Restraining order against stalker extended for Gov. Palin (Updated)

Christy flew to Alaska on Palin's birthday this year
*
Sarah Palin has won a round in court against the 19-year-old Pennsylvanian who has admitted that he stalked her, as a restraining order against him has been extended for six months:

However, a court magistrate denied requests for protective orders against Shawn Christy of McAdoo filed by Palin's father, Chuck Heath, and her friend Kristan Cole, saying the two failed to take part in Monday's hearing.

Magistrate Jonathon Lack also denied protective-order requests by Heath and Cole against Christy's parents, Craig and Karen Christy, for the same reason. But he told the Christy family that any further contact with Heath or Cole could lead to a restraining order

Judge Lack also issued a restraining order for Gov. Palin against Craig Christy, who allegedly left a number of harassing telephone messages for Palin's parents and contacted Cole's children on Facebook.

Update: Additional details from Reuters

- JP

Hearing Monday in Palin stalker case

Psychiatrist: Christy's sense of grandiosity "could turn somewhat paranoid."
*
A court magistrate will consider a request by Sarah Palin for a six month extension of the restraining order against a 19-year-old who is accused of stalking her:

Palin's father, Chuck Heath, and her friend, Kristan Cole, are also seeking long-term protective orders against Christy's parents, Craig and Karen Christy.

Craig Christy, also of Pennsylvania, is accused of barraging Palin's parents with harassing telephone messages, including 26 in one day, and contacting Cole's children on Facebook. Cole's request for a protective order against Karen Christy was denied last month.

Palin and Cole obtained original restraining orders against Shawn Christy last year, stating in court documents that he threatened them, sent a receipt for a gun purchase and said he was buying a one-way ticket to Alaska. This year, Shawn Christy flew to Alaska on Palin's February birthday, spending just one day in Anchorage - about 40 miles from Palin's hometown of Wasilla - before returning to Pennsylvania. The visit was monitored by authorities.

"When you combine, you know, all the evidence that includes the parents' threats, including threats that they're not going to end this hellish game until we pony up hundreds of thousands of dollars - that's extortion, I believe - you combine all those pieces of evidence and any reasonable person would fear for their safety, for their family's safety," Palin testified at a recent hearing. "Especially when Shawn Christy traveled to Alaska, I believe just to prove that he had the means and the ways to travel to Alaska from the East Coast."

Magistrate Jonathan Lack issued temporary restraining orders against the Christys last month and set Monday's court date to deal with the long-term orders.

[More]

- JP

Quote of the Day (January 2, 2011)

*
Politico Live:

"Sen.-elect Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) believes Sarah Palin would have shot at carrying his home state. Asked on NBC's 'Meet the Press' if the former Alaska governor - assuming she becomes the 2012 Republican nominee for president - could win Pennsylvania, Toomey allowed, 'It is possible.'"

- JP

Gov. Palin wows the crowd at Bucks County fundraiser

*



At a fundraiser expected to bring in $250,000 for a Philadelphia area Christian school Tuesday night, Sarah Palin teased her audience with the prospect of a 2012 presidential run:

After an alumnus of the private school, north of Doylestown in Bucks County, finished an uplifting performance of "God Bless America," she coyly asked him, "Would you like to sing that at an Inauguration?"

It was just what the crowd... wanted to hear. For an hour, the audience of students, parents and alumni listened as the former Alaska governor delivered a speech that was part homespun tales from the Palin household and part hardball tea party politics.

At the end of her program, the school's chancellor, Dean Whiteway, returned to the question on everyone's mind: Under what circumstances would she consider running for president?

"Goodness gracious," Palin answered. "I'm speechless."

She said it would take "prayerful consideration and polling of my family" before she would make up her mind on whether to run in 2012. "I would be in it to win it," Palin said. "I wouldn't do it just to shake things up." She added, "I would certainly have to put a lot more thought into it than what I could give you today."

The governor devoted much of her speech to the idea of American exceptionalism and the nation's Judeo-Christian heritage:

"We must continue to build on our Judeo-Christian heritage, and it's nothing to apologize for," Palin, hero of the surging tea-party movement and a possible 2012 presidential candidate, told about 700 donors at the Plumstead Christian School, in upper Bucks County.

It was the biggest applause line for Palin, who spoke frequently in her roughly 30-minute speech and a question-and-answer session with students of both the role of faith in her life and political career and of her belief that God should play a greater role in the public square.

[...]

