This Reuters story caps off 72 hours of shame for the leftosphere and their pals in the MSM who trafficked in wretched rumor about Sarah Palin and her family. This led to the breach in the family's private life, and to an extent that should [sic] appal everyone. The children of candidates and officials should be off limits, even if the nutters declare they are not. I even understood the MSM's reluctance to pursue the Edwards story because of the impact on Edwards' family.

I applaud the Palin for their candor and their decision to be [sic] compleletly transparent with the public, and expect the vast majority of decent Americans of all political stripes will respect their wish to keep the young couple out of the news.

Let me repeat: the rumors that Trig Palin was actually the son of Bristol Palin were started last spring by Republicans in Alaska that don't like Sarah Palin. None of the well-trafficked left-wing bloggers ran with this rumor. It appeared in diaries submitted by users and on lower trafficked blogs that are not usually associated with the blogosphere. We used good judgment and respect in not racing off to push unfounded rumors affecting a 17-year old girl. Andrew Sullivan is not a part of the left-wing blogosphere. He is a reformed Republican.

But more offensive than this false charge that the 'leftosphere and their pals in the MSM' pushed this rumor is the idea that 'decent Americans of all political stripes [should] respect their wish to keep the young couple out of the news.' It is the Palins that decided to put the young couple in the news. And not just the news. This will become a topic of discussion in every country in the world. Everyone will now know that Bristol Palin had underage, out-of-wedlock sex, and became pregnant. They'll know it in Buenos Aires and in Khartoum. They'll know it in Ho Chi Minh City and they'll know it Saskatoon. That's not the fault of the 'leftosphere' or the fault of Andrew Sullivan. It's the Palins fault for accepting the nomination to be vice-president. Bristol Palin is going to have a baby in December or January. Did they think the world wouldn't notice? Apparently so:

That the Palin family — by dint of ugly rumor mongering from “progressive activists” and a compliant left-leaning press that was cynically situating itself to pretend that these rumors “needed investigating” — was all but compelled to release information about their teenage daughter, is precisely the kind of thing that drives real civil libertarians and privacy advocates crazy, especially because the information has nothing whatever to do with Governor Palin’s candidacy, but instead invades the privacy (and quite possibly effects the “choice”) of a minor.

This kind of savage smear campaign by leftists and so-called “feminists” — a campaign that forced a young woman to make public a very private matter in order to stop vicious rumors about the Palin family — suggests that, when it comes to “privacy concerns” (NSA data mining for terrorists = bad; demanding the release of a Governor’s medical records = good; parental notification for abortions performed on women under a certain age = bad; insisting that the world be privy to the private sexual and family concerns of the seventeen-year-old daughter of a conservative = good), “progressives” care about such things only insofar as it protects their political interests and advances their political agenda.

How much more offensive can you get? At what point were the Palins going to reveal that their eldest daughter was with child? Were they planning on shutting her up in a nunnery for the duration of the McCain-Palin presidency? Did they plan on hiding her in the Governor's mansion until the day after the election? This is ridiculous. The rumor was that Bristol Palin had already given birth to a baby, not that she was about to give birth to a baby. There were other ways to debunk the rumor about Trig Palin than revealing that Bristol Palin is pregnant. They weren't forced to divulge this information by the rumors. They chose to wait for the moment that Hurricane Gustav made landfall to divulge this information (and the fact that Todd Palin once had a DUI). And now they want to blame it all on an invasion of privacy?

This is an invasion of stupidity into the body politic. John McCain probably never asked whether Bristol Palin was pregnant because that would be rude. He probably asked, "Is there anything else that you can think of that might embarrass the campaign?" And the Palins probably furrowed their brows and thought very hard and then said, "Nope, nothing we can think of."

But even if they did tell John McCain that their seventeen year-old daughter was pregnant and then decided to wait until Hurricane Gustav made landfall to divulge that information, it still isn't our fault that sheepherders in New Zealand will know all about little Bristol's premarital sex. That's their fault for not protecting their daughter.

Left-wing bloggers deliberately avoided discussing the possibility that Bristol Palin might have been the mother of her brother. And now we are supposed to take the blame for the fact that the world knows that Bristol is pregnant? Last time I checked, I didn't have sex with Bristol Palin, didn't impregnate her, didn't make any decisions that would assure a camel-herder in Timbuktu would know about her pregnancy, and didn't write about it or anything else related to her bodily functions.

John McCain is a jackass and the Mr. and Mrs. Palin are jerks.