Weekly Roundup, April 4-10, 2011 (And an exciting week it was…)

by Blueberry Tart

Monday, April 4, 2010

A Slice of America

We began the week with Leadfoot’s FB exchange with her aunt and cousin, who – how to say it – are on a different wavelength (planet?) politically. Leadfoot tried to have a (FB) discussion but all of her points were ignored, with lots of unfounded anti-Obama rhetoric in response. What to do? The comments were full of sincere efforts to find a solution to this problem, ranging from the “don’t talk politics” that ruled my own dinner table growing up, to asking “why do you think that” or “where did you hear that”? (H/T TurtleTears), to providing some information to gently divert or counter their arguments. There were not too many of us who do not have similar family members or friends…lots of experience talking.

Thursday, April 7, 2010

A Palin-Bachmann Ticket

Next up was Patrick, who jumped back into the fray with a post on a Palin-Bachmann ticket (satire), and more seriously, the likelihood of Sarah Palin’s candidacy. Palin’s name recognition is way above all the other potential Republican candidates, and that in itself is significant, especially when combined with such a highly committed (albeit rapid and fanatical) base. While her unfavorables are also very high, the consequences of a Palin presidency are so dire that her potential in the primaries cannot be ignored. For a little relief from that depressing thought, check out the video on the Palin-Bachmann ticket – priceless!

Christopher Hitchens on Babygate!

Babygate is back in the news, thanks in part to a source close to Bristol – hahahaha, they can’t let this pass! The subject came up because Palingates revealed that Bristol was paid $262,500 by the Candies Foundation in 2009 ($332,500 including 2010), for being an unwed teen mom who preached abstinence even though she is not abstinent and publicly admitted it was “not realistic at all.” [The Palin family motto: “do as I say, not as I do.”] Patrick then pointed out a crack in the code of public silence about Babygate, highlighting a comment by British writer Christopher Hitchens, who wrote, “An astonishing number of well-informed people tell me that Sarah Palin is not in fact the mother of baby Trig, but that she is ‘covering up’ for another family member whose child he really is.” Patrick included some photos and links to prior posts on this intriguing subject. Ooh, la-la, Babygate revisited!

Friday, April 8, 2011

En Garde! McAllister Threatens a Duel!

Kathleen has been hinting about “more to come” about Babygate, and here is a big one: Professor Brad Scharlott has written an outstanding research paper on why the media ignored the story of Sarah’s faked pregnancy. This post highlights the email sent to Professor Scharlott by Palin’s former spokesperson, Bill McAllister, who threatened to “slap” or “duel” the professor. (I can’t get the image suggested by one reader of McAllister, in tights, out of my head – and it is NOT a pretty sight!) He also called Scharlott “despicable...reprehensible...a scumbag...in the service of evil.” Hmm, remember how Bailey talked about Palin's team going on the offense to deflect attention from the truth? McAllister denies having ever heard anything about the faked pregnancy rumors prior to the RNC – a claim taken up by Patrick in the next post…

Saturday, April 09, 2011

Scharlott’s Paper, And (Surprise!) Bill McAllister is a LIAR

Next, Patrick focuses on Scharlott’s work – his paper is a must read! But before I delve into the paper itself, this post also follows up on McAllister’s attack on Scharlott. Patrick shows that, based on information previously published about what McAllister knew and when he knew it, it appears the man is a LIAR, and a nasty one at that. Surprised? (H/T to SondraT for letting us see comments she received from McAllister on FB, showing that Nasty is his middle name and MO.)

The research paper presents an overview of the evidence showing that Sarah Palin’s story about the pregnancy and birth of Trig is not credible. Scharlott’s key point is that, based on the glaring inconsistencies in the story, the media should have investigated, in accordance with the first principle of the media’s code of ethics: seek truth and report it. Instead, he shows that a “spiral of silence” was self-imposed by the media (with lots of reinforcement in the form of attacks by the Palins/supporters of anyone who dared to question the story), leading the media to fail to report this story. Per Wikipedia, a “spiral of silence is a political science and mass communication theory… that asserts that a person is less likely to voice an opinion on a topic if one feels that one is in the minority for fear of reprisal or isolation from the majority.” Scharlott’s paper rings true in light of what we at PoliticalGates and other blogs have observed about this subject since Palin’s announcement as the VP candidate. MAJOR H/T to Professor Scharlott!

On a related note, I find it fascinating that Scharlott, Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan are now among a very, very small group of people in the journalistic profession who have spoken openly about their doubts about Palin’s stories about the Trig pregnancy and birth. What strikes me is that these are all highly educated journalistic professionals, the latter two widely respected (and disrespected) for their brilliant commentary. Need I point out the stark contrast with Mrs. Palin's own purported journalistic credentials?

Finally, as some readers rightly noted, Patrick, Kathleen and many of our team and those of a few other blogs have done most of the research and hard work to reveal the birth hoax – so, a tip of my favorite blueberry-picking hat to all of US for our contributions to bringing this story to light!

(As usual, I had finished the roundup early Sunday -- but can't resist updating it with some of the juicy material posted on Sunday. What a week!

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Sarah Goes Birther!

Sarah Palin is now a bona fide birther, supporting Donald Trump’s idiotic claims that President Obama was not born in the United States and is thus ineligible to be President. She now claims that President Obama has spent $2 million to NOT show his birth certificate. This is absurd, but Sarah Palin never lets facts get in the way of a good lie. The post includes a Mother Jones report on the legal effort that has gone into refuting the birther challenges. My own interpretation is that the Queen of Projection must have spent AT LEAST $2 million to NOT show Trig’s birth certificate; she is always projecting onto someone else what she has done. Joe McGinniss’ tweets, included in the post, are excellent!

Sarah’s faked pregnancy goes mainstream

Wow, Patrick is in the midst of an amazingly productive week – he’s BAAACK! This post delves further into the emerging battle of words between Professor Brad Scharlott and Bill McAllister, whose failed career as a dramatist is in full display – the guy is a diva, just like Sarah! Alaska Dispatch is covering the controversy, including Brad’s rational explanation of the basis of his research paper, and McAllister’s bizarre statements in response. Taking a page from the Palin playbook, he is in full-scale assault mode against Scharlott’s character, but fails to address ANY of the substantive issues that were raised about the hoax. Patrick shows that the record of communications between Palin and McAllister, as well as the fact that the faked pregnancy rumor was “common knowledge” at the ADN and elsewhere in Alaska for months before McAllister claimed he learned of it, prove that he is as good as his former boss when it comes to dishing out the lies. Popcorn, anyone?

