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NathanJK wrote:\At the very least I think that Sarah Palin and her husband should have done a much better job of educating their daughter on how NOT to get pregnant. I realize they may have tried their hardest and failed, but any failure by someone who may run my country worries me.

Nathan, you admit to being younger. Perhaps you need to admit also to being short on wisdom regarding parenting too. You have absolutely no idea (nor do I, for that matter) as to how much effort they put into educating their daughter on how not to get pregnant. You see the fact that she got pregnant as their (Sarah and her husband's) failure, and not their daughter's.

Let me pose an analogy to you... You're in school taking a math class, and every single day, your teacher tells you that the final exam will have several examples of quadratic equations to solve. The teacher teaches how to solve a quadratic equation, and shows you several different ways to approach the solution. You receive this training in how to solve a quadratic equation every single day you are in class. You are assigned homework after every class, in which you are allowed to use the book to solve the problems, thereby reinforcing the teaching you've been getting in the classroom. Come the final exam, you are unable to solve the problems, and you fail the test. Is that your teacher's failure, or yours?

Most people would say that it is yours, because that is your grade, not the teacher's. The teacher did everything he/she could to impart that knowledge. If you were not committing the teaching to memory, then it is your lack of paying attention that caused your failure to pass the exam - not the teacher's failure to teach it. Teaching is a 2 way relationship requiring both a capable teacher AND a willing student. If the student is unwilling to commit to his/her responsibilities in that relationship, then it wouldn't matter if the teacher were Aristotle himself, the student would still fail.

You can't, with any degree of reasonableness, pin the Palin daughter's failure to abstain from sex on her parents' failure to teach her.

anygunanywhere wrote:We should not expect political figures to be perfect since only one man who graced the earth was perfect.

Can I get an "Amen?"

We should expect honesty. I have kept up with these issues the last few days and Sarah Palin has not lied about anything. She sweats more integrity than the other three on the national ticket put together.

Can I get a witness?

drw wrote:

anygunanywhere wrote:Statements like yours are totally inappropriate...You can't hold a child's error in judgement against the parents.

By running on a platform of social conservatism, Mrs. Palin invited scrutiny. Scripture is loaded with commands that we judge would-be leaders by the actions of their children. You and I will apparently have to disagree on this point.

Scripture is also full of commands concerning grace toward one another. I am a Christian with a past, like a lot of Christians, and I believe in a God of restoration. Beyond that, I cannot tell you how many times my son and I have had that talk about respecting women, and understanding the meaning of "no" when uttered by a girl. But he is also born of a sin nature and into a body of flesh (see Romans). If he falls some day, I won't condone his sins, but I will still claim him as my son. And if I were a public figure, I wouldn't preach to the public "don't do like my stupid son here did." I love him too much for that. At the same time, I don't believe that my being a social conservative is invalidated by the sins of my son.

But you're right, this is not about you or me, it is about Sarah Palin and her daughter. All I can say is that, in the wake of her daughter's sin, Palin has taken care to make sure that her daughter marries her baby's father and keep the child. So she sinned. If Christ can die on the cross for that sin, then who am I to not forgive her, particularly when she isn't my daughter. Teen aged pregnancy is not OK, but this particular case is none of my business. Personally, I think that all the attention focused on it is largely salacious, and it serves nothing.

But that's just my 2¢.

Edited to add the following:
Hugh Hewitt posted this on his blog today:

UPDATE: This e-mail is very representative of what I expect the reaction to this announcement will be from all decent people of good will:

Hugh –

There couldn’t be a clearer difference between conservatives and liberals than this one…

Obama…

“If my daughter makes a mistake, I don’t want her punished with a baby”

Palin…

“As [our daughter] faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support.”

(also… "Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family.”)

When I, myself, became pregnant in college, my soon-to-be mother in law (a hard-core liberal Democrat who had openly encouraged me to have un-married sex with her son) expressed her “disappointment” in both of us – and immediately pushed for an abortion. My own mother (a sex-before-marriage-is-sin Catholic) immediately comforted me, affirmed her love for me and said, “There’s always room in our family for another baby.” My husband and I have been JOYFULLY married 21 years and have 4 amazing kids…. What an beautiful gift of love my mother gave me that day!

Babies...Punishment vs. Love. I think I’ll take love.

Warm Regards,

I'll take love too.

Russell wrote:

Bart wrote:Let's suppose the rumor is true and she protected her daughter from paparazzi jackals. I don't know about the rest of you, but that would NOT be a character flaw in my eyes.

It would be in mine. She lied to the Alaskan public, while in office. On top of that, she is now lying to the nation while seeking office, if the rumors are true.

When you are a public official, you no longer have privacy. Your entire family is scrutinized, continually. This is the sacrifice you must make when you are a public official. Don't like it? Then work in the private sector.

Really? You know for a fact that she lied? You're comfortable with making that assertion, based on something posted by a demented Kosling?

The two bottom photos in that Daily Kos post were not even taken in the same year. The second one was actually taken in March of 2006 and published by the Anchorage Daily News back then. Kos claims it was taken THIS year. Trig Palin was born THIS year. Therefore, the Koslings are lying about that photo. Secondly, since that photo taken in 2006 looks exactly like the photo taken in 2007, it tends to disprove that the 2007 photo is of a pregnant teenager. The Koslings are the liars here. This is a really sleazy smear job of a politician's kid on the part of the Daily Kos, but it is also VERY typical of what Koslings post. They are unhinged. They have no brains, and they know nothing of proof. The post's author's claims about fat distribution in pregnant and non-pregnant females aren't even anatomically or clinically accurate. He obviously knows nothing about medicine. The person who posted this tripe at the Daily Kos is an idiot, and I would have serious personal doubts about the wisdom of anybody who would buy into it. Anybody who does buy into it needs to bone up on Occam's Razor:

Occam's razor (sometimes spelled Ockham's razor) is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae ("law of parsimony" or "law of succinctness"): "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem", or "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity".

This is often paraphrased as "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best." In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities. It is in this sense that Occam's razor is usually understood.

Originally a tenet of the reductionist philosophy of nominalism, it is more often taken today as a heuristic maxim (rule of thumb) that advises economy, parsimony, or simplicity, often or especially in scientific theories.

I have never bought into the notion that the proper way to attack a politician with whom you disagree is through their children. It's just indecent, and it's unAmerican. It was wrong when people did it to Chelsea Clinton. It was wrong when people did it to the Bush twins. It would be wrong to do it to Obama's kids, and it is wrong now. It is simply despicable behavior, and in my mind, it is a key indicator as to whether or not the candidate that this type of person supports is really the right person for the job. If I were Obama, I would move immediately to marginalize these kooks and make sure that the rest of the world knows that I don't need kooks in my support base, because to NOT do so would imply consent, and decent people simply won't support a candidate who tolerates this kind of behavior from his or her base.