler as a source of inspiration, even though he was a racist and anti-semitic American who is best known for his advocacy of violence and his attacks on “Commies”. Wikipedia points out Pelger had “nostalgia for the Third Reich” and believed there were “advantages in such fascism”.

While Pegler claimed to be a populist whose mission was to warn the nation that dangerous leaders were in power, he was a man whose views were so radical that even the notorious John Birch Society kicked him out in 1964 for being too antisemitic.

Is this the type of man Palin looks up to and wants America to emulate and learn from? It seems the answer is yes, as explained in the NYT:

Palin’s use of a quote from “once powerful right-wing Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler” was intended to send a subtle but unmistakable signal to far right wing supporters.

I liked the title of the blog post on Stop All Monsters so much, I repeated it here.

Most interesting to me about this controversy is how Palin claims to have been a leader of her town, but then people claim she knew nothing of policies that are the most controversial.

Clearly Palin wanted to bill rape victims as a way to dissuade them from reporting the crime. In fact, the state pressed for a bill to ban the charges in response to Palin:

…the Knowles bill that banned charging those who are raped was written BECAUSE ONE TOWN in Alaska was billing victims. Wassila.

Also, you suggestion that there were no rapes during this time doesn’t jive with the fact that the Police Chief in Wassilla stated that making this change meant that the taxpayers would have to now come up with about $14k per year.

This is for real. The state had to step in to stop Palin and her crony police chief from billing victims:

Eight years ago, complaints about charging rape victims for medical exams in Wasilla prompted the Alaska Legislature to pass a bill — signed into law by Knowles — that banned the practice statewide.

“There was one town in Alaska that was charging victims for this, and that was Wasilla,” Knowles said

A May 23, 2000, article in Wasilla’s newspaper, The Frontiersman, noted that Alaska State Troopers and most municipal police agencies regularly pay for such exams, which cost between $300 and $1,200 apiece.

“(But) the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests,” the newspaper reported.

It also quoted Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon objecting to the law. Fannon was appointed to his position by Palin after her dismissal of the previous police chief.

Palin seems to have tried to get the rape numbers down by inconveniencing those who were victims. The harder it is to report a crime, the easier it becomes for her to say there is no rape data, and therefore no case for abortion.

It is not rocket-science to see what life will be like under Palin.

She makes Ayatollah Khomeini look like a kind and democratic man.