Some Comments and Links:

Actcrabby: …What bothers me is that what we're all dealing with here is not really a political divide. It's a moral divide, a time to make choices that are going to count for the future, as the choices of the civil rights era did, or the choices of 1930's Germany…It's time to stand up and be counted. I'm horrified to think that my sister, who would give the clothes off her back to anyone she understood to be in need, is being sucked in by this great evil monster of fascist thought. The best thing I can say is that she did look surprised and a little embarrassed when I told her how I felt about her statements…

Ivyfree had an interesting point that I hadn’t thought of: Critical thinking skills scares the righties. They don't understand the word "critical" in this context. They assume it means criticizing, and they don't want their kids taught to criticize them…It should be called, "Judgment and decision-making skills." "Critical" is too scary for them.

Several commenters pointed out the importance of education if we are to ever address the problems that Leadfoot’s post pointed out; here is one:

High Peaks: …The ultra-conservative movement has repeatedly demonstrated its hostility towards education in general as being somehow elitist and therefore contrary to fundamental American values, as well as its hostility towards the teachers who practice such a subversive and thoroughly un-American profession. There is without question an obvious and serious STRATEGIC reason why these ideas have been so enthusiastically embraced by the right. Education shines the light of truth into the darkness they embrace. I beg all teachers who may be reading this, from college level right on down to kindergarten: Never miss an opportunity to teach your students to think critically for themselves, ever! Please do this before it’s too late. Tell all your friends and colleagues. I believe that quite literally, the fate of our society rests in your hands.

Maelewis pointed this out: In looking into foster care in Minnesota…There is also a program run through Bachmann's Lutheran Church, where one of the advantages of being a foster parent was spelled in bold type, "tax free income." That's some nice incentive. Four kids a year sound as if they were hiring farm labor to work their government subsidized farm in addition to household duties. Four foster kids plus 6 Bachmann kids, that's a houseful!

Mae also had some words of wisdom: It's time for some advice. If you really like your relatives, and you share wonderful memories, then form a pact and agree that you will always care about them and you want to stay in touch. You'll always be glad to hear their news, as long as politics stay out of the conversation. When I am faced with a difficult person, I just pretend that I am dealing with my cousin with the limited ability, and I have to give up and let it go. Sometimes, winning the argument means just keeping your own sanity. In the end, you have to do what's right for you to stay healthy, mentally and physically. Come here and vent. There are always friends here.

A snippet from a longer comment by Older_Wiser2: This is the conundrum for most of us who disagree politically with our families: While we love them from a familial standpoint, it also hurts to see them become solidified over time in beliefs that make them fearful, insecure, and ready to accept validation from those who don't act in their interests.

Aussiegal77: People who live in fear, in doubt and drowning in lack of faith in the God they profess to love and serve will always act this hateful way. And I have no illusions that A LOT of the most vehement conservatives are fellow professing Christians too. It breaks my heart because we are supposed to overcome by the immense grace of God and instead aspire to unwavering faith, to love especially those we disagree with, to love without condition and to control our basest desires - but yet clearly these christians have been overcome by fear and doubt instead. Words can't express how sad I am each time I see yet another example of this. But God is GOOD and He WILL bring justice at the right time.

Jollyroger (with H/T to Marieke02): The MSM would absolutely go into orgasmic ecstasy over a Bachmann/Palin (or vice versa) ticket. The puff pieces would be enough to drive up the rate of diabetes in any of the population who are still stupid enough to watch or listen to MSM "news."

Karenw729 and others noted that Palin will be speaking for a new non-profit that looks like it could be another shell organization: Checked out their web site, which is very poorly done. They're a new organization and it seems to me very fishy that they are having such a high-dollar fundraiser with no history behind them. You can't check up on their credibility, fiscal responsibility, that the money will actually be spent to help those with special needs. Of course Palin should be supporting charities and groups for those with special needs, but there's plenty that are already well-established and respected. Not this fly-by-night start-up. Aren't there other instances of non-profit groups being set up specifically to pay Palin for a fundraiser and then they disappear?

Cackling Rad: Wow, just in case anyone had begun to doubt that Bristol was Trig's birth mother, she springs into action to once again deny what wasn't even being discussed. Out damned spot, indeed.

Bandit Basheert: This is a woman who should NOT be screaming about anyone's birth certificate.

Hope for America reminded us that despite Sarah’s claims: Sarah has NEVER produced Trig's birth certificate. She never will unless she is forced under discovery procedures, which is why she has not filed suit, or even threatened to file suit, against anyone who says she faked her pregnancy. Even if she and Toss have adopted Trig, his date and place of birth will PROVE she faked her pregnancy.

Peacepax: Classic Karl Rove Play book: Attack the messenger

ProChoiceGrandma: IMO, that is the whole point of proving that she faked her pregnancy, to show that her judgment is mentally unbalanced and she will go to extreme measures to hide anything she perceives as embarrassing.

Okay, there were so many good comments this week, but I have to stop!

Joey found a good link on what’s happening in the states.

Juicyfruityy and WesinOregon pointed out this excellent article on dealing with people who are closed-minded and JF also pointed out this article about how “Conservatism, more and more, is the ideology of the economically left behind.”

HIG found this: @joemcginniss Joe McGinniss Bristol is her momma's daughter. http://bit.ly/fkDyUW Message to teens: hypocrisy sells.

Putting the cherry on the cake for a great week, Joe McGinniss’s new blog was up and running and included this WONDERFUL comment: “Rest assured, the question of whether Sarah is really Trig’s mother, or whether she faked the pregnancy and lied about the birth is not an issue I ignore in The Rogue.”

Let’s end with a good laugh from Leadfoot:

Just saw this on Twitter and laughed out loud:
Dear Scissors,
I feel your pain.....no one wants to run with me either.
Sincerely, Sarah Palin

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Thank you BBT -- edifying as usual!

