Breaking! McCain to Revoke Palin Nomination

According to comments from classmates and other members of the community, Bristol Palin was out of school during what would have been the last trimester of the governor's pregnany due to a bad case of mono. A case so severe, according to the Palin family, Bristol missed nearly 5 months of school.

Because we just heard from Josh Moffet, a 19-year-old Seward, Alaska resident a tipster alerted us had been involved in a car accident with Bristol when she "would" have been seven months pregnant with baby trig. We already know her mother was not showing much bump action around that time. But was Bristol?

Via MySpace mail of course:

Hi Maureen, Honestly I was a little distracted with her safety rather than her stomach. I don't recall her being pregnant at all, she may have been wearing a coat. No one else at the scene of the accident mentioned the word pregnant so I would say that either no one noticed or she wasn't pregnant. I do find it odd, I don't support McCain, but I don't see what this has to do with him. The public should realize how bad of a politician he is, and not try to dig up dirt on everyone that he associates with. Don't you think that it's probably hard enough having a mentally challenged child (regardless who it might have come out of) to take care of.

Re: Not a Soccer Mom (Post 3383079)
the top foto looks p-shopped to me.

it looks to me like palin is in the yellow trackers while the other one in red was dropped in.

and i'm not sure, but the one in red looks sorta like that woman journalist from several years back; linda something..

my niece tells us that this rumor has been floating around for a very long time.

Linda Ellerbe.

Irrelevant as no one cared when Palin was a Governor

Nevertheless, until this photo is debunked, we look stupid pushing this rumor.

Let me address one question being lobbed at me. Is raising questions about the Palin pregnancy a smear campaign? Here's why it's not. The circumstantial evidence for weirdness around this pregnancy is so great that legitimate questions arise - questions anyone with common sense would ask. The answers to those questions can easily be provided. This is an easier call than the "cross in the dirt" story, which will never be resolved one way or another. The McCain-Palin campaign can resolve this now with medical records, as are mandated for presidential candidates anyway.

The job of a press is to ask questions which have a basis in fact. Read for yourself the full chronology here. See whether you are certain there are no legitimate questions worth asking. I have claimed nothing. I am asking the McCain campaign to resolve a factual question which they must already have covered in the vetting process. After all, this baby was a centerpiece of the public case for Palin made by the Republicans. They made it an issue - and therefore it is legitimate to ask questions about it. That's all.

A commenter at Political Animal (where I crossposted this) notes that the Frontiersman archives are online. I checked by running this search, which is on "Sarah Palin", starting in 1980, ordered by date with the oldest articles first. It lists no articles before 1998, even though Sarah Palin was elected to the City Council in 1992, and became Mayor of Wasilla in 1996.

The archive page says that not "the archives are not a complete reference to all items published in our newspaper but only reflect those items that have been posted on our website." My search turned up one article from 1998, and three each from 1999 and 2000; the pace doesn't really pick up until Sept. 2001. Since Palin was Mayor throughout those years, I assume that there are articles from 1998-2001 that didn't make the archive.

In short: if I were vetting Palin, I would definitely want to see the physical archives, not just the online version.

Is it me, or is a statewide tip line being set up for calls and information about potential abuse of power allegations, with Sarah Palin and members of her staff and her husband caught telling big, fat lies about their involvement in "abuse of power" allegations in the midst of a family custody wrangle a fairly big deal when you are looking at a running mate? Or where there are allegations of a wrongful firing to spite the man who wouldn't fire her former brother-in-law?

Doesn't this all sound like an episode of Dr. Phil gone wild rather than a presidential campaign?

Whatever the personal angle in all of this, the public interest question ought to be asked whether or not Palin was using the power of her office to settle a personal score, and whether said actions constituted a misuse of public funds, resources or otherwise distracted from the duties of her office and those of her employees involved in the ensuing mess.

Isn't this about as basic a vetting question as you get in a Veep selection process?

"Are you currently or have you ever been involved in a criminal and/or civil investigation of wrongdoing? Do you have any depositions forthcoming in any legal matters? Have ethics questions arisen during your tenure in elected office which resulted in any investigative matter being opened? If so, please describe."

I mean, honestly, any vetting process at all should have uncovered something this basic, shouldn't it? If, in fact, there was any vetting process other than "she's my soulmate, let's pick her."

And if John McCain and his staff are so sloppy that they missed something that has been all over the evening news and newspapers in Alaska? What other corners has McCain been cutting that the public ought to know about? What other really obvious details is McCain missing on an array of other important matters?

How can anyone in America trust McCain's judgment when he didn't even bother to do basic homework on something as important as selecting his VP candidate?