By ZAZ HOLLANDER
zhollander@adn.com

(12/19/08 22:04:29)

WASILLA — Wasilla resident Sherry L. Johnston, mother of Bristol Palin’s boyfriend, faces a Jan. 6 court date for an oxycontin-related arrest at her home by Alaska State Troopers.

Little additional information was available Friday on the case as authorities remained unusually tight-lipped about details. But Palmer court records listed her scheduled court date and a troopers spokeswoman said in a release late Friday afternoon that the charges “are in relation to the drug oxycontin.”

Johnston is the mother of Levi Johnston, the Wasilla 18-year-old suddenly placed in an international spotlight in September when Gov. Sarah Palin — who was then running for vice president on the Republican ticket with John McCain — and her husband, Todd, announced their teenage daughter was pregnant and he was the father.

Johnston’s first court appearance will be an arraignment hearing — when defendants are informed of their charges and usually enter a plea — scheduled for Jan. 6, according to the Palmer court calendar.

She was arrested around noon Thursday by troopers serving a search warrant in an undercover drug investigation. A standard press released issued by troopers said Johnston was arrested on six felony counts: second-degree misconduct involving a controlled substance — generally manufacturing or delivering drugs — as well as fourth-degree misconduct involving controlled substances, or possession.

She was released on bail Thursday afternoon, just a few hours later.

Johnston has not responded to phone messages or requests for comment left at the family home off Wasilla-Fishhook Road. Nobody answered the door there Friday.

Troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters wouldn’t say Friday if there were other potential defendants involved.

Normally, troopers file charging documents in court to back up arrests. Clerks at the Palmer courthouse said they hadn’t seen any filings, and none had to be filed until the hearing.

The Palmer District Attorney’s office prosecutes drug cases. Palmer District Attorney Roman Kalytiak said he was aware of the arrest, but he also had not seen any reports or charging documents.

Kalytiak said the standard protocol for drug arrests is that law enforcement officials observe one drug buy, then get a warrant that permits them to record conversations and document more buys.

“I’d imagine standard protocol was followed,” the district attorney said.

A spokesman for Gov. Palin on Thursday said the arrest was “not a state government matter” and no comment or interviews on the topic would be forthcoming.

The real question to ask is “Why would these hateful elements not be there?”

Republican operatives realize that there is a far right, kook element of their party that they make fun of in private, with such documentation currently existing, but pander to in the saddest, most debasing way at political crunch time.

If in place of Palin a Candidate X were to address Republican rallies arguing strongly for a different economic plan to bring the U.S. economy out of its doldrums this would call for thinking rather than vicious shouts. Appeal to the narrowest base of the party and the fringe element angrily converges.

That is where you come in, Sarah Palin. Friday you said at a rally that it was great to visit “patriotic areas” of the country.

Since you take your cues from the Republican campaign organization, right down to the insertions of gollys, gee whizzes and references to Joe the Plumber and Joe Six Pack, despite your statement later aboard your campaign plane that you were counting those areas along with all others in the country, it has become increasingly obvious to many of us what you and John McCain are all about.

The Republican nominees on the one hand when cornered by the media sound like nice folks who would never intentionally smear anyone, while at rallies and in television ads the same lies and innuendos emerge.

John McCain can praise Barack Obama at the Al Smith Dinner in New York City and assert that we can be proud that the horrid cloud of racial bigotry is behind us and that an African-American is now running for the nation’s highest office. On other occasions, John, you make a reference four years after Obama entered national public life of asking, “Who is this Barack Obama?”

Let us combine this with all those Joe Six Pack, Joe the Plumber and Soccer Mom references as well as ridiculing the position of “community organizer” and hammering Chicago politics long after Mayor Richard Daley Senior and the old machine tradition of the city that involved a Republican as well as Democratic organization have died.

As an African-American commentator said on CNN recently in a program devoted to racial politics, “When she (Palin) talks about Joe Six Pack and Soccer Mom she’s not talking about blacks.”

As Lee Atwater noted regarding Nixon’s campaign of 1968 and others like it that emphasized “law and order” particularly in America’s south, it was an accepted code term that was addressing race.