Just a note to say that if anyone wishes to contact Professor Scharlott please do so at the following email address and NOT through his University mail. Thank you.

brad.scharlott@gmail.com

Sarah Palin's faked pregnancy hits the mainstream - Alaska Dispatch publishes article by Prof. Brad Scharlott and also new response by Bill McAllister

By Patrick

Brad Scharlott, associate professor for journalism at Northern Kentucky University, continues to make his voice heard - this time in the mainstream, and, appropriately, in Alaska. The "Alaska Dispatch", whose reporters made national headlines last year due to their highly effective reporting regarding Joe Miller, have published a comment by Prof. Scharlott, who raised serious doubts about Sarah Palin's pregnancy with Trig in a bombshell research paper which entered the public domain yesterday.

In todays article for the "Alaska Dispatch", Prof. Scharlott explains the background of his research paper (download the paper HERE), and he also talks about the furious reaction of Sarah Palin's former spokesperson Bill McAllister which was delivered in an email dated April 5, 2011. Bill McAllister had received a copy of the research paper by Prof. Scharlott in advance, and in his immediate response McAllister clearly "lost it", for example accusing Scharlott of being "in the service of evil", announcing: "If we ever meet, I'll slap you."

One of the most important aspects of these recent events is that the "faked pregnancy rumors" are now finally hitting the mainstream, thanks to Prof. Scharlott's initiative (and also thanks to the bizarre reaction of Bill McAllister). It seems more and more likely that it will now be possible to discuss Sarah Palin's pregnancy with Trig openly, that the idea that the pregnancy was faked will not be treated as a "taboo subject" in the media any more.

Prof. Scharlott writes in the article on Alaska Dispatch:

By contrast, the idea that Palin may have staged a hoax concerning the birth of Trig has essentially become taboo in mainstream media, with only a few stories in the Anchorage Daily News treating the question in a serious way.

Eric Boehlert summarized the situation nicely last July when he wrote in Media Matters for America that “back in 2008, 99 percent of people in ‘the media’ did the right thing and ignored the Trig nonsense.” And Newspaper Index shows the same has been true since then.

Why the enormous difference in rumor coverage? In my paper, I suggest that the “spiral of silence” phenomenon came into play with the hoax rumor about Palin but not the one about Obama.

In a nutshell, a spiral of silence takes place when people perceive an idea they hold is outside of what most people seem to think and therefore censor themselves, to avoid disapproval or ridicule. And the more such people censor themselves, the more outside the mainstream the minority idea becomes, until the idea is virtually extinguished from the mainstream, at least as represented in the mass media.

A spiral of silence would seem to explain the virtual taboo in mainstream U.S. media relating to the Trig hoax rumor – even though many Americans privately question Palin's birth story. Prominent British author Christopher Hitchens, writing from Washington, D.C, last year, observed in the Spectator, a British publication: “An astonishing number of well-informed people tell me that Sarah Palin is not in fact the mother of baby Trig, but that she is ‘covering up’ for another family member whose child he really is.”

By contrast, various factors – such as the aggressiveness of “truthers” and the helpfulness of conservative politicians in, say, proposing legislation relating to birth certificates – have kept the Obama rumor front and center in the nation’s media.

To make the case in my paper that the media should have paid more attention to the Trig hoax rumor, I pointed out that when the rumor first appeared in nationally prominent blog sites Palin offered no documentary evidence, such as a birth certificate, to prove her maternity.

Instead, she revealed to the world that Bristol was then pregnant, which was supposed to prove that Sarah must be Trig’s mother, given when Trig was reportedly born. But of course, if there had been a hoax, then Trig’s actual birth date is unknown.

So how could it have happened that the long-existing "rumors" that Sarah Palin faked a pregnancy were treated as a taboo-subject in the first place anyway? Prof. Scharlott examines this and other questions in great detail in his research paper, which he titled "Palin, the Press, and the Fake Pregnancy Rumor: Did a Spiral of Silence Shut Down the Story?"

I predict that it will not be long before only a few people will be able to remember that the subject of Palin's faked pregnancy was once a "taboo" subject that virtually every journalist desperately tried to avoid. So far, it has been the task of bloggers to keep the public informed and to investigate the details of the pregnancy. But once the floodgates open this will quickly change and it will become a much discussed topic.

Once the subject is in the mainstream, Sarah Palin will have a hard time continuing with her now well-known "stonewalling" approach: Refusing to show concrete evidence and continuing to play the victim of the evil liberal media.

It's also very appropriate that it's an Alaskan publication which takes the "first step" in the mainstream, because the pregnancy issue originates from Alaska, and it should be resolved there.

The truth is that Sarah Palin is unable to present evidence for her pregnancy, for the simple reason that it did not happen - and many Alaskans know it, and it is my view that a number of Alaskans are also implicated in this scandal and have assisted her to execute the "hoax."

Now we also have a "second story": The mentally-unbalanced reaction in an email by Bill McAllister to Prof. Scharlott - and his subsequent vicious attempt to damage Prof. Scharlott's reputation by sending his email to several of Scharlott's colleagues at Northern Kentucky University. Apparently Bill McAllister still believes that he has "power" and can destroy careers. He couldn't be more wrong.

This is Bill McAllisters full email to Prof. Scharlott again:

On Apr 5, 2011, at 2:57 PM, xxxxxxxxxxxx@alaska.xxx wrote:
If we ever meet, I'll slap you. In a different era, I'd challenge you to a duel.
Be advised: I am at home on my own computer. This is my final week at
the Alaska Department of Law. Nothing I have to say here is said on
behalf of the state, the attorney general or Sarah Palin, whom I have
not seen or heard from since she resigned.
The italicized word "coincidentally" in the following sentence makes
you a scoundrel:
"In the first photo, Palin is shown standing to the left of KTUU-TV
newsman Bill McAllister, who coincidentally would become her director
of communications in July. (The other person is KTVA-TV cameraman Dan
Carpenter.)"
So let's parse this. I was a journalist for 30 years. I took down a
conservative Republican congressman, Arlan Stangeland (7th District,
Minnesota), in 1990, because he used his House credit card to bill
phone calls to and from the home of his mistress. (Johnny Apple of the
New York Times followed up on the story.) In 1980, I took down the
police chief of Winona, Minnesota, over a variety of ethical lapses,
including the doctoring of a police report on an alleged sexual
assault by his son. I have won national, regional and state awards for
my reporting in both Alaska and Minnesota for television, radio and
newspapers. I co-chaired the annual conference of Capitolbeat, the
Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors, in Seattle in 2005. I
was elected four times (the most ever) as the president of the Alaska
Capital Correspondents Association.
And I threw it all away to hide Sarah Palin's pregnancy hoax?
You are despicable.
I wasn't there when Palin was impregnated nor when she gave birth, so
I have no eyewitness accounts to offer. I can tell you that I never
even heard of the fake pregnancy rumor until the VP selection. Let me
repeat that: As the most connected politics reporter in the state for
years, I NEVER EVEN HEARD OF IT!!!!
Your suggestion that I was bought off to perpetuate a scam on the
American people is reprehensible. Be sure -- and be glad -- that we
will never meet. I have far more honor than you, scumbag. I have lived
an imperfect but honest life. You are in the service of evil.

Prof. Scharlott has commented on McAllister's email in an article at the Alaska Dispatch. The Dispatch have also given McAllister a chance to respond and published his op-ed together with Prof Scharlott's article. That seems fair enough. However, the gist of his reply is that he, McAllister, will continue to resort to insults of a nasty and derogatory manner whilst defending himself, a cancer survivor, against any insinuations (real or imagined) that he is a liar.

Bill McAllister today writes in the Alaska Dispatch:

Associate professor Scharlott -- whose name aptly combines “charlatan” and “harlot,” both phonetically and symbolically -- compares himself to an investigative reporter but demonstrates none of the tenets of responsible journalism.

For example, he “buried the lead.” You have to read several paragraphs into his diatribe before you discover that the reason for my response to him was not the seemingly ludicrous premise of his “paper” -- that Trig Palin is not really his mother’s child -- but his cavalier attempt to draw me into a controversy that doesn’t concern me except in the most tangential way.

On Saturday morning, Sept. 12, 2009, I narrowly escaped death due to complications from a cancer that had been diagnosed 11 months previously. I have an incurable condition that, thankfully, is at the moment under control. But I do not know if I will get to live a normal lifespan for an American man of my generation.

It is in this context that I have adopted a “zero tolerance” policy for lies about my character. The charlatan associate professor suggests that I should have responded to his completely unsubstantiated innuendo with some helpful comment or diplomatic riposte.

No chance. At this stage of life, I’m not going to sit still when anyone alleges that I was part of an unprecedented hoax perpetrated on the American people. That’s calling me a liar. That’s calling me a conspirator. That basically says that a record of 30 years of quality journalism should be chucked into the trash because of a fleeting association with Sarah Palin.

The harlot takes at face value and very seriously my comments about slapping and a duel. That’s fine. I just think it would be incumbent upon him, then, to take every other part of my email just as seriously: That he has no reason and no proof to cast aspersions on me in regard to the Trig controversy. That to treat me as collateral damage for his ideologically inspired slash-and-burn campaign against Sarah Palin is immoral.

In classic Palin-style, McAllister plays the victim and answers not one of the many factual questions which Prof. Scharlott raises in his research paper and his article. Instead, he resorts to ugly name-calling, also one of Sarah Palin's preferred tactics (who learned from who here?) and he suggests that anyone questioning Palin's pregnancy should automatically treated as a liar.

McAllister also glosses over the fact that there would be no controversy at all without the persistent refusal of Sarah Palin to present evidence for her pregnancy - which would also give her the chance to claim a major victory over these pesky bloggers like us and other critics in the mainstream like Prof. Scharlott.

Clearly McAllister hasn't spoken to Frank Bailey recently. Might I suggest to McAllister that a telephone call to Bailey may refresh his memory somewhat. The available evidence (Sarah Palin's emails and news reports from 2008) strongly suggests that Bill McAllister must have known about the faked-pregnancy allegations, as we explained in detail in our previous post about the subject.

It is proven through the available evidence that Bill McAllister knew about the allegation in March/April 2008 that Bristol was pregnant (before she could have been pregnant with Tripp). Sarah Palin herself explained in an email from April 1, 2008, which is included in the leaked manuscript of "Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin" that this rumor is directly connected to the faked-pregnancy rumor when Palin wrote:

"Todd: Don't tell (Bristol) but rumor around the capitol is that she's pregnant. People are so mean. I'm going to nicely pull McAllister (KTUU political reporter and soon to be Palin spokesperson) aside and tell him that's not true."
Funny people maybe speculated I'm not really pg, but she is and I'm taking the heat for her! Funny, but pathetic.

Not only did Palin's email imply that she had the power to use McAllister in his role as a journalist, she also suggested that he could put an end to the rumours regarding both herself and Bristol. From the reports in the ADN we know that Sarah Palin then did exactly what she announced in the email and talked to Bill McAllister about the allegations that Bristol is pregnant.

In addition, other journalists were well aware of the faked pregnancy allegations. For example, Michael Carey from the Anchorage Daily News stated on the record on September 2, 2008 that he had heard the rumor that Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy long before the nomination, that it was discussed in the newsroom of the ADN and that one of his friends, a "smart lawyer", claimed that it's the "absolute truth" that Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy.

This rumor should have been very, very difficult to miss for anyone whom claims to have been "the most connected politics reporter" in Alaska at that time.

Professor Scharlott further writes in the article at the Alaska Dispatch:

Indeed, during the previous spring, reporters for the Anchorage Daily News variously wrote that Palin “simply does not look pregnant” (at seven months) and that she “did not get big with this pregnancy” (after she reportedly gave birth). Published pictures from the spring support the reporters' observations.

One of those two mystery photos, taken on April 13, shows Palin being interviewed by a TV reporter. The other picture shows her standing next to TV newsman Bill McAllister, who, I wrote in my paper, “coincidentally would become her director of communications three months later.” (In early April, a Daily News columnist wrote that McAllister was preparing to leave KTUU, and bloggers later wondered if he had been negotiating a job with the Palin administration while still covering it.)

The fact that I italicized “coincidentally” is what sparked McAllister’s seeming outrage.

He wrote: “The italicized word ‘coincidentally’ … makes you a scoundrel …”

And he continued: “I can tell you that I never even heard of the fake pregnancy rumor until the VP selection. Let me repeat that: As the most connected politics reporter in the state for years, I NEVER EVEN HEARD OF IT!!!!”

However, on August 31, the day McCain selected Palin, Anchorage Daily News reporter Kyle Hopkins wrote that the fake pregnancy rumor was “long simmering in Alaska.”

Prof. Scharlott comments in the article and his research paper about the "famous" two pictures which were uploaded as the only pictures ever on August 31, 2008 to the anonymous "erik99559" youtube account.

