Legal News

Sarah Palin Wows ?Em in Indiana But Loses a Battle in Juneau

By Jennifer Forsyth

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is continuing to make a splash with conservatives nationally as her appearance today in Indiana shows in this CNN report, but her nominee for the state’s next attorney general went down in flames Thursday after reports spilled out, alleging name-calling of homosexuals and mocking of domestic violence victims in his past. (See this previous LB post on Ross’s nomination.)

According to this story in the Daily Beast from earlier in the week, a lobbyist in Juneau who advocates on children’s and women’s issues, claimed that Ross once said during a debate on the Equal Rights Amendment: "If a woman would keep her mouth shut, there wouldn't be an issue with domestic violence." Ross called the claim a “bunch of crap.”

But he was also left defending himself against opinion pieces he had penned in the past, which were harder to deny. The Daily Beast writes: “Among them is a 1993 piece entitled, "KKK 'art' project gets 'A' for courage," in which Ross cheered on a local college student who had offended an African-American classmate by creating a statue of a Klansman with a cross in one hand and a flag in the other. ‘It might have been fun to see [the African-American student] try to remove the display," Ross wrote. "Then she could have been arrested and her future as a student of the university could have been resolved through the university disciplinary proceedings.’ ”

On Thursday, the Alaska Legislature rejected Ross in a 35-23 vote. Here’s the Anchorage Daily News story. The paper reports that it was the first time in state history a head of a state agency has failed to be confirmed by the Legislature. Palin called the Legislature’s vote hypocritical since the state House last year unanimously passed a citation praising Ross as a distinguished Alaskan and a vocal proponent of free speech.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on April 17, 2009 (boomark / email).