If Bristol didn’t get pregnant again, Sarah Palin might be forced to release the birth certificate. If she falsified the birth certificate, she might face criminal charges. If the birth certificate is true, she would just be guilty of lying, not a crime.
But her political career would be over for something when the truth would have amounted to nothing. Why take the risk?
And something else: since when is it up to the accusee to prove an accusation false? If someone here says that I like to let small to medium sized dogs sodomize me on Friday night for my own pleasure, is it not up to them to submit hard (laugh it up) facts to prove that?
Or is it up to me to try to convince interest parties that I don’t do that? And there is never a way to prove a negative. Even if Sarah Palin produced a birth certificate showing her as the mother, that would be followed up with accusations that the documents were falsified, she bribed the recording clerk, she blew the doctor to sign off on the certificate, etc. etc. etc.
In these types of theories, all evidence in support of the status quo is always suspect…
And yet it was up to Obama to release his birth certificate, when the (silly) accusations that he wasn’t born in the US were being flung about.
That is a bit different since not being born in the U.S. is a constitutional disqualifier. He could have refused and waited until some type of lawsuit compelled the production of his birth certificate, but the political realities would suggest that he should show it anyways.
Besides, I don’t know about HI, but in every state I know a birth certificate is a public record. Go to the county courthouse, ask to see it, pay 5 bucks for a certified copy, and off you go…
Yes, why not? By the time my older sister was as old as Trig is now, my mother was three months pregnant with me.
True; she’d had to just ignore the rumor and see if it died on its own. Seemed to be a good chance of that.
Howzat? Nobody’s found any documents yet.
You kidding? All sorts of kids get pregnant twice by 17. And oral contraceptives prevent implantation. Which, to these people, is the same as an abortion. They don’t think the same as we do.
I hope you don’t mind the insertion of the (a) and (b) in there. Just wanted an easy way of saying (b) doesn’t follow from (a).
Besides, remember what we’re arguing here. We’re not debating whether this story is more likely than not (I don’t think it is) but whether or not it’s possible.
Is it possible that Palin, in such a situation, would have seen the risk/reward tradeoff differently than you? It’s extremely possible.
Per your link, they are (or at least, accusations of having made a false statement(s) are, which is what I actually did). Accusations of being a liar or lying with deliberate malicious intent are not allowed. I can see how accusing a person of being careless in their reading before having made demonstrably false, slanderously insulting statements could be confused with an accusation of being a deliberate liar - and apologize for treading close to the line.