Hypocrisy

Via Think Progress:

“We’re not going to spend $3 million of your tax dollars to study the DNA of bears in Montana,” McCain has said during this year’s campaign, referring to a study he’s mocked for years of whether grizzlies need to keep their status as an endangered species.

Palin, meanwhile, has requested $3.2 million to be spent in part researching the “genetics of harbor seals,” in one of the state’s many requests for federal funding of research into Alaska’s fauna.

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Additionally, this isn’t the first time McCain’s efforts to make earmarks “famous” have conflicted with Palin. CNN reports today that “McCain criticized two of his future running mate’s hometown projects in broadsides in 2001 against congressional ‘pork-barrel’ spending”:

In a 2001 statement opposing a transportation spending bill McCain singled out for criticism about $3 million worth of those projects. McCain’s list of “objectionable” spending included a $2.5 million road project for the town that then had a population of 5,500, as well as a $450,000 appropriation for an agricultural processing plant there.

The McCain-Palin campaign defended the conflict in a statement, saying that “Palin was forced to work within the current system to obtain critical funding for a growing city.” Somehow, projects that McCain once considered “objectionable” are now deemed “critical” by his campaign.