I just moved to Renton and don’t know much about this “newspaper,” but is it common for you to print bald-faced partisan hack lies without the mere attempt at fact-checking?

Melissa Kruger wrote a diatribe you saw fit to deliver to my abode, including:

• In Alaska, Palin sought out ways to ban books from libraries.

Lie. Debunked all over the Internet and even from the original whining Wasilla librarian quoted in the old newspaper story. No books have ever been banned (more correctly, removed from the shelves) at Wasilla before, during or since Palin’s mayoral stint.

• Imagine this in a McCain/Palin administration, writ large to apply to all your freedoms of expression.

Baseless hyperbole.

• She was a member of the Alaskan Independence Party.

Lie. Debunked by the supposed originator of the rumor, again.

• Palin slashed funding for Covenant House in Alaska.

Lie. Palin’s administration funded Covenant House at a level three times greater than her predecessor.

• Palin is not your average Christian.

Hey, neither is Barack Obama!

•Palin is a religious extremist who doesn’t believe in the separation of church and state.

Wow, that’s a fat one.

• Her church in Wasilla preaches that people who vote against the Republicans will be banished to hell and that the Iraq war is a religious war for Jesus.

The one she hasn’t been a member of in more than six years? Since before the war in Iraq began? That church? How is that her problem?

• Sarah Palin can’t even run a carwash.

She was part-owner of the venture. Guess who closed the carwash down when it failed to report properly? Yeah, that’s right.

• Is this the person we want a heartbeat away from the presidency, beside a 72-year-old man with a history of recurrent cancer?

Do McCain/Palin haters really want to play this game? I find the obsession over McCain’s supposed longevity odd, given that Obama is not yet 40 and his parents are both dead already while McCain’s mother is a spry 96 year-old. Genetics and a self-admitted history of drug use are definitely not in Obama’s favor.

Jason Oleston

Renton