It seems that the John McCain campaign can sink as low as it pleases, and John McCain – thanks to his impenetrable bubble of honor and the media’s deep denial about what’s going on – stays totally clean …

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Wow, going to war with Russia might be necessary if Russia invades another one of the former states of the Soviet Union. So says Sarah Palin. War with Russia over Armenia? If Russia and Georgia go at it again? War between the US and Russia sure would be a positive development for the US. And sort of shows the consequences of taking a freshman governor with no experience in foreign policy and giving her a ten day crash course with Randy Scheunemann and the rest of John McCain’s neocon brain trust that got booted from the Bush inner circle for being too nutty.

Late Update: Do we all understand now why former Sen. Chafee (R-RI) called her a “cocky whacko” earlier this week?

From ABC News:

EXCLUSIVE: GOV. SARAH PALIN WARNS WAR MAY BE NECESSARY IF RUSSIA INVADES ANOTHER COUNTRY

More of the first excerpts from the Charlie Gibson interview here and here.

Here’s the exchange on Russia:

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn’t we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help.

But NATO, I think, should include Ukraine, definitely, at this point and I think that we need to — especially with new leadership coming in on January 20, being sworn on, on either ticket, we have got to make sure that we strengthen our allies, our ties with each one of those NATO members.

We have got to make sure that that is the group that can be counted upon to defend one another in a very dangerous world today.

GIBSON: And you think it would be worth it to the United States, Georgia is worth it to the United States to go to war if Russia were to invade.

PALIN: What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. We have got to be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries.

And we have got to be vigilant. We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.

It doesn’t have to lead to war and it doesn’t have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.

His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that’s a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen.

I get the sense that maybe the subject is so charged that people don’t want to bring it up. But I’m wondering if Charlie Gibson might be able to raise the matter during the Barbara Walters style interview he’s doing today with Gov. Palin up in Alaska.

While Gov. Palin was Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska in the late 1990s, the city’s policy was to charge rape victims for the cost of the ‘rape kits’ used to collect forensic evidence to help prosecute the rapists. Eventually the state had to step in and pass a law banning the practice. And according to former Gov. Tony Knowles, the law was passed specifically in response to Wasila’s policy. “There was one town in Alaska that was charging victims for this, and that was Wasilla,” says Knowles.

So Wasila was either the only or one of the only towns in the state to follow this practice. And the state legislature had to intervene to put an end to it. There’s no controversy about this. So this part is clear.

But it appears this is another case whether Sarah Palin is lying or in this case deputizing press aides to lie on her behalf. In this case spokeswoman Maria Comella, when asked, told USAToday that “does not believe, nor has she ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test. Gov. Palin’s position could not be more clear. To suggest otherwise is a deliberate misrepresentation of her commitment to supporting victims and bringing violent criminals to justice.”

Well, this just appears to be a confident statement of another lie. She does not and has never believed this, only it was her policy when she ran the city in question which was either the only or the most prominent in the state that held to this practice.

Charlie, can you help on this?

(ed.note: This has been another edition of “Lying Sarah Watch”…)

Paul Rieckhoff: Seven years later, why is there still a hole at ground zero?

M.J. Rosenberg talks about how we mourn not just the victims of 9/11, but the country we lost that day.

Bernard Avishai discusses how the next President might recover that past.

John McCain asserted in an interview with local Maine TV that Sarah Palin is “coming out in the next couple of days with interviews with numerous people.”

Really? Is that true?

We know about the Charlie Gibson interview, Barbara Walters style. But we also know that she declined to be interviewed for CNN’s big investigative special set to air this weekend (in contrast to Joe Biden, who sat for an interview with CNN).

So who is McCain talking about? Is she really doing “numerous” interviews? Or did McCain just make that up?

Keep an eye out and let us know if you see any others.

Late Update: The McCain campaign confirms to TPM Election Central that a series of Palin interviews are in the works, to start early next week (not in the next couple of days), but declined to provide specifics. Should we expect a soft roll out, with the likes of Hannity and Fund “grilling” her?

A number of you have written in (mainly research scientists of one sort or another) to say that in the case of Sarah Palin’s $3.2 million earmark request to study seal DNA we should not jump to the conclusion that such spending is wasteful just because it may sound funny. So let me be clear. I don’t assume that at all. In fact, I’m a big supporter of federal spending on pure research — much of which McCain routinely derides as pork to guffaws all around. My father was a marine biologist whose commitment to investment in the sciences was so great that he’d surely send a thunderbolt down from heaven to smite me if I didn’t. Of course, being such a hard core scientist he didn’t believe in heaven, which is a complication. But I digress. I raise these earmarks because it is another example that John McCain and Sarah Palin are monumental hypocrites and liars on the whole issue of reform, earmarks, the Bridge to Nowhere and virtually everything else. So it would be irresponsible not to make that clear.

Late Update: TPM Reader LS makes a good additional point …

One more point of view from a scientist:

good science is funded through peer review, not via earmarks and lobbying.

we don’t want science funded this way, it leads to croneyism and misuse. give the money to NIH and NSF and don’t do by congressman trading favors.

earmarks are lousy way to fund science, bad, bad, bad.

TPM Reader CM makes much the same point …

I’m a social scientist, rather than a hard scientist, but, for better or for worse, I swim in the sea of research dollars. While I agree with your post that funding research is a good use of tax money and is essential to keeping our society and economy vital, I’m not sure
that earmarking research dollars through legislative action is the best way to ensure that the best research is funded. The federal government has organizations like the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities that distribute research dollars after review by area experts and professional scientists. While I certainly do think congressional oversight of the NSF and the NEH is necessary, allocation of research funds is best left to the professionals. However valid, direct research funding through spending bills is a pork-related program activity.

As a related matter, most of Palin’s ‘science’ earmarks requested for last year are actually sops to the fishing industry in her state to which she is closely tied.