From Time we hear that as a newly-elected Mayor of Wasilla, Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin tried to ban books from the town library:
One thing all sides agree on is that the valley was in flux. The old libertarian pioneer ethos was giving way to a rising Christian conservatism. By shrewdly invoking issues that mattered to the ascendant majority, Palin won the mayor's race. But while she may have been a new face, says Naegele, she was no maverick, not yet. "The state party gave her the mechanism to get into that office," says Naegele. "As soon as she was confident enough to brush them off, she did. But she wasn't an outsider to start with, she very much had to kow-tow to them."
Governing was no less contentious than campaigning, at least to begin with. She ended up dismissing almost all the city department heads who had been loyal to Stein, including a few who had been instrumental in getting her into politics to begin with. Some saw it as a betrayal. Stambaugh, the police chief and member of Palin's step aerobics class, filed a lawsuit for wrongful termination, alleging that Palin terminated him in part at the behest of the National Rifle Association, because he had opposed a concealed-gun law the NRA supported. He eventually lost the suit. The animosity spawned some talk of a recall attempt, but eventually Palin's opponents on the City Council opted for a more conciliatory route.
At some point in those the fractious first days, Palin told the department heads they needed her permission to talk to reporters. "She put a gag order on those people, something that you'd expect to find in the big city, not here," says Naegele. "She flew in there like a big city gal, which she's not. It was a strange time, and [the Frontiersman] came out very harshly against her."
[Former Mayor John] Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast."
The librarian, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire her for not giving "full support" to the mayor.
Let's see...Mark Twain, for "Letters from the Earth":
"Man is a marvelous curiosity . . . he thinks he is the Creator's pet . . . he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea." Letters from the Earth
Thomas Jefferson, for believing that Jesus died and was buried, like other men:
In Jefferson's version of the Gospels, Jesus is still wrapped in swaddling clothes after his birth in Bethlehem. But there's no angel telling shepherds watching their flocks by night that a savior has been born. Jefferson retains Jesus' crucifixion but ends the text with his burial, not with the resurrection.
"What Every Girl Should Know," by Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. And probably every book ever written by Voltaire, for the following:
I have only ever made one prayer to God, a very short one: O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it.
Voltaire
