Sarah Palin and her husband Todd gave a lengthy interview on October 15, to appear in the upcoming issue of People Magazine. The interview covers everything from what Sarah reads to how their kids keep up with school while on the campaign trail with her. Todd and Sarah talk about when he’s the boss and when she’s the boss and Todd talks about how it’s hard not to feel protective of his wife, but he knows she’s tough, too.

Another thing that the parents of five seem to agree on is the hope that now that eldest daughter Bristol has turned 18 she won’t wait until next summer to get married. Bristol, due in December with her first child with fiancé Levi Johnston, has had a summer wedding in mind for some time, but the Governor and First Dude are hoping she’ll move the date up a bit.

Now that Gov. Sarah Palin’s daughter has celebrated her 18th birthday, the GOP vice-presidential candidate says she’s hoping Bristol and fiancé Levi Johnston – who are expecting a baby in December – will tie the knot well before the date next summer the young couple had been eyeing.

“Hopefully before that,” Sarah Palin tells PEOPLE in an Oct. 15 interview for the issue on newsstands this Friday. “Bristol turns 18 in a few days [Oct. 18]. That’s what we wanted her to wait for: 18, and a decision on her own about how she’s going to go forward, her and Levi, at this point.”

[From People]

It sounds to me like Bristol and Levi have already decided on a summer wedding. Even though Bristol is 18 now, she hardly has time to marry before the baby is born, and at that point, what difference does it really make whether they marry in January or June? Isn’t having a baby at 18 enough to deal with right away without adding in a new, young husband and a household of your own to learn how to manage? I just think it’s setting the kids up to fail. The first year of marriage is hard, but the first months after your first baby would make it even harder.

I do actually understand the Palin’s feelings as conservative, Christian parents. I grew up around a lot of those same kind of parents and they were loving, wonderful parents. Wanting their daughter to marry and provide what would be seen as a stable, family home for their grandchild is important to them, and that’s great. But I think it’s important to think about Bristol just as much right now and let her settle into motherhood for a little while before she has to settle into being a wife, too. Summer isn’t that far away, and an Alaska wedding would be much more comfortable in the warmer months.

Sarah and Todd Palin are shown at a rally in Scranton, PA on 10/15/08, Credit: Bauergriffinonline

The father of Bristol Palin’s unborn child has finally spoken to the press after months of silence. Levi Johnston spoke to the Associated Press today. He generally came off as a nice, simple, slightly naive kid. When he talked about what kind of dad he’s going to be, he listed a few of the fun “guy” things, noting, “‘I’m going to take him hunting and fishing. He’ll be everywhere with me.’” I got the impression that he’s genuinely going to try his best, but that he doesn’t yet fully appreciate how much work that’s going to be.

Even though he seems like a pretty normal 18-year-old, I felt kind of torn between begrudgingly liking him and reminding myself that this is all still related to politics and thus he may have received coaching. Johnston recently dropped out of high school (he would have been a senior) to work as an apprentice electrician – presumably due to the impending birth of his child. The interview was kept pretty simple – there weren’t any deep, probing questions about his feelings or what Bristol’s long-term education plans are. But all in all I think he came across as a fairly decent kid – who’s got a lot to learn.

On rumors:
Levi Johnston, who’s having a baby with the daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin, can’t believe all the things he’s hearing. No, he wasn’t held against his will on the campaign trail. No, he’s not being forced into a shotgun wedding with 17-year-old Bristol Palin. “None of that’s true,” Johnston, 18, said in a rare interview with The Associated Press…

On being told what to say:
He agreed to talk despite the presidential campaign’s advice in the days following Gov. Sarah Palin’s nomination to avoid the media. “They’re not telling me anything right now,” Johnston said as he checked his Blackberry. “It’s pretty chill.” Not surprisingly, Johnston was a little shocked when he learned about Bristol’s pregnancy, but he says he quickly embraced the prospects of fatherhood.

