The recent flurry of comments on my blog just demonstrates how contentious, and therefore interesting, this election is. And on top of all that, it's an important election, coming at a time when our country is in turmoil, both home and abroad, thanks to the present administration. I would like to comment myself about the difference between Barack Obama's mother giving birth to him at the age of eighteen and Sarah Palin's pregnant seventeen-year-old daughter. The difference to me has nothing to do with right or wrong. It's the irony of such a thing happening to someone who belongs to the party that champions so-called "family values." While the conservative right rallies around Palin and her daughter now, they are the same people who preach abstinence as the best form of birth control. They oppose sex education in our schools, as well as the free distribution of condoms. I hope that we can all agree, Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal, that teenage pregnancy is a problem in this country, and a problem that we would all like to see addressed. It is not my intention to judge teenagers who get pregnant, regardless of their socioeconomic status or the color of their skin. But given that Palin is a conservative member of a party that touts the family and the importance of parents' involvement in the lives of their children, it is virtually impossible not to notice that her daughter's pregnancy and the delayed announcement even on a national holiday when Hurricane Gustov was the top news story and the Republican convention was opening were all, at the very least, not good news for the McCain campaign. I think it would be foolish not to acknowledge that, regardless of your politics.