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"Maybe Palin had an anomalous pregnancy that showed far, far less than her previous ones..."

"... one that went from close to nothing to a serious bump in two weeks. Maybe the angle in the photo is misleading, and leaning toward us her pregnancy is concealed. Maybe her fifth labor really did take 26 hours combined via a speaking engagement (as amniotic fluid was leaking) and an 11 hour airplane flight (when a birth could have begun at any moment at extreme risk to the child), and maybe the bizarre and, to my mind, incredible stories she has told about the pregnancy and labor are true (there is still a chance they are). But if all these things are true, the Palin camp has had months to provide what would be instantly available records to dismiss all and every 'insane' blog speculation about this. And yet none came - on or off the record."

Andrew Sullivan is still on the case. Why?

Maybe I am crazy to even wonder. Or maybe we have witnessed one of the biggest frauds in American political history and the biggest failures among the American media in a very, very long time.

All I know is: the media refuses to ask and doesn't want to know and failed to demand medical records. All I know is that some journalists - like the Washington Post's Howie Kurtz - even tried to discredit the integrity of bloggers for asking. And yet in the campaign, the pregnancy and baby were offered at every moment as a reason to vote for Palin.

At every moment? Come on. The baby was used against her more than it was used for her. Much more. She was criticized for thinking she could properly attend to a "special needs" baby and take on a job with heavy responsibilities.

If the Bridge To Nowhere is worth checking out, why aren't the pregnancy's bizarre details?

Because the Bridge to Nowhere involved public, government actions, and the pregnancy was something happening inside her body as a result of purely private behavior.

Without the Down Syndrome pregnancy, Palin would not have had the rock-star appeal to the pro-life base that contributed to her selection.

Oh, yes, she would have.

She made it a political issue by holding up the baby at the convention.

All the candidates display their children at the convention, and the public normally keeps a respectful distance. We note that they are sweet and cute and we move on to matters of public concern.

I do not know the truth and have never claimed that Palin is lying. I have always stated that bringing a baby with Down Syndrome into the world is a noble and beautiful thing. I have simply asked, given the implausible, if possible, circumstances, that a person running for vice-president provide some basic evidence for a very strange and unclear story. For a photograph of Palin pregnant with one of her previous children, [follow the link]. Compare and contrast. Remember that, as a general rule, pregnant mothers show more with each successive pregnancy...

Oh, for God's sake, stop obsessing over that woman's belly!

Full post as published by Althouse on December 05, 2008 (boomark / email).