Pregnant Pause

Moulitsas says he doesn't know who the anonymous ArcXIX is -- his contributors decide whether to identify themselves -- but that his site also disclosed that Palin was once a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, which has pushed for a vote on seceding from the United States. That was confirmed Monday by ABC News.

"Our people are doing the vetting. Even if some of it is hitting dead ends, other ones are striking direct hits," Moulitsas says. His role, he adds, "is to sit back and let the citizen journalists do their job, and I amplify the stuff that shakes out."

LAT: "Now the magnitude of McCain's gamble is becoming clear.

"For every piece of the portrait of Palin that the McCain campaign sketches, a far more complicated picture of the Alaska governor is drawn.The youthful mother of five whose placement on the ticket was meant to reinforce traditional values has now revealed that her unmarried teenage daughter is pregnant -- a piece of information that the family and the campaign said they had hoped to keep private."

NYT: "A series of disclosures about Gov. Sarah Palin, Senator John McCain's choice as running mate, called into question on Monday how thoroughly Mr. McCain had examined her background before putting her on the Republican presidential ticket . . .

"Aides to Mr. McCain said they had a team on the ground in Alaska now to look more thoroughly into Ms. Palin's background. A Republican with ties to the campaign said the team assigned to vet Ms. Palin in Alaska had not arrived there until Thursday, a day before Mr. McCain stunned the political world with his vice-presidential choice."

A tad late, perhaps?

The daughter's pregnancy, and the hockey-playing father, were

apparently an open secret in Alaska.

The left may not be rushing to embrace this, if this HuffPost blog by Ruth Hochberger is any indication:

"When a 17-year-old girl gets herself pregnant, I believe the press ought to stand down unless there's an unusually good justification for publishing.

"How old is the family member? 17. Would any parent out there want to be judged as fit or unfit for their job on the basis of the nutty or irresponsible stuff our kids do?"