This flickr-account was quietly deleted in spring 2009, but I had taken screenshots before it was deleted (click on pictures to enlarge):







In his response at the Alaska Dispatch, Bill McAllister doesn't answer any of the questions which still surround these pictures - for example who took them.

In an interview with right-wing Alaskan radio talk-show Eddie Burke from January 9, 2009, Bill McAllister, back then still Sarah Palin's spokesperson, talked about the fake pregnancy allegations and tried to explain why Sarah Palin doesn't need to provide any evidence for her pregnancy. The interview is very enlightening also because McAllister describes in some detail how the reporters from the Anchorage Daily News tried to investigate the fake pregnancy allegations at the end of 2008 - which resulted in the famous "story that never appeared." Well, I guess the ADN-reporters might get a "second shot" now!

Watch:

(h/t: HopeforAmerica)

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Read all posts at Politicalgates about Sarah Palin's faked pregnancy with Trig - FOR THE COLLECTION, CLICK HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE AND HERE.

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As the events move very fast this weekend, please don't miss our post about Sarah Palin properly outing herself as an Obama-birther and falsely claiming that President Obama spent two million dollars in order to hide his birth certificate.

Sarah Palin thinks it's ok for "We the People" to demand to see President Obama's birth certificate (which Obama has provided!). Therefore "We the People" demand to see Trig's birth certificate!

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Please re-tweet:

http://twitter.com/#!/politicalgates/status/57070535506542592

http://twitter.com/#!/politicalgates/status/57070781045276672

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Please address any email messages to Prof. Brad Scharlott to his personal email account, and not his university email account.

His personal email:

brad.scharlott (at) gmail.com

Sarah Palin goes "birther": Supports Donald Trump's birther investigation, claims that Obama spent two million dollars to hide his birth certificate

By Patrick

Sarah Palin is getting desperate. Not being that great star any more whose tweets are intensively discussed nationwide, she now uses a new strategy to reclaim the headlines and also the hearts and minds of the teabaggers: Follow Donald Trump's lead and become an "Obama birther!"

Today on Fox News, she had the following to say to "Judge Jeanine" in respect to Donald Trump's current "birther investigation":

“You know, more power to him. He’s not just throwing stones from the sidelines. He’s digging in there. He’s paying for researchers to know why President Obama would have spent two million dollars to NOT show his birth certificate. So more power to him…

…well you know I think he was born in Hawaii because there was the birth announcement put in the newspaper. But, obviously if there’s something there that the president doesn’t want people to see on that birth certificate. Then he seems to go to great lengths to make sure it isn’t shown.”

Watch:

The claim that president Obama spent "two million dollars" in order to not show his birth certificate is complete nonsense. Maybe Sarah Palin needs to go to journalism school again to get her facts straight?

Mother Jones has the real story regarding this bogus claim - excerpts:

Is President Barack Obama spending millions of dollars to hide the truth about his citizenship?

During Obama's 2008 run for the White House, his campaign and a host of other credible sources repeatedly debunked the conspiracy theory that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii, and was thus ineligible to serve as president. But this failed to quell the "birther" movement, whose acolytes have filed more than 60 civil lawsuits challenging the president's citizenship. None of these suits have gone anywhere in court. But birthers say that's because Obama has unleashed a phalanx of powerful lawyers to silence them—spending $1.7 million in the process, according to WorldNetDaily (WND), an enthusiastic online promoter of the birthers' cause.

(...)

Roger West, an assistant US attorney in the central district of California, represented the government in a lawsuit brought by Taitz on behalf of perennial presidential candidate Alan Keyes, asking the court to require that Obama prove he is a natural-born citizen. The case has dragged on for more than a year, mostly because Taitz, a graduate of an online, unaccredited law school, failed to serve the defendants. Judge David O. Carter dismissed the suit in October for a host of reasons, but Taitz has appealed. Yet West says that far from bleeding his office, Taitz and her co-counsel Gary Kreep have assembled such a weak case that he hasn't had to spend much time on it. "I filed one motion that didn't take too long, we've had two hearings and that's it," he says. "It's not like we've devoted some sort of task force to this."

Army Major Rebecca Ausprung handled two of the birther cases against the Department of the Army that disputed Obama's authority as commander in chief to order soldiers to war. Ausprung says she spent a few hours drafting motions and doing research, and she did have to make three short trips to Georgia from Arlington, Virginia. She prevailed in both cases. "The monetary cost to the government in defending these two cases was extremely minimal," she says.

(...)

But not only have the birthers shown little gratitude to the judges who have indulged them, their court losses have also fueled the conspiracy theories that the judges had hoped to extinguish. Taitz accused US District Judge Clay Land of having improperly discussed one of her cases with Attorney General Eric Holder, and submitted a sworn eyewitness account describing a clandestine meeting in a Columbus, Georgia, coffee shop between the judge and a man with a "trim upper lip mustache, not large of stature and general olive complexion"—whom the source naturally assumed to be the attorney general. On the day in question, however, Holder was making a public appearance 2,000 miles away in Los Angeles. Expect the birthers' theories to become even more far-fetched as their legal endeavors continue to fail.

As Sarah Palin indulges in birther conspiracy theories, she doesn't seem to realize that her very own struggle to hide Trig's birth certificate will get more and more complicated - because too many very well-informed people know by now that Sarah faked her pregnancy with Trig.

So it's not surprising at all that author Joe McGinniss prompty tweeted an hour ago:

Oh, my. Sarah Palin says Obama has spent $2million to hide his birth certificate. http://bit.ly/ieGT8V But what about Trig's?

President and pretender can have birth certificate show'n'tell: I'll show you mine when you show me Trig's. http://bit.ly/e8c8QS

Palin wants O's birth certificate http://bit.ly/ieGT8V ? She must think Pandora's Box is a zone defense used in women's basketball.

So, Sarah, where is it? And just what is it that you are hiding on Trig's birth certificate that you don't want us to know about?

Could you at least please ask Alaskan Governor Parnell to confirm that Trig was born on April 18, 2008, just like Hawaii's Republican Governor Linda Lingle confirmed that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii?

+++

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+++

Read all posts at Politicalgates about Sarah Palin's faked pregnancy with Trig - FOR THE COLLECTION, CLICK HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE AND HERE.

