Hotline on Call: Palin To LAT: Release The Tape

Hotline on Call

Palin To LAT: Release The Tape

Sarah Palin joined her running mate’s attacks againstBarack Obama and the media Wednesday, suggesting the Los Angeles Times is withholding a videotape that shows Obama watching as a former Palestinian Liberation Organization spokesman bashed Israel.

Palin departed from her stump speech to talk about Obama’s “assortment of friends from Chicago.” She described Rashid Khalidi, the former PLO spokesman, as “another radical professor from the neighborhood who spent a lot of time with Barack Obama going back several years.” She said Obama was at a party for Khalidi in 2003, when he described Israel as the perpetrator of terrorism.

But she saved her hardest criticism for the newspaper that currently holds the tape, saying they was refusing to release it to aid Obama.

“It must be nice for a candidate to have major news organizations looking after his best interests like that,” Palin said. “In this case, we have a newspaper willing to throw aside even the public’s right to know in order to protect a candidate that its own editorial board has endorsed. And if there’s a Pulitzer Prize category for excelling in cow-towing, then the L.A. Times, you’re winning.”

Palin’s comments echoed criticism John McCain has voiced in recent days. The Los Angeles Times has said they are not producing the tape because it was given to the newspaper with the condition that it not be released. But the paper documented the substance on the tape in an April 2008 article.

The Alaska governor said the newspaper could restore its credibility by producing the tape.