Well put.

It would shock me to find that she doesn't have a small cadre of like-minded confidants that she shares her thoughts with long before she publishes them - even online.

That seems to scare me all the more.

It's time to stop gawking at the right wing freak show. Too easy a target. A couple of wars are going on and Palin and the Royal shack-up dominate the conversation.

She just lost some voters for 2012!

You realize that Ms Palin probably didnt even write her own words ~ that would be a bit too taxing for someone as un-inquisitive as she is. No, she found someone (or I suppose I should say Rupert Murdock hired someone) who is just a notch or two smarter and thats who writes her gibberish.
The whole point is that she can be the focus while he manipulates in the background. Whatever you do, dont look behind that curtain!

I only wish the people who NEED to read this would do so. Thanks for the reminder.

I don't like wasting my valuable time for people like Sarah Palin but because the national media have a fetish for her we need to pay attention so we won't be shocked if she were to gain more of a national status. People need to keep pointing out when she is wrong, lying, or both.

Since we are all entitled to our own opinion, factual or not, it is my opinion that Sister Sarah is a complete bone-head blowhard, as well as an opportunist. I will just be glad when her 15 minutes are up.

I wrote about this when Archbishop Chaput demoaned the Kennedy speech earlier this year. Here is what I said.

"...Catholic Herald includes a story by Nancy Frazier O'Brien about Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput's talk at Houston Baptist University on "The Vocation of Christians in American Public Life." The Archbishop bemoaned how, since JFK's talk to the Baptist Ministerial Alliance, Catholic politicians have been putting a wall between their religious beliefs and their political duties. O'Brien interviewed the Archbishop by email on the talk, included coverage of an editorial in the Los Angeles Times criticizing the talk and sought comments from Catholic scholars on both sides of the issue. Those who criticize the Archbishop point to a decline in anti-Catholicism in the public square and an increase in pluralism while those who support his comments think that they may be part of a move to call Catholic politicians to task on support for abortion and gay rights.

As a Catholic politician, I agree that we must discuss life issues. What the Archbishop does not seem to realize is that Catholic politicians really don't wall off their beliefs. Indeed, support for health care reform while walling off federal funds from abortion services is an example of putting the Magisterium into law to a very great extent. While Catholics talk about pluralism on the issue, what they are really saying is that they don't want to get into a public discussion on the issue with the Church. For some, this is out of respect for the bishop's office, especially for those of John Kerry's generation. Others fear alienating the portion of Catholic voters who would resent such disrespect, even if they agree with the argument made by the politician. Resorting to pluralism allows some Catholic Democratic politicians to have their cake and eat it too.

Disagreement is not without its risks as well, since many bishops have a nasty habit of excommunicating politicians that agree with them publicly, even (and especially) if those politicians are right. Many bishops, especially A/B Chaput and his ally on this issue, Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde, mistake the nature of the public law on abortion in the United States. In most Catholic nations, legalized abortion was done legislatively. This is not the case in the United States. While they understand that, they are not quite ready to concede that most Catholic politicians have no say in the question - including state governors - since the right to privacy in abortion services has been constitutionalized. Indeed, former governor, now Secretary of HHS, Kathleen Sebelius has still been advised to avoid Communion for her quite correct veto of an abortion ban in Kansas, since the ban proffered was, in fact, unconstitutional. The Secretary has been treated most unfairly and the bishops have been cutting themselves off from the wise counsel of Catholic politicians who disagree with them on abortion law.

This lack of knowledge allows the Republican Party to politicize the issue while at the same time making it unsolvable, since even the last two Republican justices appointed to the Court upheld Roe while also supporting the Partial Birth Abortion Law. If overturning Roe were really important, Roberts, Alito and Kennedy would have been told to avoid Communion. It is odd that Catholics are told to make abortion the primary issue - but when they do and support a President who runs on this issue nothing happens. I smell a rat called coalition politics.

Even if abortion and gay marriage were not, at heart, constitutional issues, there is a big difference between not fining doctors who perform abortions and active participation in providing or paying for abortion services. Telling young girls that they should have abortions if they get pregnant out of wedlock would be wrong (in view of the Magisterium), however making sure that they do not die in a back alley abortion is not (no matter what the Magisterium says) since the remedy offered by the pro-life movement does not pass the smell test as public policy. Catholic Democrats who think so should explain why and what to do instead. "

From an article last September:

The Church claims that its doctrines are based entirely on natural law, however determining what is true in natural law is the province of every thinking person – it is not dependent upon the authority of position. In practice, that is not the natural law theory held to by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Rome grants itself a privileged position in natural law reasoning based on the grant of binding and loosening to St. Peter, even though in other places this power was granted to all of the Apostles, if not to the Church as a whole. In this formulation, both Catholic politicians and Catholic voters must adhere strictly to the teachings and interpretations of the Church, even when they are wrong on their face. In other words, the hierarchy still wants us to pray, pay, obey and vote their way – even when their way is bad public policy or based on faulty reasoning or evidence.

Very good observation.

Perhaps Ms Palin could discuss this with Christine O'Donnell...

Thanks for this, Douglas. Out of principle, I hadn't even considered reading her book. Now I see that I had better.

She knows no bounds - everyone is open for interpretative attack. I'm impressed you could even read her - it is too gut wrenching for me.

I think Palin misses the point of the JFK speech because evangelicals don't find privacy to be the most compelling value on the question of religion and public life. As they say in programming, it's not a bug, it's a feature. Evangelicals generally want more religion in pubic life, not less. Of course, they mean their own narrow and fundamentalist version of religion.

I don't have all my references on this off the top of my head, but if you Google the Texas state school board fight on history standards, there are great examples there on the question of Thomas Jefferson and the separation of church and state, and how Texas evangelicals were trying to re-write the framer's intent on the role of religion in the foundation of the country. There is also discussion of it in Hanna Rosin's book, "God's Harvard".

Sadly, these types of comments will be ignored by her base, and they will listen only to the words they put into her mouth that say what they want to hear. But we deserve what we vote to represent us.