The “socialist” label that Sen. John McCain and his GOP presidential running mate Sarah Palin are trying to attach to Sen. Barack Obama actually has long and very ugly historical roots…..McCain and Palin have simply reached back in history to use an old code word for black. It set whites apart from those deemed unAmerican and those who could not be trusted during the communism scare.

Perhaps I can provide some context that will help McCain finesse a constructive lesson from the painful comparison. In September 1963, Wallace had sent his state troopers to schools around Alabama to block court-ordered desegregation. On Saturday Sept. 7, Wallace delivered the keynote at a fundraising banquet in Birmingham for the United Americans for Conservative Government, the political arm of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama. In his speech, Wallace referred to the recent bombings in Birmingham against prominent black citizens, citing the lack of fatalities as proof that the “nigras” were throwing the dynamite themselves in order to attract publicity and money.

Among the 489 attendees that night were two of the seasoned bomb makers who had given the city its nickname: “Bombingham.” One week later, their handiwork blasted a hole in the wall of the 16th Street Baptist Church, killing the four girls attending Sunday school. John Lewis attended their funeral.

Westmoreland was discussing vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s speech with reporters outside the House chamber and was asked to compare her with Michelle Obama.

“Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they’re a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they’re uppity,” Westmoreland said.

Asked to clarify that he used the word “uppity,” Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.”

Other Democrats have charged that the Republican campaign to paint the Illinois senator as an “elitist” is racially charged, and accused them of using code words for “uppity” without using the word itself.

In August, Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) told reporters, “When I hear the word ‘elitist’ linked with Barack Obama, to me, that is a code word for ‘uppity.’ I find it extremely offensive and John McCain should know better.”

Political consultant David Gergen, who has worked in both Republican and Democratic White Houses, said on ABC’s “This Week” that “As a native of the south, I can tell you, when you see this Charlton Heston ad, ‘The One,’ that’s code for, ‘He’s uppity, he ought to stay in his place.’ Everybody gets that who is from a Southern background.”

• In 2004, the states with the highest divorce rates were Nevada, Arkansas, Wyoming, Idaho and West Virginia – all red states in that year’s elections.
• The highest teen pregnancy rates were in Nevada, Arizona, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas — also all red states at that time.
• By contrast, the lowest divorce rates were in North Dakota, Vermont, New Hampshire, Minnesota and Maine – all blue states except North Dakota.
• The 5 states with the lowest average age at marriage are also all red, while the 5 highest are all blue. Which makes sense when you also know that age at time of marriage is a big factor in predicting whether a couple will divorce.
• People also start families earlier in red states – in part because they are far more inclined to deal with an unplanned pregnancy by marrying rather than having an abortion.

As the Bristol Palin saga showed, conservatives “forgive” teen pregnancies as long as the kids have the baby and marry. But this model of marriage is highly problematic.

June Carbone, co-author of an upcoming book on this topic, summarizes the data as follows: “The paradigmatic red-state couple enters marriage not long after the woman becomes sexually active, has two children by her mid-twenties, and reaches the critical period of marriage at the high point in the life cycle for risk-taking and experimentation. The paradigmatic blue-state couple is more likely to experiment with multiple partners, postpone marriage until after they reach emotional and financial maturity, and have their children (if they have them at all) as their lives are stabilizing.”

Mark Regnerus, a sociologist and author of book titled “Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers,” suggests that public and symbolic commitment to marriage remains strong in red states but falls down in practice, whereas in blue states, commitment to marriage is more discreet or private, but marriage in practice works well. In short, conservatives talk the talk but liberals walk the walk.

And I thank you, Senator McCain and Mrs. McCain, for the confidence that you have placed in me. Senator, I am honored to be chosen as your running mate. I will be honored to serve next to the next president of the United States.

03/03/2000 Motion for Trial Court Accounting Filed by: GRAYBAR ELECTRIC/ENGINEERED C1: DENIED C2: DISTRIBUTION OF BOND FUNDS DEPOSITED INTO COURT REGISTRY C3: NO OPP FILED C4: ORIGINALLY ROUTED ON 3/24/00 C5: BANKRUPTCY STAY IS AS TO KEITH AND SHERRY JOHNSTON ONLY C6: C7: C8: