I have no idea if she faked her pregnancy or not, but the fact that she came out about her daughter's pregnancy now isn't evidence that she told the truth before.

Her youngest son has Down Syndrome. The likelihood of a teenager giving birth to a Down child is so much less than a 40 year old woman. Give the woman a break. She has a pregnant teenage daughter, which is hard enough without 300 million people knowing and judging.

you know, regardless of whether she told the truth or not, it's about women's bodies.

and I have spoken to a doctor friend- teens with a down's baby is almost beyond rare.

yes, greg, you are right. standing up and saying we suck while she has a pregnant "unwed" daughter sucks but... I wrote this earlier today to a list, and I'm still thinking...

I took a long hard look at my own bias around this issue. on one hand, I not only don't care about how she chose to have her child, I think it's wrong to poke into it. it's privacy and to hear people discuss leaking amniotic fluid (which, by the way, can come out in a tiny little trickle), I was horrified. we don't talk about John McCain's penis and whether or not it can get erect, we don't don't about men's bodies, why are we talking about a woman's body?

we should know better. the women's movement declared our bodies off limits to public decision making.

On the other hand, to think she 'covered up' her daughter's teen pregnancy felt incredibly hypocritical. Like closeted gay republican politicians that fight hard against gay rights, to have someone fight against reproductive freedom (which INCLUDES birth control) be lying about her daughter's pregnancy for any reason- well, the moment was ripe to uncover the lies.

Stepping back... I have to wonder... do I want Obama to be under this kind of scrutiny? Do I want Michelle Obama to go through this kind of public undressing? will we start to comparing birth stories and decide who did it in a more responsible way?

this is starting to feel like a slippery slope. it's the kind of morality argument that is used against the LGBT community all the time.

I think, quite seriously, that she's the poster child for christian parents who are trying sooooo hard to teach morals to their children.

even good people get hit with teen pregnancy. check out the FRC's response... this is not back-firing.

this is fuel for the fire.

and I don't spell my name with an 'h.'

heathen that I am...

Step back for a minute and think about how different the reaction would be if Palin were Black or Latino and had announced that her 17 daughter was pregnant. FRC and the morals patrol on the right would have been frothing at the mouth talking about bad parenting, lack of Christian values and the permissiveness promoted in pop culture.

I am not saying that to say that we should be raising the issues with regard to the real life Palin situation, but just to point out how cynically social conservatives use their outrage (or in this case, lack of outrage) over teen pregnancy. It would be even worse if the instead of a pregnant daughter it was a teen-aged gay boy who had become HIV positive.

I am not really interested in what goes on in the Palin family, but I am amazed and disgusted that Palin and others like her think that they should be able to make family decisions in private while they try to legislate what options other families have.

I am honestly uninterested in her daughter's sexual history or pregnancy status. I AM very interested in the Governor's policy history and expreience, such as it is.....nearly non-existent.

Years ago, When I was visiting this country on business, I remeber snickers from attorneys in Manhattan about Bush I's contention that "Dan Quayle is qualified to lead."

This seems more of the McSame....

Today when I was checking out the news footage about this I took a good look at the pictures of her daughter.I saw a scared young woman with an unhappy upset look in many of the pictures.She's 17 five months pregnant and doesn't need to be crucified to feed the American political meat grinder.She needs to be allowed to be her age and spared the bad press even if it means giving her mother a free pass on this subject.While being 17 and pregnant may not be the same as being lgbt none the less it has had to be a tough one for her given her family's position and now her mothers VP acceptance.I think I can afford her some compassion and a hope she gets through this allright and without unnecessary guilt for making a mistake many teens do.

Stepping back... I have to wonder... do I want Obama to be under this kind of scrutiny? Do I want Michelle Obama to go through this kind of public undressing? will we start to comparing birth stories and decide who did it in a more responsible way?

Too late, Sara.
Michelle Obama has been under scrutiny ever since her husband declared he was running for the presidency. From the GOP trying to raise hell about her Princeton senior thesis to them trying to make her look like an Angela Davis clone.

I don't have any sympathy for either Botox Barbie or Sarah Palin. If you're gonna hold Michelle Obama to some lofty standard that shifts every time the GOP opens its mouth, then I'm applying the same lofty standard to the other women in this presidential race who don't share her ethnic heritage.

Let's see, one party's Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates are solidly married, one to only one woman, the other remarried only after being widowed.

The other: the Presidential nominee was a bigamist who dumped a woman who waited for his return from a POW camp in favor of a rich shrew, while his running mate has such strong family values that her daughter has been knocked up at 17.

Which ticket is the real family values ticket?

Which ticket will the family values bleaters going to be supporting?

Families come in all shapes, sizes, orientation, and genders. Maybe this will be the year the so-called "family" groups learn that. More likely, pigs will be taxiing to runways. They've been hypocrites for years; this nomination proves it.

I worry about her daughter and I do feel that families and kids are off limits, but I'm not willing to completely ignore the story in the sense that I wonder why she would accept this offer knowing what scrutiny her daughter would be going thru, at the same time it really resonates in my mind that this woman does not believe in contraception, so much that here she has just had a baby, and might continue re-producing all thru her duties should McCain win in the General Election and I think wow she won't be our best advocate for safe sex or any HIV. AIDS programs as it is obvious this abstinence only stance is more than a belief or lip service but something she supports, believes and obviously practices, that is kinda scary.

No matter how this cuts why is it women always carry more of the burden? Whether it is Michelle Obama, the Palins, their children why do politics seem to have to equal keeping women on the defensive.

Barack Obama made me proud when he said that children of candidates are off limits and anyone in his organization who commented would lose their job.

On a stealth level, anything that keeps the fundies in their prayer bunkers instead of the polling booths on election day. In a public manner our whole country has so much healing to do. We have so much potential if we can abandon hate and much of it around the world is toward women.

I will repeat again that I think any attacks- or perceived attacks- on Palin or her daughter will backfire in our faces.

it will make her an even more sympathetic person.

and the last thing in the world we need is sympathetic on the republican ticket.

I think we stick to Alaska being close to Russia does not make her a foreign policy expert and go after McCain for his lack of family values.

I don't get it, and I'm not it's not true, why we think that any personal attacks on Republicans will backfire but not any personal attacks on Democrats.

Republicans made up attacks on Kerry's military record. If Democrats were planning on doing something similar to McCain, hundreds of liberals would speak out against it, not because of its morality or immorality, but because they'd say that it'd backfire by making us look crazy.

If Obama had a 17-year-old daughter and he announced that she was unmarried and pregnant, the right would stop at nothing to make that an issue and no one one the right would be worried that it would make them look crazy or unsympathetic. And it would probably help them win an election.

But people consider doing that to a Republican and, whoa, we can't get personal. People would think that Democrats are mean.

I'm not saying that specifically about this post. George Lakoff just wrote a similar entry on the Huff Po. Several journalists are already saying that if Biden shows off the fact that he knows more at the VP debate than Palin does, he'll come off as beating up a poor, defenseless woman (arguing that with their typical lack of self-awareness that prevents them from seeing that they'd be the ones pushing that narrative).

It's not that any of this is true or untrue, but I want to know how we got to a place where any personal attack on a Democrat or his/her family is OK but not a Republican or his/her family. Is it how the Republicans do it? Is it the fact that our traditional media is in bed with the Right?

The pick of Palin absolutely shows that John McCain lacks the judgment needed to be POTUS. If he didn't know, he should have. If he did know, he shouldn't have picked her. McCain has a history of mistakes.

No, Obama shouldn't pick on Palin's daughter (I can, however), but he can Palin's total lack of experience and McCain's poor judgment in picking her, as a litmus test of electability. However, he won't have to. She has to debate Biden, after all. He will eat her lunch in a way that only Dan Quayle can understand.

it is interesting that a "unidentified" staff member said McCain was pissed he didn't get his first two choices- lieberman or ridge.

seems johnny does blow his stack a bit, huh?

not sure I want him in control of the big red button.