Quick Hitters for the day:

• I’m someone who was a fan of Palin (to the degree that I knew who she was before she became the VP candidate, and endorsed her for that) who’s soured on her significantly. Turns out she’s nothing but a fundamentalist (both politically and religiously) tool of the neocons. Nevertheless, this whole controversy over her upcoming speech at CSU Stanislaus is stupid. What she’s doing isn’t uncommon (both being paid and the fee being confidential) and the false attempt to tie endowment foundations to the state government. Everything from Cal athletics to alumni associations to foundations for particular colleges at each University have ALWAYS operated independently and without oversight. Since they can’t take tax money, only contribute, why should they need to be? But that’s not the underlying issue here. This is just “Palin Derangement Syndrome” run a muck.
• As a general question, is “politician X derangement syndrome” really a new thing? I’m a relatively young guy so anything before Bush #2 is before my political time. But it seems to have taken off with Bush #1 and we’ve seen it with Obama, Hillary and Palin since then, at least those are the most visible cases. It also seems like there’s some vestiges of it with Reagan, but it’s not as clear. It’s a really troubling trend to me, but perhaps it’s just the same old, same old.
• I’m glad to see Nebraska taking a lead on abortion, limiting abortion to the first 20 weeks. One of the unknown truths of the abortion debate is that there is a popular middle ground of limiting abortion to somewhere between the 1st trimester (12 weeks) and 20 weeks. In fact, if you look at the 3rd most popular comment by ‘moxichick67′ in the linked article, and the heavily favored thumbs up to thumbs down, it shows that truth (SFGate.com leans heavily liberal). I think the debate would be calmed down significantly if the 1st trimester limit were put in place (or at least if individual states were allowed to). Sadly, the debate has been hijacked by the radical pro-abortionist who’ve very successfully framed the debate as a binary issue, not a gradient issue of where it should be cut off. Of course, I’d prefer to see it outlawed entirely, but the reality is that the compromise that would best reflect the mind of the country is somewhere between the 1st trimester and 20 weeks.

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