Sarah Palin Attacks Continue: Email Hacked, Trig Should Have Been Aborted

The number of baseless attacks on Sarah Palin has been well-documented. I've blogged about it until, frankly, I've grown tired of it. Tonight I realized that as tired as I am of the subject, for the sake of human decency, I should continue to try to make people aware of them. With that in mind, there are two topics to cover.

One, in case you haven't heard, hackers managed to break their way into Sarah Palin's private email account. Screenshots of her messages, photos friends had sent her, were posted on a blog for people to laugh at. Do people have no decency? Kim Priestap has a long post covering the story at Wizbang. My quick thoughts:

• The McCain camp's only action was to issue a statement saying that the FBI was investigating the matter and they would be no further comments on the matter. I think this is the right decision.
• The FBI has apparently asked the Associated Press for copies of the emails they received. The AP declined because, you know, they are impartial and can't take a side. For the record, what bullshit. But in the end I doubt it will make a difference in the investigation.
• A wide-variety of federal laws have been broken and personally I hope they people involved get the book thrown at them. McCain should stay clear of the subject; the FBI, the Secret Service, and the Department of Justice should not.

The other topic was so distasteful to me I actually wrote up a post on it earlier tonight and found I was being incoherent and in the end decided to just delete it. This story is also being covered at Wizbang. Cassy Fiano writes about a Nicholas Provenzo editorial opinion entitled "Palin's Down syndrome child and the right to abortion." In his writings, Provenzo makes the following statements:

Like many, I am troubled by the implications of Alaska governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's decision to knowingly give birth to a child disabled with Down syndrome. Given that Palin's decision is being celebrated in some quarters, it is crucial to reaffirm the morality of aborting a fetus diagnosed with Down syndrome (or by extension, any unborn fetus)—a freedom that anti-abortion advocates seek to deny.

...

That is, we need the mentally retarded to teach us how to better sacrifice our lives and divest ourselves of our self-interested ways more than they need us to care for them. At Noodlefood, Diana Hsieh condemns such a stand as "the worship of retardation." Given that Palin had complete foreknowledge of her child's severe disability yet nevertheless chose to have it, it is hard not to see her choice as anything less.

I'm am (almost) speechless. In discussion about abortions, I've heard people hurl accusations such as "You aren't pro-choice, you are pro-abortion!" and I've always thought it was nonsense. I was wrong. If it matters to you as a reader, I am pro-choice and I've always taken that to mean that women (and couples) should actually have a choice. I detest the idea of someone in government dictating such a personal decision. But to claim that killing any baby that has a defect is the moral thing to do is astounding. Sarah Palin made a choice. A choice she should be free to make. To say she is "worshiping retardation" is one of the dumbest statements I heard this entire campaign--and as we all know there's a wealth of them to choose from.

Note also that Provenzo refuses to call her son Trig. Provenzo repeatedly refers to Trig as "a child disabled with Down syndrome"; I'm surprised he doesn't use the term "it" and be done with it. In the comments someone describes Palin as "anti-abortion, pro-retardation". Pro-retardation? Is this an Onion article? I can only wish it were, it seems.

The point of linking these two stories is to make you stop and think about freedom in this country. You are reading the Internet Freedom Trail, after all. You may not agree with Sarah Palin. You may think she was a horribly poor choice for vice president. But think about the seething hatred directed at her that has spewed forth from some many directions it is mind-numbing. Does it represent the society you want to live in? Do the people instigating the attacks represent you? I hope not.

For other reasons, before the choice of Sarah Palin, I had already chosen to vote for John McCain (more on that later). But I swear that if I had been undecided the treatment of Palin would have been enough for me to vote for her merely as a sign of support of common decency and freedom. I strongly hope that other independents reach the same conclusion.