+++

UPDATE:

Today, Michael Isikoff from NBC News delivered the ultimate "slam-dunk" on the Obama birther issue:

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/42519951/ns/politics-more_politics/

He reports:

As the top Hawaiian official in charge of state health records in 2008, when the issue of Obama's birth first arose, Fukino said she thought she had put the matter to rest. Contacted by NBC, Fukino expanded on previous public statements and made two key points when asked about Trump's recent comments.

The first is that the original so-called "long form" birth certificate — described by Hawaiian officials as a "record of live birth" — absolutely exists, located in a bound volume in a file cabinet on the first floor of the state Department of Health. Fukimo said she has personally inspected it — twice. The first time was in late October 2008, during the closing days of the presidential campaign, when the communications director for the state's then Republican governor, Linda Lingle (who appointed Fukino) asked if she could make a public statement in response to claims then circulating on the Internet that Obama was actually born in Kenya.

Before she would do so, Fukino said, she wanted to inspect the files — and did so, taking with her the state official in charge of vital records. She found the original birth record, properly numbered, half typed and half handwritten, and signed by the doctor who delivered Obama, located in the files. She then put out a public statement asserting to the document's validity. She later put out another public statement in July 2009 — after reviewing the original birth record a second time.
Story: Trump: I have ‘real doubts’ Obama was born in U.S.

"It is real, and no amount of saying it is not, is going to change that," Fukino said. Moreover, she added, her boss at the time, Lingle — who was backing John McCain for president — would presumably have to be in on any cover up since Fukino made her public comment at the governor's office's request. "Why would a Republican governor — who was stumping for the other guy — hold out on a big secret?" she asked.

Her second point — one she made repeatedly in the interview — is that the shorter, computer generated "certification of live birth" that was obtained by the Obama campaign in 2007 and has since been publicly released is the standard document that anybody requesting their birth certificate from the state of Hawaii would receive from the health department.

The document was distributed to the Obama campaign in 2007 after Obama, at the request of a campaign official, personally signed a Hawaii birth certificate request form downloaded on the Internet, according to a former campaign official who asked for anonymity. (Obama was "testy" when asked to sign the form but did so anyway to put the issue to rest, the former campaign official said. The White House has dismissed all questions about the president's birth as "fictional nonsense.")

The certification that the campaign received back —which shows that Obama was born in Honolulu at 7:24 p.m. on Aug. 4, 1961 — was based on the content of the original document in state files, Fukino said.

"What he got, everybody got," said Fukino. "He put out exactly what everybody gets when they ask for a birth certificate."

Sarah Palin never looked any stupider than today, and that's quite an achievement.

Download Professor Brad Scharlott's bombshell research paper about Sarah Palin's fake pregnancy hoax and the role of the media!

By Patrick

Finally - the code of silence has been broken! For more than two years the media desperately tried to ignore the obvious, the fact that Sarah Palin is not the biological mother of Trig Paxson Van Palin and faked her pregnancy. This story turned into one of the best kept secrets in America, a taboo subject, something not to be mentioned in public, considered "nonsense" for example by far too many liberal journalists out of pure wishful thinking. It was so secret that famous author Christopher Hitchens once wrote with deep surprise in the UK "Spectator":

"An astonishing number of well-informed people tell me that Sarah Palin is not in fact the mother of baby Trig, but that she is ‘covering up’ for another family member whose child he really is."

Now Bradford Scharlott, Associate Professor for Journalism at Northern Kentucky University, who has been teaching at the university since 1991, finally decided to take matters into his own hands, and wrote a very well researched and brilliantly executed research paper about the faked pregnancy. The paper is not only a collection of damning facts, but also a stunning indictment of the media.

If the media continues to ignore the subject, they do so at their own peril. Already the question has to be asked how it was that the obviously faked pregnancy by Sarah Palin was never seriously discussed in the US media when the story first emerged in public at the end of August 2008.

Brad Scharlott writes at the beginning of his paper:

But it’s fair to ask if the U.S. press should have treated the fake pregnancy rumor as untouchable, both in 2008 and up to the present day. After all, if there seemed to be any real chance that the rumor was true, that might mean that a candidate for the vice presidency had staged a hoax about the birth of a Down syndrome child and then used that birth to promote her political career. This article looks at what American journalists knew, and when they knew it, concerning the fake birth rumor – and it finds there was insufficient evidence for the press to conclude that Palin was telling the truth about Trig. The article then looks at what factors may have caused the press to give Palin more deference than she was due, and how journalists might have reacted differently. Finally, the article considers how the spiral of silence theory casts light on press performance relative to the Trig hoax rumor and, relatedly, the Obama fake birth-certificate rumor.

***

DOWNLOAD BRAD SCHARLOTT'S 

RESEARCH PAPER HERE!

Prof. Scharlott would like to stress that this paper is not the final version - it's a preliminary version, a work in progress, and there will probably be additions in the future.

***

Moreover, we already have "a story in the story" as well! As we reported earlier today, Brad Scharlott made his paper available to several people in advance - including Sarah Palin's former spokesperson Bill McAllister.

Brad Scharlott didn't expect that Bill McAllister's reaction would be an outburst of hate on part of McAllister - the student's newspaper "The Northener" reported earlier today:

After sending his research to McAllister, Scharlott said he was not expecting what came next.

“If we ever meet, I’ll slap you,” McAllister wrote in an email to Scharlott on April 5. “In a different era, I’d challenge you to a duel.”

McAlliser’s email continued, calling Scharlott a “scoundrel” and “despicable.” He then forwarded his response to Scharlott to five other members of the Communications Department, with the subject line “Brad Scharlott disgraces your university.”

“He should be fired, frankly,” McAllister said. “I can’t believe [the] university is going to let some idiot present a paper [like this.]”

McAllister is quick to point out, both in his emails and over the phone, that he is, in no way, speaking on behalf of the Alaska Department of Law, but as “someone who is demeaned and lied about in this paper.” Emails obtained by The Northerner were sent to and from his personal email account, and he said he spoke to reporters on his lunch break.

“I had never even heard a rumor [about this] until she was chosen by McCain, then that weekend all kinds of shit came out that no one had heard before,” McAllister said. “[Scharlott’s research] defames me and I’m just not having it.”

McAllister said that after he sent the emails to other members of NKU’s communication department, Scharlott responded to him again, this time telling McAllister that he “made a deal with the devil.”

