Our guest blogger is Rick Weiss, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Is McCain’s choice for vice president a creationist? The record offers worrisome evidence that the first woman to make it onto a Republican presidential ticket holds to this backward and wholly unscientific view of reality.

As reported in the Anchorage Daily News during her race for the governorship of Alaska, Sarah Palin offered up a classic anti-evolution answer when asked during a televised debate whether creationism should be taught with evolution in the public schools:

“Teach both,” Palin said. “You know, don’t be afraid of information… I am a proponent of teaching both.”

“Teach both” and “teach the debate” have long been the mantras of the religious right and the Intelligent Design crowds, which have struggled over the years as court after court has batted down their efforts to inject unscientific teachings into the nation’s science classes.

The legal record suggests that Palin’s approach is not just ignorant of the facts, but a plain violation of the Constitutional boundary between church and state.
Recall, for example, the December 2005 United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania decision in Kitzmiller vs. the Dover Area School District. At issue was the legality of a 2004 Dover Area School District decision to inform all students that they should “keep an open mind” about evolution and to encourage students to peruse Of Pandas and People, which the school district gamely referred to as “a reference book,” to gain an understanding of a competing view of how life came to be, known as Intelligent Design.
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Our guest blogger is Adam Jentleson, the Communications and Outreach Director for the Hyde Park Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Sen. John McCain has a long record of opposing equal pay for women. Given that his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK), is a member of Feminists for Life, an anti-choice group that also calls for equal pay for women, it would be interesting to know her views on McCain’s votes against legislation designed to close the pay gap between men and women. One such piece of legislation is the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which the Senate voted on (and McCain opposed) just this spring.

Last night at the Democratic convention, a former Republican named Barney Smith spoke of the need for economic policies that “Help Barney Smith, not Smith Barney.”

Watch it here:

Ironically, according to Sarah Laskow at the Center for Public Integrity who analyzed Palin’s disclosure forms, Sarah Palin’s financial portfolio is managed by none other than Salomon Smith Barney.

Furthermore, by joining McCain on the ticket, Palin is now endorsing a radical $300 billion in tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy that would leave out millions of American families while delivering $45 billion in tax breaks for America’s 200 largest companies and at least $6.3 billion for America’s largest financial firms.