Because Janet Reno is her father!

Now that’s funny!

Your going to have to explain that. How was Palin hypocritical in the pregnecy or her daughter?

Moreover, I don’t really have much respect for Hannity’s ability (or intent) to accurately represent the truth on these issues. Hannity does have a staff and it is either a lie or negligent to claim none of them bothered to Google “John McCain” “Chelsea Clinton”, which is all one had to do to know what McCain said in 1998.

One the other hand, it isn’t fair to blame one or the other party or its partisans for what Leno, Letterman, SNL et al. or various web sites have said. That’s where most of the jokes in the 1990s came from, and I expect the same to be the case today.

A more legitimate issue here, IMO, is whether the professional press is being evenhanded in covering the policy implications related to what politicians want for their own kids versus what they want for everyone else’s. To wit, private versus public schooling is an issue and what a politician does with his kids speaks to his views on it. Similarly, sex education is an issue. (Not that advocating a policy that happened not to work for one’s own kid makes one a hypocrite, especially when all alternatives also have significant failure rates. If anything, both instances support the case for letting parents decide how to raise their kids.)

As a libertarian I completely agree with that statement, however it’s pretty rare that a politican doesn’t want to regulate some aspect of our private life. Once you do that it opens pandora’s box and forces them into the spotlight.

It would be a a pretty fair question to ask Palin: “If you believe that Abstinence Only Sex Ed. works, what went wrong with your family?” In this regard it will make it less painful to bring her family out herself.

I don’t see how McCain’s action belies Hannity’s main point.”

I think you and I may have a different idea of what Hannity’s point was then. To me that quote says something like: Republicans are better than Democrats because they would never say bad things about a Politicians family

McCain’s is a single example where this is obviously an untrue statement. I’m sure if we look we could find others.

Now if you consider the point was “It’s not nice to denigrate a politicians family” that sounds like a fair point but that is a whole world different than what Hannity was quoted saying in the original post.

The Lips say it all…..

Janet Reno was Donna Shalala’s husband. Still?

Look, this afternoon McCain, the Palin’s, and a kajillion cameras just staged a massive PR photo op on the tarmac (not enough room in traditional terminals for all those cameras and reporters) in Minneapolis greeting the 18 yo father to be. You can see a clip from CNN at TPM. This was a deliberate, well staged opportunity to put the Palin family, Bristol, Trig, fetus, and everybody, out there for voter’s consideration. Sorry. When a politician at any level does this sort of thing, the press and public have every right, and I would argue responsibility, to look beneath the hype to see what is there.

I suspect the McCain campaign is betting the media does not let this go so they can vilify them. Better yet, the MSM will let it go and the GOP speakers will claim the MSM is badgering this poor couple anyway.

I said it above, I’ll say it again. If candidates don’t want their kids (or their kids’ lovers) to be an issue then they THEMSELVES shouldn’t make them an issue. Leave them home for everyone’s sake.

U can, but in his case, the joke ended up being on us.

You really ought not to use quotation marks unless you’re quoting people or giving a reasonably realistic representation of someone’s positions.

Heck, the Daily Mail (or one of the London Papers) managed to print a fawning article about the baby’s father, talking about how he’s a “proud redneck”.

Also, can you please point to me any quotes from mainstream libertarian sites that talk about how wonderful Obama is and how “we” are all willing to pay higher taxes and support the larger state that will accompany him? Just curious. I’ll be waiting.

now let’s compare the *published articles* critical of chelsea, and amy carter – who is truly, deeply, butt-ugly, btw – with the *published articles* “reporting on the antics of palin’s kid or the bush twins. *published articles* featuring plenty of snide commentary about how the poor choices of the minor child/idiot college student reflect and prove the underlying hypocrisy of her mother’s/father’s political positions. what’s that you say? there *were* no critical articles reporting on chelsea’s foibles? wow! she must have been a perfect kid, huh? either that or they just didn’t, you know, just didn’t *report* them ….out of respect for their fellow democrats.

samo samo from the ‘libertarians’ here. the left goes into full-blown attack & smear mode, while the gop told a few jokes …. so naturally, it’s the sinister gop who’s worse. has the morphing of the word “liberal” into “progressive” become so stale now that the new word is ‘libertarian’? “we’re libertarians who think obama is wonderful and therefore are for the higher taxes and more powerful state that will accompany him!” “also, palin’s kid is a slut and possibly the victim of incest! no one can prove she’s not!” “also, the gop is evil for making a few chelsea jokes!”