On being a dad:
Johnston hinted he’s expecting a boy, but he declined to discuss baby names. “I’m looking forward to having him,” he said. “I’m going to take him hunting and fishing. He’ll be everywhere with me.”

On his MySpace page:
For starters, he said his much-maligned MySpace page was a joke — the one that claimed he said: “I’m a … redneck,” referring to a common stereotype of poor, rural, white Americans and “I don’t want kids.” Johnston said his friends created the page a few years ago, and he had nothing to do with it.

On getting married:
“We were planning on getting married a long time ago with or without the kid,” he said. “That was the plan from the start.” While Johnston provided few details about next summer’s wedding, the planning has started: A cousin will likely be his best man, and he has asked two hockey buddies, Ben Barber and Dane Wilson, to be groomsmen. Barber doesn’t think anyone pressured Johnston into marriage. “If he thought it wasn’t the right thing to do he probably wouldn’t do it,” he said.

On hunting and tattoos:
He’s hunted bears, sheep, elk, and caribou. Some of the antlers are scattered about his yard. Last July on a caribou hunt he lost a ring that Palin had given him. He said he decided to tattoo her name on the finger and not bother with more rings because he’d just lose them anyway.

On his image:
Johnston is an avid hunter. He’s dark haired, tall and muscular, sports a bit of stubble and drives a red Chevy Silverado truck. While Barber said his friend is a celebrity now, Johnston said it hasn’t changed him. “I’m still the same old boy,” said Johnston. “I’m just a workin’ man.”

[From the Daily News]

The thing that made me wonder if he’d been coached was his response to what he thought about Barack Obama. Johnston said “‘I don’t know anything about him. He seems like a good guy. I like him.’” I can’t think of a better answer. He also said he doesn’t know much about politics, so that’ll buy him out of most complex questions in the long run.

It’s hard not to wonder how much of Johnston’s personality is him and how much is really a campaign advisor. Either way, he came off as nice and decent, even if it didn’t exactly seem like he was disclosing his deepest feelings. Hopefully both he and Bristol will grow into being good parents.

The National Enquirer gets more scoops than any other gossip magazine and I have little doubt that their journalistic standards are above the other weekly tabloids they’re often grouped with. They broke the John Edwards cheating and lovechild scandal, and if they weren’t on that story I doubt it ever would have reached the public. This week’s edition of the Enquirer has plenty of bombshells to accompany their cover story on Vice Presidential Republican candidate Sarah Palin. Whether the allegations about Palin are true or not remains to be seen. They don’t say that they’ve independently verified these claims, but quote a source. It’s possible the source has motivations to lie about Palin.

There’s the “Troopergate” scandal for which Palin is currently under an ethics investigation, which involves her firing the Public Safety Commissioner for the State of Alaska for allegedly refusing to fire her ex brother in law, an Alaska State Trooper, over a ongoing feud in Palin’s family. That’s received plenty of press, but there are also new allegations in the Enquirer’s story which may raise some eyebrows. Here are the highlights.

Sarah Palin cheated on her husband with one of his business associates

Another incredible allegation emerging from the family war is that Palin, a mother of five, had an affair with a former business associate of her fisherman husband, Todd.

“Todd discovered the affair and quickly dissolved his friendship and his business associations with the guy,” charges an enemy. “Many people in Alaska are talking about the rumor and say Todd swept it under the rug.”

[From The National Enquirer, print edition, September 15, 2008]

It’s entirely possible that The Enquirer’s source is making up crap about Palin for other reasons as we mentioned, and that she didn’t really cheat or tell her pregnant daughter to get married right away, as they go on to allege. There’s no date for the supposed affair and the details are vague. Palin seems to have a lot of enemies who could be spreading lies about her. Here’s how the source claims she tried to handle Bristol’s pregnancy at first - by hiding it and trying to make her get married before the news came out.

