While the “maybe she did/maybe she didn’t” Palin family drama makes for good tabloid gossip, it’s nothing compared to the way the civil rights of Americans are being violated in the run-up to the RNC in Minneapolis.

via Whet

Edited to add: There are plenty of reasons to be unhappy with Palin as McCain’s VP. But how her family has decided to deal with (a) personal family issue(s) ought be low on the list of objections. Hell, even Obama thinks so.

I’d just like to announce I am not interested in being considered as a candidate for Vice-President. At this time, I have the job that I want.

I figure that since Fred Thompson is being asked if he wants the job, they must be casting the net pretty wide to include people who don’t have a chance in hell of getting the gig. So I want to stop the speculation before it starts.

Though it’s a hobby and interest of mine, I won’t often be using this space for political discussion. Yet I can’t ignore the meaning of today, with everything that’s going here and abroad. While most people consider today to be about history, I try to make it a point to read the Declaration of Independence every fourth of July. I’m sad to say this text has as much relevance today as it did in 1776:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

The rest is here.