The militarized zone outside the convention? It looks like Iraq.

So, we know that Bristol was having unprotected sex. She should take an AIDS test immediately. If she had received real sex education this all could have been avoided. Abstinence only apparently doesn't work very well. Not only is she pregnant, but she could have other problems as well.

Don't identify too much with Palin because both she and Republicans were very quick to say that Bristol's doing the responsible and right thing by marrying the father (who wrote he didn't want children on his webpage). So for them it's OK to get pregnant out of wedlock as long as you marry afterward. But they find single motherhood to be an irresponsible and even immoral choice. They also reject all kinds of support for single mothers. Republicans have always demonized single mothers who constitute 95% of all welfare recipients (and 70% of those welfare recipients are white, although Republicans always try to present them as black). You may not have needed welfare, but being a single mom at any age is tough and children need support from the government when families fail. It's funny that people will identify with those who will be the first to kick them when they're down. I never posted twice in a forum before, but I am just really surprised that the group that social conservatives hate the most, single mothers, can actually support a social conservative.

He says we must lay off Palin's daughter and be careful about hammering Palin about anything. The best thing the Democrats can do about this choice is to ignore it. One might delicately refer to her lack of international experience, but anything else will backfire. The Republicans are hoping she'll draw Democratice fire and therefore sympathy and then the base will get out of their easy chairs and go to the polls to show their support for one of them. Since the Republican base doesn't much like McCain and they'd been counting on Hillary being on the ticket to motivate those folks to get to the polls, sympathy for Sarah will have to do for motivation.

It is a huge leap to assume that because Palin's daughter may have received abstinence-only sex ed in school, then she may not have known about contraception.

Kids don't pay a lot of attention to what they are taught in school, or they would all be geniuses and would walk around quoting Shakespeare.

Kids learn from peers, TV, internet, and from families. No one here has any proof that Mrs. Palin never talked to her daughter about contraception outside of school. I personally received abstinence-only sex ed forty years ago, but I still knew about condoms, though I probably would never have dared ask for one when the barber pointedly asked Is there anything else, sir?

It sounds like it would have been a good idea for Bristol to have been on the pill, but perhaps she was, but didn't take it, or perhaps she was deliberately in rebellion against her parents and got pregnant on purpose to make her politics-obsesssed mother pay more attention to her. [Wouldn't surprise me.]

"As John has been saying for the last several days, this is a time when we take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats." (Cindy McCain addressing her comrads at the Republican Convention, Labor Day - September 1, 2008.)

For now, the storm is over and Republicans can breath a sigh of relief as they remove that heavy American hat and replace it with the light weight of their Republican hat.

Once again the Republicans can chant their Orwellian mantra of "personal responsibility", "ownership society", "free trade", "school choice", "intelligent design", and give Rev Rich Warren a mental high five for asking McCain and Obama to explain to the American people what their relationship is to Jesus. Last, but not least, they can demonstrate their hypocricy on matters pertaining to sex and sexual morals. Without doubt, this self-righteous assembly would be condemning the moral character of a democratic politician and the politician's daughter under identical circumstances.

...and leave the personal attacks to the PO'd yukapuks. Next step is to take away Nancy's gavel and start drilling.

What on earth does Bristol's pregnancy have to do with Presidential politics? Talk about looking for smears? Daily Kos has done a great disservice to the progressive community by pushing the story about whether Sarah Palin was really Trig's mother (Trig is the four-month-old with Downs.) When it comes to the bipolar internet, a plague on both their houses!

Sarah Palin's daughter was a left-wing extremist. She could have just killed the baby pre-birth (which, based on the posts here at Salon, a lot of left wingers would have preferred) and no one would have been the wiser.

That is the hard part about being a conservative. We believe in taking responsibility for our mistakes and not forcing someone else (like a defenseless baby) to do so.

I sympathize with Bristol because her family brought her out into the spotlight. At 7th month pregnancy she should have stayed at home and rested. It is unfortunate she became pregnant, but she is not the first or the last teenager that will experience pregnancy prior to marriage. The fault lies also with our leadership who insist abstinence's is the way to go. It doesn't matter how much that is preached as people are human and will do what they will do. What should be emphasized is exercising birth control if or when one is promiscuous.

Because nuts like Palin don't agree that a what a woman does with her own body is a private matter. Actually, she wants to criminalize women for making decisions about their own bodies-the quintessential private matter, and wants to criminalize the doctors who help them. The wingnuts can't have it both ways: they either respect everybody's privacy, or they lose their own.

"It sounds like it would have been a good idea for Bristol to have been on the pill, but perhaps she was, but didn't take it, or perhaps she was deliberately in rebellion against her parents and got pregnant on purpose to make her politics-obsesssed mother pay more attention to her. [Wouldn't surprise me.]"

You seem amazingly ignorant of rightwingnut conservaderanged opinion of contraception.

For the more deranged of the wingnuttery, the use of contraception is defacto abortion.

So, under NO circumstances would the Palin family even CONSIDER contraception for this child because 1) it is implicit approval of her fucking like a bunny and 2) it is abortion.