palin

A lot of conservative heavyweights have been freaking out over Gwen Ifill being the moderator of the Palin-Biden debate tonight. Ifill has a vested interest in the campaign -- she has a pro-Obama book due out on Inauguration Day -- so how can she be fair to Sarah Palin? Leave it to The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto -- one of the most interesting and thoughtful conservative writers around today -- to urge a little stepping back and calming down:

Reason magazine faults Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and, especially, Sarah Palin, for continuing to favor criminal penalties for something they get to treat as a youthful indiscretion:

Everybody else in the free world is weighing in on the "lipstick on a pig" flap, so I might as well wade in, too.

1. Of course he meant it as a sly dig at Sarah Palin, as the reaction to it makes clear:

The crowd apparently took the "lipstick" line as a reference to Palin, who described the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull in a single word: "lipstick."

"We can't afford on-the-job training for our next president." That was Hillary Clinton, way back in November, speaking of Barack Obama, though not mentioning him by name. This was my reaction:

Being president is a unique challenge, and in an election when there is no incumbent, there is no candidate who has any relevant experience.

[. . .]