Palin tried to cover up 17 year-old Bristol’s pregnancy, demanded she marry before news came out

Palin dropped a huge bombshell when she announced recently that her teen daughter Bristol is pregnant. But sources close to the family say that the governor had desperately tried to cover up her daughter’s pregnancy, a potentially embarrassment for the ultra-conservative governor.

Palin confirmed her daughter’s pregnancy only after it was clear that the media already knew about it and that the news was about to break, according to the sources.

While Palin has publicly expressed support for Bristol and said that she would be marrying the baby’s father, the source says Sarah had been working frantically to get the two married before the pregnancy news came out.

An insider close to the baby’s father says Palin went as far as starting to make arrangements for a small wedding ceremony for the teens in Palmer, Alaska. “She wanted the wedding date to be scheduled before McCain announced her as his vice president - but Bristol refused,” said the insider.

[From The National Enquirer, print edition, September 15, 2008]

The source goes on to say that Sarah Palin planned for a small wedding a few days after the Republican National Convention, and that she then wanted to announce that Bristol was pregnant by her new husband. “But Bristol refused to go along with the lies,” the source says, and had a huge fight with her mom over it.

We all know how everything turned out for that family, and it’s still unknown how it will affect Sarah’s bid for the Vice Presidency - whether it will make her more appealing to voters like she has problems like everyone else, or whether they’ll be turned off by the sheer drama of it all.

Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama has urged people not to focus on pregnant 17 year-old Bristol, repeating his earlier claim that families are off limits. His wife Michelle mirrored his comments on Ellen yesterday, saying “I know that they care about their kids, and we should let them deal with this issue. This shouldn’t be an issue for political discussion.”

Pregnant Bristol Palin’s 18 year-old finance, Levi Johnston, sat next to her during her mom’s speech at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota last night. Five months pregnant Bristol, 17, was seen wearing an engagement ring while Levi displayed his devotion with a small tattoo on his left ring finger that spelled out his fiance’s name in script. Bristol and Levi looked a little uncomfortable at times to be in the spotlight:

Pregnant 17-year-old Bristol Palin and her 18-year-old boyfriend Levi Johnston displayed their commitment to each other at Wednesday’s GOP convention.

Johnston debuted a “Bristol” tattoo on his ring finger, while Bristol rocked what appeared to be an engagement ring. (McCain campaign officials have yet to identify the ring.)

In a statement announcing that their daughter was five months pregnant, Sarah and Todd Palin noted that the teenage couple planned to wed.

Levi flew to the convention in Minnesota from his Alaskan hometown on Wednesday. He was warmly greeted at the airport by Sen. John McCain.

Levi’s mother, Sherry Johnston, recently told the Associated Press that there had been no pressure put on her son to marry Bristol and that the two teens had made plans to wed before it was known she was pregnant.

[From US Weekly]

As I said yesterday, I don’t blame the family for making the decision to bring Levi to the convention and put on a show of togetherness. He’s going to marry Bristol, who is due to have his baby in December, and it only makes sense that he should show up after the whole deal was announced. Some journalists and observers are questioning their decision to make an announcement about Bristol’s pregnancy, only to turn around and ask for privacy. It’s not like they could hide her at home, though, where most of the people in their small town already knew about Bristol’s pregnancy. The news was going to get out anyway, and maybe they thought they were trying to head it off or whatever. Now we know that the two kids are crazy in love and that they were supposedly even engaged before Bristol got pregnant.

Debbie Mazar has spoken out about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy. Mazar’s mom was just 15 when she had her, and the actress says that it is a private matter and that we shouldn’t make such a big deal out of it:

Mazar knows all about teen pregnancy. Her mom had her when she was just 15 years old.

