UPDATED: I don't have the transcript, but Gov. Palin talks to Greta about the resource rebate check in an interview you can find here, titled "Palin and the Economy." Perhaps she was distracted in the previous interview. My bad, and apologies to the governor, if so.

Since Gov. Sarah Palin was tapped by John McCain as veep, watchful eyes have taken note of nearly every misstep and misstatement Palin made on the trail. Some of them seem fairly petty. But some, like the fact that she supposedly told Congress "thanks but no thanks" to the Bridge to Nowhere, were significant. They were significant because they were such obvious distortions of her record. Sure, Joe Biden gaffed all the time, but they were gaffes. Unlike Palin, he never seemed to knowingly lie or mislead. Palin did that more than once, and it seems she isn't finished.

In Palin's interview with Greta Van Susteren that aired on Fox News last night, Van Susteren asked Palin about the $1,200 check that Alaskans received this year. That would have been the resource rebate check that she fought hard for and pushed into law.

This year, Alaskans got that, on top of the $2,069 Permanent fund check. In total, every Alaskan that was eligible for a Permanent fund check got $3,269.

That extra $1,200 was from the spoils of a huge new windfall profits tax on the oil companies.

But Palin didn't say that. Instead, she told Van Susteren that the $1,200 was the Alaska Permanent fund dividend check.

Here's part of the transcript:

VAN SUSTEREN: ...Most Americans don't understand. What is this $1,200 check these Alaskans are getting?

PALIN: It is the Alaska permanent fund dividend check. Every year as oil development takes place and revenues derived from this development, a chunk of the money goes into the stock market and makes the money for Alaskans and it goes into the permanent fund. It is about a $30 billion fund right now, it's a savings account.

And then Alaskans get a dividend as a result of the savings in that account.

And it is good, because our constitution says that it is Alaskans who own resources underground. It is not like other states where perhaps the oil company actually owns all the resources underground and they're the ones that solely benefit from development. Here in Alaska we partner with the oil industry...

But our constitution says that Alaskans own the resources, so they derive benefit every time the resource is developed and the money is made on it. That is what the Alaska permanent fund dividend check is every year that people get...

And she goes on and on. It's highly improbably that this was just a mistake. That $1200 was just too specific. The rebate check was one of her crowning achievements this year. She took criticism from it from her own party. To some Republican lawmakers, it smelled suspiciously like Socialism.

So why did she lie? Imagine how the truth would sound to the average Fox viewer: "In Alaska, we raised taxes on the rich oil companies, and with that money, spread the wealth around, also."