The argument for parental consent laws is that if girls can’t even get their ears pierced without parental approval, they certainly shouldn’t be allowed to get something as serious as an abortion. As Palin’s spokeswoman put it last year, “She feels parental consent is reasonable because it is required in nearly every aspect of a child’s life.” But that logic is backward. The more profoundly a decision affects a girl’s future, the more vital it is that no one, even her parents, be authorized to veto it. And nothing short of death alters a person’s life more profoundly than bringing a child into the world. It is the moment when you cease to be the primary purpose of your own existence.

The Alaska Supreme Court understood this. The “uniquely personal physical, psychological, and economic implications of the abortion decision … are in no way peculiar to adult women,” the justices wrote. Palin, a five-time mother, understands it, too. She says Bristol will “realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child.”

Palin claims the decision was Bristol’s. But had Bristol faced the same predicament a year ago, and had she chosen not to bear the child, her mother would have demanded the right to force that result. As governor, Palin fought for this authority. Two weeks after the Alaska court’s 3-2 ruling against her, she replaced one of the justices in the majority. She called for a state constitutional amendment to reverse the ruling. This year, with the court stacked in her favor, she endorsed a bill that would send the court an even tougher parental consent law. She even proposed a special session to pass the bill.

Watch the video of Palin answering abortion questions during a 2006 gubernatorial debate. “If your daughter were pregnant … what would be your reaction and advice?” asks a reporter. “I would choose life,” she answers, smiling. The reporter persists: What if your daughter had been raped? “Again, I would choose life,” she replies. Not she would choose. I would choose.

Saletan is right.  This isn’t really a parental consent law.  It is a parental choice law.

I wonder if the Palins would support the right for parents to choose for their children if the parents chose abortion?

Oops.

It is the Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, CA.

It was supposed to be Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, DC.

See the pictures and read the detective work at Talking Points Memo.

You know, I had thought of Sarah Palin as a sort of dark horse candidate for Veep a while ago, but I’m now immediately struck by just how dark a dark horse can look when you get it into the light of day. Yeesh. This woman is a horrorshow. An epic horrorshow. And it says something about the state of the nation that even after all the calamity that has followed this pick, it still may not cost McCain anything.

Nevertheless, it’s funny how once you start delving into a complete stranger’s life the way you suddenly find out a whole lot about an ancillary topic. In this case, aerial wolf hunting. Palin’s a big fan of aerial wolf hunting. What is aerial wolf hunting? Basically, you get a bunch of guns, board a plane, find a wolf, and then chase the wolf with your plane until the wolf is dead on its feet from exhaustion. Then you land your plane and shoot the wolf.

Now, look. I know that mankind is locked in an epic battle with nature and, like many of you, I hope I live to see the day when we destroy nature once and for all. But there’s something about aerial wolf hunting that just doesn’t strike me as very sporting. I think it’s the whole part where you chase the wolves hither and yon across the tundra in a goddamned airplane.

Really, is this even technically hunting? I mean, I could go in for some aerial wolf taunting, maybe, where you chase the wolf around in your plane, tire him out, land, and then get out and say things like, “SUCK IT WOLF! Now you know what the FUCKING SCORE IS!” Then you get back on the plane and get wasted on mini bottles of cinnamon schnapps or something.

But there’s nothing about aerial wolf hunting that seems akin to the manly pastime of hunting that gun-toting Republicans like to extol. And this weird sort of wussy-ass hunting seems to be consistent with the GOP. Remember, Dick Cheney doesn’t actually hunt quail, he hunts heavily sedated, incompetent quail in a practice called “canned hunting.” Again, this does not seem to be true hunting. It feels sort of like cheating.

Don’t get me wrong: I actually have great fear and respect for Cheney as a hunter because he also likes to shoot Republican lawyers in the face. Why they haven’t set up a game preserve so that all of us can enjoy this pursuit is beyond me.

Pick one of:

• because then, we have to let every gutsy hocky mom run the country
• because then, we have to let every gutsy soccer mom run the Department of Defense
• because the Commerce Department doesn’t have a blue line
• because the Russians don’t care of you call them for icing
• because the Office of Management and Budget sessions last for more than three periods
• because you can’t go to the United Nations and yell at the coach
• because being an intellectual lightweight shouldn’t be seen as an affirmation of one’s abilty to govern.

She was picked for the penis enabled voters.

McCain didn’t pick Palin to attract the stalwart issue conservatives.  He picked her for the men.  The men look at her and she is hot and will vote for her.

Clue up.

Microsoft got a patent for ‘pg up’ and ‘pg dn’.

The software giant applied for the patent in 2005, and was granted it on August 19, 2008. US patent number 7,415,666 describes “a method and system in a document viewer for scrolling a substantially exact increment in a document, such as one page, regardless of whether the zoom is such that some, all or one page is currently being viewed”.

The patent’s listed ‘inventors’ are Timothy Sellers, Heather Grantham and Joshua Dersch. However, Page Up and Page Down keyboard buttons have been in existence for at least quarter of a century, as evidenced by this image of a 1981 IBM PC keyboard.

If I believed in God, then I could also believe in ghosts and I’m sure that the ghosts of Edison and Tesla would team up to fry these turds, first with DC, then with AC.

Yesterday, the internets were awash with the buzz that baby Trig Palin might not be Sarah Palin’s son, but her grandson.  A family picture from Christmas 2997 was floating around the web that showed young Bristol Palin looking a little too pudgy around the middle.  Pictures of Sarah Palin in the eight month for her first and fifth prenancies showed that she wasn’t showing much for bambino number five.

Well, things are clearer now.  The family picture was from Christmas 2006.  But Bristol is preggers now.  Five months so.  Lead by example.  I think I’m going to go trolling over at the high school and see if I can find some hot Republican girls.   At least they will be easy.

.

I got this vibe while watching it in real time that he would jump her if he wasn’t married to money bags.

And money bags is looking pretty haggard lately.  Is she doing drugs again?