“I think it’s completely fine,” Mazar told me earlier today of 17-year-old mom-to-be Bristol Palin while promoting her new movie, The Women (I’ll have more on the flick later on), at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills. “And I think Sarah Palin made a good choice in being supportive of her daughter…and I agree that it’s private because those are her children. Her daughter fell in love and had sex. Big deal—it happens.”
But if it’s anything like her own childhood, Mazar says Sarah will likely hit some rough patches with her child because of her age. “My mom is a great mom and we’re very close,” Mazar says. “But because she had me so young, we had hurdles we had to go through. But it made me who I am today…As long as that kid has love and support, I wish her the best.”

[From E! Online]

The first thing I thought of when I read this is that Mazar’s grandmother must have been around to help raise her. If Bristol’s mom ends up being Vice President it’s not like she’s going to be a lot of help to her daughter with the baby. That’s just something that occurred to me and isn’t meant to disparage her choice to run. I don’t like Sarah Palin or more importantly, John McCain, as candidates for other reasons. Someone’s family situation shouldn’t have a lot of bearing on that.

The ‘Sarah Palin’s 17 year-old daughter is pregnant’ story is getting plenty of press coverage, and it’s spilling over into into the celebrity press and entertainment news because frankly it’s pretty good gossip. It’s controversial and polarizing and has sparked a lot of debate. There are pundits saying Palin is exploiting her daughter on one side, and others claiming she’s supporting her as well as a mom can.

The father of Bristol Palin’s unborn baby, Levi Johnston, 18, will attend the Republican National Convention in Minnesota to celebrate his future mother-in-law’s Vice Presidential nomination. That makes sense, because he’s about to join the family and Palin needs to show wary voters that her daughter made a mistake but that she and the father are accepting responsibility and doing their best. Sarah Palin insists that her daughter and the baby’s father were engaged before they learned of 17 year-old Bristol’s pregnancy.

While some say Sarah Palin is somehow at fault for not giving her daughter birth control advice and insisting on abstinence others hold up their hands and say that 17 year-old teenagers get up to all sorts of things and the best you can do is be there for them and help them live with their decisions, which Sarah Palin is doing. This whole incident makes Sarah Palin seem human by some people’s estimation.

Amidst all this controversy over her pregnant teen daughter, outlets are questioning Palin’s fitness for the job and arguing that we should be talking about that, not about her daughter. Her record and where she stands on the issues should be the focus.

US Weekly brings it down to a character issue and points out that Sarah Palin was less than courteous to the president of the Alaskan Senate, laughing along with a radio DJ who made fun of the woman, a cancer survivor, by calling her a “cancer” and “a bitch” and mocking her size. When it came time to apologize Sarah Palin did it half-heartedly, doing one of those “I’m sorry if you misinterpreted” type responses:

On January 15, Alaska governor Sarah Palin laughed along with an Alaskan shock-jock DJ who called her political rival Lyda Green a “cancer,” a “bitch” and ridiculed her weight. (Green is a cancer survivor.)

“People were so nice and were motified. Newspapers that were never Lyda Green-friendly, they demanded that [Sarah] apologize,” Green told Us.

“You know what she said? She said, ‘I’m calling to apologize. I hope you didn’t misunderstand the radio program,’” Green says. “I told her, ‘I didn’t misunderstand.’”

The Alaska state senator added, “It’s not a good way to behave. Why would anybody call a shock jock?”

So what did Green think when she heard Palin was John McCain’s vice presidential candidate? “It’s been very difficult to work with her,” she tells Us Weekly. “I wish there had been more vetting.”

Monday, Palin released a statement confirming that her daughter Bristol, 17, was five-months pregnant.

Mom-of-five Palin is antiabortion (even in cases of rape) and opposed to sex-education classes (she believes in abstinence instruction for teens).

In the wake of the announcement about Bristol, questions have begun to arise about the governor’s candor and McCain’s judgment (The New York Times reported that McCain’s camp vetted Palin only the day before her selection was announced.

“It’s conceivable a 17-year-old girl just screwed the GOP,” Democratic strategist George Lakoff tells Us Weekly.

