Andrew Sullivan demands to know from Harper Collins whether "Going Rogue" was fact-checked

Andrew Sullivan has stepped up a gear again and now demands to know from Harper Collins whether "Going Rogue" was fact-checked. Especially regarding Sarah Palin's "pregnancy" with Trig, he wonders whether Harper Collins has actually received documentation.

Andrew Sullivan writes:

"I've emailed Bellow (Andrew Bellow from Harper Collins, editor of "Going Rogue"- P.) asking him about the fact-checking process for "Going Rogue." Getting an on-the-record confirmation that, for example, Harper Collins reviewed the medical records proving Palin's multiple medical stories (including corrected hospital records by her own account) would be a useful piece of information. Since it appears that the McCain campaign knew nothing of these rumors, and indeed, by some accounts, nothing even of Bristol's pregnancy, it would be reassuring to know that someone somewhere has actually sought proof of some of Palin's wildest embellishments or total fantasies.

A responsible editor would do due diligence and check them out, right? I'll let you know Bellow's response to the fact-checking question when I get it."

I am very intrigued to know what the result of Andrew's inquiry will be. However, Harper Collins cannot have received any medical documentation regarding Sarah's supposed pregnancy, because her pregnancy with Trig was faked. This is a FACT.

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I would like to use this opportunity to point out some "highlights" in Andrew Sullivans reporting on the Daily Dish about "babygate", although I also would like to mention that Andrew Sullivan himself has never finally concluded that the pregnancy was faked, but "just" continues to ask "persistent questions" up to this point, being the responsible journalist he is:

August 31, 2008:

Things That Make You Go Hmmm

"(...) There must be plenty of medical records and obstetricians and medical eye-witnesses prepared to testify to Sarah Palin's giving birth to Trig. There must be a record of Bristol's high school attendance for the past year. And surely, surely, the McCain camp did due diligence on this. But the noise around this story is now deafening, and the weirdness of the chronology sufficient to rise to the level of good faith questions. So please give us these answers - and provide medical records for Sarah Palin's pregnancy - and put this to rest. (...)"

October 6, 2008:

Transparency, Please

"(...) So it is part of Palin's record to demand the marriage license of a fellow Republican, but to ask for any medical confirmation of the mysterious birth of Trig earlier this year, any affidavit from the obstetrician, any objective evidence at all that Trig is indeed Sarah Palin's biological child is, well, in the words of John Podhoretz, "virtually unspeakable." Look: this is usually not hard at all. Births are recorded at the hospitals where they occur. And, as you might expect, there's a long list of babies born at Mat-Su Medical center, where we are told Trig was born on April 18 this year. But for some reason, Trig Palin's name is not among them.

Why would a hospital exhaustively record all births on their premises and leave out easily the most famous baby ever born there? There were only 24 births at Mat-Su in April of this year: it's not like they could have mislaid one. So why is there no formal record of Trig's birth? This is not an "unspeakable" question. It's a simple factual one. Presumably there's an explanation. Perhaps the Palins decided that it would be an invasion of Trig's privacy to have the birth actually recorded in the hospital where he was born. But at least they should be able to tell us that. Or perhaps the hospital decided for some reason not to record that one birth. I have no idea. I do know that if Sarah Palin were running against Sarah Palin, she would demand evidence, as she did with something just as accessible with respect to John Stein's marriage license.

How much longer are we supposed to put up with the far right running on different standards than everyone else? Hand over all the medical records and put Sarah Palin in front of a press conference now. We need answers to an almost dizzyingly long list of questions and accountability for an equally long list of public lies."

December 5, 2008

A Fourth Picture

"As Dish readers know, there are only three public photographs that I could find of Sarah Palin pregnant with Trig (the McCain campaign insisted there were "loads" and then was forced to retract). But we now have another. The date of this photograph, which turned up on a Flickr account, has been clearly established as March 26, 2008:

Here's a link from the Alaska state website discussing the event. Here's a news video.

That's barely three weeks before she gave birth to Trig, a full-term, 6 pound baby. It's also around a week before video footage of Palin, captured here. Since Palin refused throughout the campaign to provide any medical records (although, in classic Palin style, says she has), we only have three photographs of her pregnant and one doctor's letter, released hours before the polls opened November 3. If you're interested in why any sane person would ever doubt a mother's announcement of her own pregnancy, read this.

Maybe this photo has been photo-shopped. Maybe Palin had an anomalous pregnancy that showed far, far less than her previous ones, one that went from close to nothing to a serious bump in two weeks. Maybe the angle in the photo is misleading, and leaning toward us her pregnancy is concealed. Maybe her fifth labor really did take 26 hours combined via a speaking engagement (as amniotic fluid was leaking) and an 11 hour airplane flight (when a birth could have begun at any moment at extreme risk to the child), and maybe the bizarre and, to my mind, incredible stories she has told about the pregnancy and labor are true (there is still a chance they are). But if all these things are true, the Palin camp has had months to provide what would be instantly available records to dismiss all and every "insane" blog speculation about this. And yet none came - on or off the record.

I begged the McCain campaign by private email and in a private meeting to give me something - anything - to kill the story off. I promised to run any evidence that would blow this out of the water. That offer still stands. Please make me look like an idiot for asking these questions. But they didn't offer a thing, asserting that even asking the question was an outrageous reputation-destroying offense. Maybe Michelle Malkin is right that this is truther, tin-foil hat territory. But Malkin's only substantive point rebutting the photographic evidence is: We’re all obstetricians now!

Actually, the Dish went out and interviewed eight of the leading obstetricians in the country and laid out all the facts of the case and asked the experts for their take. While none would say that this pregnancy could not have happened, and none would comment on a case they hadn't examined personally, all of them said it was one of the strangest and unlikeliest series of events they had ever heard of and found Palin's decision to forgo medical help for more than a day after her water broke and risk the life of her unborn child on a long airplane trip to be reckless beyond measure. (...)"

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Please note that a slideshow with the above picture from March 26, 2008, including the picture in the original size and complete documentation CAN BE FOUND HERE.

In addition, the extensive reporting of "palingates" with regard to Sarah Palin's faked pregnancy with Trig CAN BE READ HERE.

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