Should the news about Bristol Palin really be mentioned at the the same level as Gustav?

This is an insult to the two million of us who have been enduring hardship over the last few days as we deal with the hurricane.

Just can't lay off the gutter politics and leave a 17 year old girl alone. This tabloid trash reflects on no one but yourself.

The last time I checked, 18 and 19-year-old boys have gone to prison for making their "underage", 17-year-old girlfriends pregnant.

Having once been a boy that age, I have never and will never like those laws...but they exist, and where are the police in all this?

Oh, right...never mind.

Gee, what a happy happy ending. Bristol Palin, the recipient of plenty of that fine abstinence-only education, was apparently working on several approaches to teen sex, including the experimental approach.

So, now, Mommy Sarah has explained to Bristol that, for some pretty important reasons, LIKE MOMMY'S CAREER, Bristol was gonna need to get married TOOT SWEET.

Did Bristol agree to this little plan? What about the sperm donor? Has he agreed to the fine idea of teen-age daddy-hood?

Or is this just child abuse in another way?

Remember, when you become pregnant, you are emancipated, and you make your own decisions.

This is not a private matter when your mother is the governor and advocates not teaching about or using birth control and when she supports abstinence only education. How far do we have to look for the evidence that this sort of sex education does not work? So she got pregnant. Mom apparently did not teach her how not to get pregnant. If Palin did not advocate certain positions with regard to sex education and women's bodies, then this would not be an issue.

Their respective sartorial splendor speaks volumes.

Cindy looks money. Real money. Blithe, in-your-face I-will-buy-you-serf money.

Laura Bush, not so much.

Laura looks like money-with-a-stick-up-it's-ass. Married to money. Better, married to her husband's parent's money.

Smile, ladies. Is Sarah still wrappin' bandages down in N'awlins?

Teenage girl gets pregnant. Lordy, stop the presses!

Please, if anything this is likely to get votes, not lose them. Millions of families have been in just this situation.

Obamacans, please heed the advice of your leader. Leave peoples' families alone.

hope she gets married,sounds like she was raised by good parents, despite the circumstances and probably her husband to be was too.Her child will not be raised by the taxpayers,who are so eager and willing to support young girls who don`t know who the daddy is,and have been awarded the prestigous title of SINGLE MOTHERHOOD!lets not mistake the wo`s with the wholesome.family matter! family matters!

Imagine how the righties would have reacted if Obama's teenage daughter got preggers. They wouldn't be cheering his family values, that's fer damn sure.

Don't get me wrong -- the coverage should stay within the realm of decency. But to just look the other way? Fuggitaboutit.

Lay off the kids.

Obama's right: minor children should not be fodder for political posturing by either side. It was creepy when Limbaugh was taking shots at Chesea, and it's still creepy, no matter who does it.

I'm sick of all the beside-the-point discussions in this campaign. I want a viable health care system in the country for every American. I want an intact Constitution. I want a president with a track record that shows he/she can do the job, and a veep who can, too, because bad things happen.

It would be very nice if when a politician does something wrong he/she could just say so and not have it become a national guessing game and mudfight. However, that may be wishing for the impossible, since it's been a while since one has shown that capability.

I don't care whose baby is whose, who's pregnant, who's been abducted by aliens, who has celebrity buddies, or who had lipo/botox/a nose job/a boob job. I DON'T CARE.

I do care who lies and who tells the truth, who takes money in exchange for influence, and who thinks habeas corpus is important (or even knows what it is.)

Please: Health care. The Economy. Foreign Policy. Remember those things?

Oh sure, when a right winger's daughter gets pregnant, we need to respect her privacy, but when the right wingers want to change the Constitution to discriminate against gays (ain't one's sexuality a private matter too?), then privacy flies out of the window. Or when a gay servicemember wants to serve their country, their sexuality becomes a reason for discharge, regardless of their performance. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

It's exactly your dismissive attitude that leads to more and more teen pregnancies. It's not okay to bring a child into the world at 17 when you are not able to care for it. She should be thinking about colleges, not baby names.

That the Republicans don't live up to the family values that they preach about to everyone else... who would have thought???

One's children are a reflection of the parents. It isn't a surprise that Chelsea Clinton went to Stanford and has a Masters from Oxford and went on to be successful, while the loser Bush twins are caught with fake IDs drunk in a bar in Austin. And isn't one the Bush cousins a drug addict? So, this is a real issue.

So just what was the thesis of this article? There may be a function, but no real thesis. The function seems to be to attempt to say something negative and mask it (poorly) as observation. What actually happens, though, is that the article ends up flopping on the floor with a dull thud, helped along by (A) no particular point (B) weak attempt to somehow tie together a pregnant 17yr old and a costly hurricane (C) feebly bitchy remarks about Cindy McCain's clothes . . . CLOTHES (!!!) are we really talking about clothes, dear me, how sad is that?! (D) some weird comment about money and sticks and asses that seemed to wreak of the very thing it evoked.

Did you sneak this past your editor as some kind of intern's prank?