“That blows any pretense that he’s objective or fair,” McAllister said. “It proves it is not academic rigor but vitriol.”

McAllister said he found many factual errors in the paper when he read it, such as incorrect call letters to TV stations, and facts taken out of context.

“He doesn’t come out and say it, but he is implying there is some link between the story about Trig [Paxton Van Palin] and my being hired by her,” McAllister said. “The two things have nothing to do with her. She hired me because I was the best known politics reporter in the state of Alaska.”

McAllister said he denied the charges on behalf of Palin because he was her spokesman, not because he had any role in a pregnancy hoax. He said the only part he played during Palin’s pregnancy was that of a reporter.

“Aside from interviewing her in her office when she came back to work, I had nothing to do with it,” McAllister said. “I had nothing to do with her personal life.”

Interestingly, it was Bill McAllister himself who chose to make his response to Brad Scharlott public, by sending it to Scharlott's colleagues in the communications department, in an attempt to damage Scharlott's reputation.

Therefore it's only fair to publish Bill McAllister's email in the full version - it's a memorable document:

On Apr 5, 2011, at 2:57 PM, xxxxxxxxxxxx@alaska.xxx wrote:
If we ever meet, I'll slap you. In a different era, I'd challenge you to a duel.
Be advised: I am at home on my own computer. This is my final week at
the Alaska Department of Law. Nothing I have to say here is said on
behalf of the state, the attorney general or Sarah Palin, whom I have
not seen or heard from since she resigned.
The italicized word "coincidentally" in the following sentence makes
you a scoundrel:
"In the first photo, Palin is shown standing to the left of KTUU-TV
newsman Bill McAllister, who coincidentally would become her director
of communications in July. (The other person is KTVA-TV cameraman Dan
Carpenter.)"
So let's parse this. I was a journalist for 30 years. I took down a
conservative Republican congressman, Arlan Stangeland (7th District,
Minnesota), in 1990, because he used his House credit card to bill
phone calls to and from the home of his mistress. (Johnny Apple of the
New York Times followed up on the story.) In 1980, I took down the
police chief of Winona, Minnesota, over a variety of ethical lapses,
including the doctoring of a police report on an alleged sexual
assault by his son. I have won national, regional and state awards for
my reporting in both Alaska and Minnesota for television, radio and
newspapers. I co-chaired the annual conference of Capitolbeat, the
Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors, in Seattle in 2005. I
was elected four times (the most ever) as the president of the Alaska
Capital Correspondents Association.
And I threw it all away to hide Sarah Palin's pregnancy hoax?
You are despicable.
I wasn't there when Palin was impregnated nor when she gave birth, so
I have no eyewitness accounts to offer. I can tell you that I never
even heard of the fake pregnancy rumor until the VP selection. Let me
repeat that: As the most connected politics reporter in the state for
years, I NEVER EVEN HEARD OF IT!!!!
Your suggestion that I was bought off to perpetuate a scam on the
American people is reprehensible. Be sure -- and be glad -- that we
will never meet. I have far more honor than you, scumbag. I have lived
an imperfect but honest life. You are in the service of evil.

Brad Scharlott, in the" service of evil?"

Bill McAllister will make C4P proud.

However, the available documentation suggests one thing: That Bill McAllister is a liar.

After Frank Bailey's new book "Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin" was leaked, it quickly became apparent that it contained incredibly interesting information (click to read details) about the frantic attempts of Sarah Palin in March and April 2008 to suppress the fake pregnancy rumors.

Excerpt from the book:

Of course, placid waters did not last long. Two issues immediately became irksome.

Because she did not look pregnant, speculation arose that Sarah was not actually carrying a child at all. More annoying was the allegation that she was hiding daughter Bristol‘s pregnancy. Those of us who saw Sarah daily and were there after the birth of Trig, know this to be an idiotic story.

We also saw Bristol regularly in jeans tight enough to convince anyone with eyes she was not with child. At first, Sarah made light of the story:

From: sarah
Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2008 2:30 PM
Subject: Bristol

Todd: Don't tell (Bristol) but rumor around the capitol is that she's pregnant. People are so mean. I'm going to nicely pull McAllister (KTUU political reporter and soon to be Palin spokesperson) aside and tell him that's not true.

Funny people maybe speculated I'm not really pg, but she is and I'm taking the heat for her! Funny, but pathetic.

The next day, Sarah alerted us that Bristol had already heard the story:

Yeah- Brsitol (sic) just called and heard the rumors too, but this time is was from Wasilla High kids who heard that I'm not really pg, but she is, and I'll be taking/raising the baby she's supposedly having next month. She's ticked, but made light of it with, "They think I'm pregnant just because I have huge bo obs?" Told her to just tell those rumormongers that they're invited to peer at my stretch marks, that'll prove who's really pg .

Let's summarize:

Bill McAllister in his email to Brad Scharlott on April 5, 2011:

"I can tell you that I never even heard of the fake pregnancy rumor until the VP selection. Let me repeat that: As the most connected politics reporter in the state for years, I NEVER EVEN HEARD OF IT!!!!"

Sarah Palin in an email to her staff on April 1, 2008:

"Todd: Don't tell (Bristol) but rumor around the capitol is that she's pregnant. People are so mean. I'm going to nicely pull McAllister (KTUU political reporter and soon to be Palin spokesperson) aside and tell him that's not true."

Funny people maybe speculated I'm not really pg, but she is and I'm taking the heat for her! Funny, but pathetic.

We know that Sarah Palin then DID in fact pull Bill McAllister aside, from an article by Kyle Hopkins in the Anchorage Daily News from August 31, 2008.

Kyle Hopkins wrote:

Here's a story we wrote soon after the birth. At that point, the questions were all about whether Palin should have flown back to Alaska to give birth. In the story, Palin's doctor talks about the labor and addresses questions raised at the time about Palin's decision to board a jet and fly to Alaska from Texas when she showed signs of early labor.

"The stage of her pregnancy was not apparent by observation," said an Alaska Airlines spokeswoman. The doctor, Cathy Baldwin-Johnson, said she induced labor once Palin was at the hospital.

What's the McCain campaign say? Nothing so far. I've called and e-mailed for an on-the-record response, but haven't heard back.

What's Palin's in-state spokesman, Bill McAllister say?

That it's not true. "The answer to that is no," he said.