At one point, the 2008 vice-presidential candidate and icon of conservative feminism said of bedrock beliefs in the Constitution and in the values of freedom that "something seems to be missing, and especially in the last year or two."

Later, she criticized Obama's call in the 2008 campaign for a "fundamental transformation" of America, saying that what the nation instead needed was a "fundamental restoration and renewal" back to its original values, which include faith.

Two anonymous benefactors reportedly picked up the tab to bring Gov. Palin to Bucks County for the Plumstead events.

- JP

Gov. Palin speaks in Pennsylvania today

*
Sarah Palin will appear at multiple events in Bucks County, Pennsylvania today. She will speak at the Plumstead Christian School this afternoon, and she will also participate in two fundraising events for the school this evening:


- JP

PA: Toomney up 45-42 in Morning Call tracking Poll

*
In Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey has moved out a 45% to 42% lead in Morning Call's latest tracking poll. for Toomey, that's a 3 percent gain over yesterday and a 6 improvement over the past 3 days.

Not coincidentally, Sarah Palin endorsed Toomey four days ago, and the candidates met for their second and final debate last night. Even if the Palin deprecators claim that the debate made the difference, that's only half of Toomey's 6-point surge and doesn't account for the other three-points.

Or perhaps those xenophobic Pennsylvanians are simply still clinging to their guns and religion.

- JP

NY Sun: Sarah Palin Celebrates Shabbat And Offers Echoes of Esther

*
The day before the Restoring Honor rally, Sarah Palin attended a Shabbaton in Pennsylvania. Benyamin Korn, director of Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin, helped organize the event, and he wrote about it in a New York Sun op-ed. Here are a few excerpts:

Meeting Sarah Palin turns out to be not the kind of celebrity thrill one experiences by meeting, say, a member of the Rolling Stones. My wife and I found her unpretentious and gracious both, with an un-politician-like sincerity. She expressed gratitude for the work of Jews for Sarah. We brought a small gift for Mrs. Palin’s family, a video disc of "Praying with Lior," the film about the bar mitzvah of a Jewish child with Down's Syndrome.

[...]

Although 65 years have passed since the Holocaust, the threat of genocide still hangs over the Jewish people — and again from Persia. Iran openly threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Hamas, with its charter calling for the extermination of the Jewish State, fires rockets at Israeli schoolchildren. Syria races to build chemical and biological weapons to use against Israel. Mrs. Palin makes it clear that she recognizes these threats to America’s ally, Israel, and wants to end them. She minced no words in her remarks to the Pennsylvania Family Institute, criticizing the Obama administration for “coddling our enemies while abandoning our treasured ally, Israel.”

On her lapel, she wore a pin showing the American and Israeli flags intertwined.

As we enjoyed our Shabbat meal, we listened to Mrs. Palin’s references to "Judeo-Christian values" — a concept well understood by the deeply religious Christian audience with whom we shared the evening, including more than a few Amish ladies wearing their traditional bonnets. Mrs. Palin spoke of how the family is the building block of society and how strong families mean a strong nation. She did not suggest that Democrats do not share the attachment to family. But she warned that the most immediate threat to American families is the administration’s economic policies, which will burden our children’s generation with crushing, inescapable debt.

[...]

But for the most part, our Shabbat with Sarah Palin transcended politics. It was a Salute to the American Family, an occasion for connection between conservative Christians and conservative Jews. It offered a chance to exchange a knowing look with the Hockey Mom from Wasilla, about our beloved special needs kids. And then she was gone, off with her “bodyguard Piper” to speak the next day before 300,000 at the Lincoln Memorial. For us it was a memorable and moving shabbat, full of songs and prayers, hearty food, and our plans and dreams for bringing back home the message of our American Esther.

Read Benyamin's full NY Sun article here.

h/t: roy y

- JP

Penn for Palin

*
The Mount Penn GOP has posted a reminder to its members that Gov. Palin will be in the Keystone State next week:

Sarah Palin is coming to Hershey, Pa., on Friday, Aug. 27, at 7 p.m. as the keynote speaker at the Pennsylvania Family Institute's Friends of the Family Banquet.

Tickets are at $200 per person ($150 of which is tax deductible) but the price includes a gourmet meal at The Hershey Lodge.

How often do you get a chance to meet Sarah Palin?

For more information on sponsorship opportunities or to reserve your seat, visit www.PAFamily.org/Palin.php. or call 800-597-9605 or click on the link below.

Pennsylvania Family Institute - Friends of the Family Banquet

Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin is hosting a a kosher shabbaton for the evening, plus a sabbath day at the Lodge, including Jewish prayer services and gourmet kosher meals.