Though hailed by many family-values supporters for standing by her daughter during her difficult time, Barbara Belknap, former president of the National Organization of Women’s Juneau chapter, is less glowing: “Here’s a textbook case of how abstinence - only doesn’t work in practice, even if your mom’s the governor.”

[From US Weekly]

It’s pretty clear where US Weekly’s allegiances are, and we can’t blame them. Most of us here are Obama supporters, and while we wouldn’t go about discrediting Palin in quite the same way we did run that ridiculous conspiracy theory story about Trig being Bristol’s son. Sometimes it’s hard to pass up such incredible gossip, even if it defies logic. Whether it’s helpful to Obama or not to go after Palin is another story, but the other side has been doing it for quite a while and it seemed to be wholly effective against Senator Kerry four years ago.

I don’t like it when people bash policies or programs by saying they failed one high-profile person so they must be ineffective. That’s logically a very weak argument and a sample of one. We have plenty of other better statistical evidence that abstinence education doesn’t work, we don’t need to hold up this poor girl as an example.

Once the news came out that 17 year-old Bristol Palin, the 17 year-old daughter of Republic Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, is five month’s pregnant, people started focusing on the father. Sarah Palin released a statement yesterday acknowledging her daughter’s pregnancy and saying that she was due to marry the father, 18 year-old Levi Johnston. Outlets quickly found Johnston’s MySpace page, pointing out that he made some moderately obnoxious statements on it, as teenage boys often do. He had some expletive-laden statement on his Myspace about how he’s a redneck. Johnston also said he didn’t want children. He hasn’t accessed the page in over a year, though, so he wrote all that stuff when he was 17 or younger. Teenagers can change a lot in a year. Johnston is about to become a dad and a husband, so he’ll need to do some maturing fast if he wants to make his marriage and family work.

The NY Daily News points out that just about everyone in Bristol Palin’s small community in Wasilla, Alaska has known for at least a few weeks that she’s pregnant. She’s been with Levi Johnston for over a year and they were attending the same high school up until mid year last year.

He’s a superhunky bad-boy ice hockey player from cold country; she’s a chestnut-haired beauty and popular high school senior.

The all-American teen twosome will make GOP vice presidential pick and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin a grandma at age 44 - just in time for Christmas.

Doe-eyed Bristol Palin, 17, and ruggedly handsome Levi Johnston, an 18-year-old self-described “f—in’ redneck,” have been dating a year, locals in Wasilla, Alaska, told the Daily News.

And the pregnancy? An open secret in the close-knit town of 9,780…

On his MySpace page, Johnston proudly declares: “I’m a f—in’ redneck.”

“I live to play hockey. I like to go camping and hang out with the boys, do some fishing,” he says on the site.

He also warns that if anyone messes with him, “I’ll kick ass.”

The Web site, before it was removed, appeared not to have been accessed for a year.

On it, he admits to having a girlfriend.

On the part where it asks about children, he wrote, “I don’t want kids.”

Mark Okeson, the assistant principal at Wasilla High School, told the Chicago Tribune that Bristol started her junior year last fall, in the town where Sarah Palin grew up.

He said Bristol inexplicably transferred to an Anchorage high school midyear, leaving Levi behind.

“I never heard the story why,” he said.

[From NY Daily News]

Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama has responded to all of the controversy surrounding Bristol’s pregnancy. He repeated an earlier plea he made before the scandal broke that families of the candidates should not be smeared, and said “I think people’s families are off limits and people’s children are especially off limits.”

Some are saying that Sarah Palin should be focused on because she shows that abstinence-only education is ineffective. If anything this case shows that teen pregnancy is all too common, although that’s something that’s been painfully obvious for years. It’s a sensational story given her mother’s political aspirations and it’s hard not to pay attention to the pregnant 17 year-old daughter of a conservative Vice Presidental candidate. It’s like a movie of the week, and this surely isn’t the last we’ll hear about this young woman.