"But beyond that, I don't know, why should we even have to say anything," he said.

McAllister was an Anchorage TV reporter before working for Palin. He said Palin once approached him - before people knew she was pregnant - assuming he'd been hearing rumors.

"She said it's not true about Bristol," McAllister said.

At the time, the rumor would have been that Palin's daughter was pregnant.

How does McAllister know it's not true?

"The governor's not a liar. That's the main reason. But also this would have to involve some sort of conspiracy with the hospital of Wasilla. They said she gave birth there. Is the doctor, the nurses ... are they all lying?" he said.

Why not share the birth certificate?

"What a thing to request -- prove that this is your baby," McAllister said. "I mean, my god, that's horrifying to think that she would have to do that."

I said one reason is to put it to rest.

"In my mind, there's nothing to put to rest," he said.

No, Alaska birth certificates are not public record. Meantime, this is all a plotline straight out of a recent season of Desperate Housewives.

So it's proven that Bill McAllister was very well aware about the "false" rumor that Bristol was pregnant BEFORE she was pregnant with Tripp - and he now claims that he wasn't aware about the faked pregnancy rumors, which are basically a "derivative" of the first rumor?

In any case, I highly doubt that Bill McAllister was the "most connected politics reporter" in Alaska back then.

Others appeared to be much, much more connected - here Michael Carey from the Anchorage Daily News states on the record on September 2, 2008 that he had heard the rumor that Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy long before the nomination, that it was discussed in the newsroom and that one of his friends, a "smart lawyer", claimed that it's the "absolute truth" that Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy:

In this context is also interesting to note that after the election, Alaska journalist Brendan Joel Kelley published a very detailed and revealing portrait about Bill McAllister in the "Anchorage Press" on June 10, 2009.

There, Brendan Joel Kelley wrote:

McAllister went round and round with the press, including with the Anchorage Daily News, which had a reporter chasing a story about the persistent rumors that Palin’s baby Trig wasn’t really hers; ADN editor Pat Dougherty perpetuated the dustup between the two with posts on his editor’s blog. Asked to comment for this story by email, Dougherty replied, simply, “Brendan, No.”

In any case, historians have to decide who was "in the service of evil" and who wasn't.

But the journalists have to do their duty first. Now or never!

+++

UPDATE:

Joe McGinniss just wrote on his new blog:

"Rest assured, the question of whether Sarah is really Trig’s mother, or whether she faked the pregnancy and lied about the birth is not an issue I ignore in The Rogue."

Say it ain't so, Joe! ;-)

+++

Websites which linked to this post:

Joe McGinniss - "The Rogue" blog

The Alaska Dispatch (here and here)

+++

"Babygate" has been covered in much more detail in previous and later posts. Far more pictures and other documentation exists. You can find all this information here:

Read all posts at Politicalgates about Sarah Palin's faked pregnancy with Trig - FOR THE COLLECTION, CLICK HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE AND HERE.

Read the old post at Palingates about the faked pregnancy with the pictures still intact HERE.

We break the "Spiral of Silence" - Read the details about the "biggest hoax in American political history!"

In addition, please don't hesitate to watch the excellent video-documentaries about "babygate" which our reader Lidia17 created - HERE, HERE and HERE.

Sarah Palin's former spokesman Bill McAllister hits back at Journalism Professor's research regarding Palin's Trig pregnancy hoax

By Kathleen

Dan Carpenter, Sarah Palin and Bill McAllister (taken April 13th 2008)

In a recent post Patrick hinted that there is more to come. Here is some of it.

The Northerner, the student newspaper for Northern Kentucky University, reveals that Bill McAllister, Sarah Palin's former communications director, has hit back at suggestions by a Northern Kentucky university professor, Brad Scharlott, that he may have been involved in a hoax regarding Sarah Palin's alleged pregnancy with Trig Palin.

Brad Scharlott is an Associate Professor in Journalism and has taught at Northern Kentucky since 1991. The Northerner writes that Scharlott recently completed a research paper "Palin, the Press, and the Fake Pregnancy Rumour" which explores the mainstream media's role in dealing with the rumours surrounding Palin's pregnancy with Trig and quotes Scharlott's motivation for doing so:

Scharlott said he first became interested in the pregnancy hoax rumor after Palin was nominated as a vice-presidential candidate, and said he was fascinated that no one from McCain’s camp chose to rebut the rumor.

In his paper, Scharlott says that the “oddness of the McCain’s campaign response to the fake birth rumors should have caused reporters, ostensibly skeptical by training and nature, to wonder if something was amiss.”

Scharlott asserts that this topic is relevant because Palin is still saying she may decide to run in the upcoming presidential election, “because if Palin has lied about the pregnancy, it says a lot about her character, her fitness for the presidency, and maybe even her mental health.”

.

“[There’s] a theory out of mass communications that ideas not in the mainstream can be squeezed out of the public sphere entirely,” Scharlott said. “I think that’s what happened with the idea that Palin may have faked the pregnancy and now, while some people may privately speak about it, no one in America wants to be quoted about it."

Scharlott sent the paper to Bill McAllister as a matter of "fairness" because he had suggested that McAllister may have been directly or indirectly "involved in a hoax". According to The Northerner McAllister's response was that he never knew anything of the rumour until she announced her vice-presidential bid. In the email McAllister asserts:

“I had never even heard a rumor [about this] until she was chosen by McCain, then that weekend all kinds of shit came out that no one had heard before,” McAllister said. “[Scharlott’s research] defames me and I’m just not having it."

It is hard to believe that McAllister had never heard of the fake pregnancy rumours before the election when you consider the fact that half of Alaska was discussing them at the end of March/beginning of April 2008 and that Palin herself wanted to prove the rumours wrong. How can it be possible that a highly experienced Alaskan journalist had missed hearing about such suggestions regarding the woman who was the Governor of his state? I find it hard to accept McAllister's denials.

You can read more at The Northerner which reveals details such as the fact that McAllister thinks Scharlott "should quit" and that he forwarded a copy of his email to five other members of the faculty. It would seem that McAllister would like nothing more than to curtail the distribution of Scharlott's paper and that he wants to discredit it in whatever way he can because it has the potential to open up a real investigation into the rumours of Palin's pregnancy with Trig.

Personally I am looking forward to seeing Professor Scharlott's research paper in the public domain. I hope you will not have to wait too long before you can read it.

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