Sarah Palin's Real Record on Abortion | Newsweek Politics: Conventions

POLITICS
Rebuilding the Brand
Suzanne Smalley 11/13/2008 12:00:00 AM
The sun-drenched waterfront hotel in Miami is glitzy, with swaying palms out front and a glittering fountain in the lobby. But the mood inside Wednesday was dark, as the Republican governors Association gathered to try to rebuild a brand badly tarnished at the polls.
CAMPAIGN 2008
A Titan in Trouble
Tony Hopfinger 10/28/2008 12:00:00 AM
Ted Stevens assumed his U.S. Senate seat in 1968—the same year the North Vietnamese Army launched the Tet Offensive, the Beatles recorded "Revolution", and Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated. It was also the year when Alaska was discovered to be sitting atop the largest oil fields in North America. A crude relationship was born between Alaska's politicians and its economic lifeblood—one that helped keep Stevens in office for 40 years, and could now end the career of the longest-serving Senate Republican in history.
FACTCHECK.ORG
Call of the Wild
Viveca Novak 9/24/2008 12:00:00 AM
Alaskan officials call it "predator control," not aerial hunting, and use it to keep the populations of moose and caribou high for subsistence hunters.
CAMPAIGN 2008
Palin Admin. Oversaw $26 Million ROAD to ‘Nowhere’
9/17/2008 12:00:00 AM
When Lois Epstein approached Gov. Sarah Palin during a July 2007 meeting, she says she had a simple request: pull the plug on the construction of a $26 million dead-end gravel road that she saw as a waste of federal money. The road was part of the $398 million project to link Ketchikan and its airport on Gravina Island known as the "Bridge to Nowhere," and an earmark inserted by Alaska's congressional delegation had provided the funding. But construction had begun in June, and it didn't seem to matter that the infamous bridge—to which the road would have led—would never be built. Every dollar spent on the project was a dollar wasted, Epstein thought.
CAMPAIGN 2008
'American Idol’ Meets ‘Northern Exposure’
Karen Breslau 9/10/2008 12:00:00 AM
When I traveled to Alaska last summer to meet an obscure Republican governor named Sarah Palin, I never would have thought that a year later her face would be staring at me as I traipsed through the Anchorage airport yet again, from every tabloid and magazine cover in the country. What I could imagine was that Sarah Palin was exactly the kind of Republican, were she not sequestered in Alaska, who had the potential to breathe new energy into her party. I had chosen Palin during my yearly talent hunt for promising female politicians to feature in our annual women’s leadership issue. Working from a list of female governors---my sample size was all of nine---Palin immediately leapt out: her approval ratings were 90 percent and she was a Republican picking a fight with Big Oil in Alaska. The FBI corruption probe into Alaska's senior leadership---including the once-venerable U.S. Senator Ted Stevens (now under indictment for filing false financial disclosures) was just heating up. Palin seemed to have no qualms about throwing her fellow Republicans under the dogsled. Plus she was only 43 at the time, and the leadership of her own party seemed to hate her. Sounded like a story to me. It's been fascinating over the past 11 days to watch the whole country having the same reaction I did a year ago. "It's 'American Idol' meets 'Northern Exposure'," says University of Alaska historian Stephen Haycox, who, like all Alaska experts, found himself in high demand last week.
CAMPAIGN 2008
An Apostle of Alaska
9/6/2008 12:00:00 AM
John McCain was not her dream pick. Only a year ago, when the Republican primaries were just beginning, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told NEWSWEEK that she wasn't enthusiastic about anyone in the GOP field. McCain was languishing at 7 percent in the polls. Mike Huckabee was reduced to playing his electric bass to get attention. Palin, driving with a NEWSWEEK reporter along the highway from Anchorage to Wasilla, said she could understand why the country was enthralled by the race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. "When you talk about the Republican Party needing appealing candidates, darn right they do!" she said. "The Democrats, whether you like them or not … there is some dynamic there, and it's something that the Republicans I think have lacked for some time."