- JP

Jonathan Chait's self-contradiction is revealing

*
Writing in The New Republic, Jonathan Chait contradicts himself and exposes one of the left's favorite memes at the same time -- all in the same sentence:

"If economic conditions remain terrible, it's likely that the Republican Party will regain power. 9% unemployment would give even a radioactive figure like Sarah Palin a decent chance to win the presidency, and a double-dip recession would give her a very strong chance of success. This means there's a significant chance that by 2013 the country will be governed by a Republican Party that makes the Bush-era version appear benign by comparison."

But if Gov. Palin is "radioactive," how then could she have a "decent" to "very strong" chance of winning the presidency? Chait's statement is revealing.

He sounds afraid, very afraid. It's not that his fears are unfounded. Chait is well aware that key members of the Obama Administration have been publicly warning that unemployment will remain high, and not just in the short term. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, in testimony in front of the House budget Committee earlier this month said that unemployment is expected to remain elevated for a "significant amount of time." Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner had said the same thing in April. And Obama's very own puppet master George Soros was quoted in December as saying that unemployment will remain high for years to come.

Also, what is "radioactive" to the relatively small minority of American leftists is benign to the majority of Americans. Any public figure who does not conform to the radical leftist agenda is "radioactive" -- if only to radical leftists. But judging from the free fall indicated by every public opinion poll recently, the liberal policies being pursued by the president and the Democrat-controlled Congress have triggered the Geiger counters of the American electorate, and they are running away from the fallout as fast as they can. First it was the independents who were overcome by buyers' remorse over the votes they has cast in 2008 for Hope and Change. They were closely followed by the Vichy Republicans, and now a newly-released poll of Pennsylvania Republicans shows Sarah Palin not only the overall leader for 2012, but at the top of the list of both conservative and liberal elements of the GOP.

We believe Gov. Palin's endorsements of a few moderate Republicans, sprinkled as they are among the much greater majority of conservative candidates who have received her blessing, are beginning to bear some fruit. They may not have set well with the absolutists on the far right, but they have helped to broaden her appeal significantly. One does not win the White House solely on appeals to the left or the right. Ronald Reagan proved that conservatives win when they make conservative principles make sense to the broader spectrum of American voters. Despite the left's worst efforts to define her as a far right winger, Sarah Palin is breaking through that false narrative to demonstrate that her common sense brand of conservatism shares common ground with the concerns of a growing share of the U.S. electorate in these tough times. Like Reagan, she remains optimistic about an American future in which that America returns to Reagan's shining city on a hill. And that is precisely where Sarah Palin is leading it.

- JP

Sarah Palin: I’m proud to support Tim Burns

*
Sarah Palin has endorsed Tim Burns in the upcoming House special election to fill the seat of the late Rep. John Murtha, she announced Monday with a post on her Facebook Notes page.

The Businessman vs. the Bureaucrat

In a year when Americans are desperate for job growth and frustrated with the reckless spending in Washington, the candidates running in the special election in Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District epitomize the problem and the solution. It’s a race between a career Washington bureaucrat and a small business entrepreneur.

Born and raised in Pennsylvania’s beautiful 12th district, Tim Burns’ story is like that of millions of successful small business owners across the country. He started a pharmaceutical technology company out of the basement of his house and grew it to over 400 employees. He worked hard and gave back generously to his community, in part by starting a charity to help children with special needs. In his spare time, he’s a “hockey dad” coaching his sons’ team. Last year, he attended a local tea party and spoke passionately about the danger that the policies coming out of Washington pose for small business owners like him. Reflecting on that day, Tim said, “I had not considered running until after the tea parties, but I decided that I owed it to my two children, who are 14 and 12, to do something. We’re in a fight for the very life of our country.”

Tim spent his professional life building a business from scratch that employed Pennsylvanians, and now he would like to bring his common sense pro-free market message to Washington. I’m proud to offer my support to Tim Burns in his campaign to bring real job creation to Pennsylvania’s 12th district. Please join me in supporting his campaign. Visit Tim’s website here, and follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

It’s been said many times this year that America is at a crossroads, and the decision we make in November will decide the course of our children’s future. The choice in Pennsylvania’s 12th district couldn’t be more obvious. Let’s send the job-creator to Washington to get this economy moving again.

- Sarah Palin

Former Murtha aide Mark Critz, Burns' Democrat opponent in the race, won't be amused by the endorsement.

- JP