Sarah Palin vs. Levi Johnston, the sequel: Can too much exposure ruin a potential presidential candidate?

 
The timing had to be awkward.

Just as former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was wowing crowds in a book tour for "Going Rogue," her one-time almost son-in-law Levi Johnston -- the father of her grandson, Tripp -- celebrated a publication of his own -- full-length photos in the nude for Playgirl Magazine.

Palin, who does not mention Johnston in her book, told Oprah that she considers his poses porn.

"By the way, I don't know if we call him Levi -- I hear he goes by the name Ricky Hollywood now, so, if that's the case, we don't want to mess up this gig he's got going," she said. "Kind of this aspiring, aspiring porn -- the things that he's doing. It's kind of heartbreaking."

As for Johnston's relationship with his son, Palin said: "He hasn't seen the baby for a while, but we will let that be the discussion between Bristol and Levi, as they work out their relationship. Because Levi will forever be the father of this beautiful little baby, and I continue to hope for the best, and pray for Levi."

Asked if he would be invited to Thanksgiving, Palin said, "He is part of the family...This can all work out for good."

Johnston has already generated some political heat by saying, in an interview with Vanity Fair, that Palin found her job as governor "too hard" and that she offered to adopt Tripp to hide the teen pregnancy.

The Playgirl shoots provide further evidence that even as Palin's national profile rises, Johnston's not going away anytime soon. As The Times' Meghan Daum put it the other day, "He's hot, he's cute, he's playing hardball."

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Levi Johnston, photo credit: Getty Images

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Mitt Romney talks about the economy, tea parties and the future of the Republican party

A few minutes before Mitt Romney spoke to conservative donors at a dinner hosted by the Young America's Foundation conference in Santa Barbara this month, he made a surprise appearance before a roomful of student attendees who had been squeezed out of the dinner due to lack of space.

"Hey, everybody!" he said. "Ho! Ho!"

The 200 or so young conservatives cheered. "You are a good American!" one young man shouted.

For a few minutes, the former Massachusetts governor bantered with the crowd with the ease of a stand-up comedian. He fielded questions about the economy -- "It will get better"  -- and the 2012 presidential election.

"Are you running?" someone asked.

Romney laughed. "I'm running up the stairs," he said.

Romney, who sought the Republican presidential nomination last year and lost to Arizona Sen. John McCain, is widely seen as a front runner in the race for the 2012 nomination. Although he hasn't announced his intentions, he spoke like a candidate at the conference, seeming eager to impress the deep-pocketed donors in attendance.

The Young America's Foundation aims to groom high school and college students to be future leaders by exposing them to the conservative philosophies that organizers say are missing from many classrooms. Last weekend's conference brought nearly 300 high school and college students to the Reagan Ranch Center, where the foundation is based, for a series of lectures.

A website tracking potential candidates for the 2012 presidential election reports that...

Going berserk over 'Going Rogue;' Democrats' reaction to Sarah Palin book and publicity

Wow, for somebody who's supposed to be such a political joke, an Arctic ditz and eminently dismissable as a serious anything except maybe a stay-at-home hockey mom, Sarah Palin is sure drawing an awful lot of attention from Democrats and eager critics.

The launch of her "Going Rogue" interviews Monday on "Oprah," of her book today, of her on-air chat today with Rush Limbaugh at 10 a.m. Pacific and of her mid-America bus book tour Wednesday ignited a surprisingly large blizzard of derogatory Democrat dis-missives.

Every few minutes another note from Democratic National Committee operatives and others dropped into electronic mailboxes across the media-verse, helpfully passing on even the tiniest tidbit of negative news about Palin.

You know how sometimes a friend tells you how much he/she doesn't really care about....

Video clips of Sarah Palin with Oprah

As you may have heard mentioned somewhere, Sarah Palin has a book coming out next week, called "Going Rogue: An American Life."

HarperCollins says it has printed 1.5 million copies, which is a lot of books to sell, even at Amazon.com's deeply discounted $9 price. So the successful Alaska governor and unsuccessful Republican vice presidential candidate starts her promotional tour with a coolly polite interrogation by one of the president's biggest boosters, another big O -- Oprah. 

Here, courtesy of CBS, are two video clips from the interview, which was taped Wednesday in Chicago and will be aired nationally Monday. First, Palin's thoughts on the PR disaster of her campaign interviews with a CBS News anchor.

Also below is a list of our recent items on this subject.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

And then, of course, the obligatory question about the father of her grandchild who's selling his nude pictures to a magazine since the electrician apprentice thing didn't work out.

Talk about going rogue!

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Related items:

Oprah talks about what Sarah Palin talks about

What's actually in Sarah Palin's book

Palin's roguish book tour schedule details

The secret Sarah Palin speeches we never heard

Sarah Palin breaks with GOP to endorse Conservative

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Gay rights advocates get good news from unusual sources: Salt Lake City and the AMA

 
Gay rights advocates were disappointed last week when Maine voters voted to repeal a state law allowing same-sex marriage. But they got a boost on Tuesday from two unlikely sources: the American Medical Assn. and the Salt Lake City Council. 

At its semiannual meeting in Houston, the nation's largest doctors' group voted to oppose the military's "don't ask, don't tell' policy because it sometimes restricts the "honesty and openness . . . that is the basis of the patient-physician relationship."

The AMA also reported that same-sex couples excluded from civil marriage often do not have access to the same healthcare benefits that married couples do.  

Same-sex households are less likely to have health insurance than their married counterparts and are therefore at a higher risk of "living sicker and dying younger," said Dr. Peter Carmel, an AMA board member. The AMA said the disparity is also linked to a basic fact: Same-sex families aren't eligible to receive other benefits afforded to married couples, including tax breaks and Social Security survivor benefits.

The group resolved to "work to reduce the health disparities suffered because of unequal treatment . . . by supporting equality in laws affecting healthcare of members in same-sex partner households and their dependent children."

In Utah, the Salt Lake City Council passed two ordinances making it illegal to discriminate against gays in housing and employment. As the Ticket reported last week, voters in Kalamazoo approved a similar ordinance that grants anti-discrimination protections to gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender individuals.

Significantly, the ordinances in Salt Lake City were endorsed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is the same Mormon Church that strongly urged members to contribute money to the campaign in support of Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage in California.

Mormons were credited with playing a strong role in the measure's victory in Salt Lake City.

Have the Mormon's had a change of heart?

No, said Michael Otterson, a church spokesman. He told the City Council that the church "remains unequivocally committed" to opposing gay marriage.

-- Kate Linthicum

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Photo: A car flies the gay pride flag in protest past the Mormon Conference Center during the 179th Semi-Annual General Conference of the Mormon Church on Oct. 3 in Salt Lake City. Credit: Getty Images

Small moments from Fort Hood's memorial

It’s hard to catalog all the moving moments and images from today’s memorial for the 13 people shot dead last week at Fort Hood in Texas and the dozens wounded, as investigations continued into Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged shooter.

President Obama delivered remarks that were both somber and inspiring, using the ceremony to praise today’s military while honoring the victims of the shooting.

Other simple images stand out:

Soldiers, in fatigues, wiping away tears while listening to “Amazing Grace.”

The large color photographs of the dead.

The rifle volley.

The roll call of the dead -- and those chilling silences after each name was called and no response came back.

It was also one of the those events in American public life when religion somehow sits side by side with the secular. “Amazing Grace,” of course, contains the phrase, “How precious did that Grace appear the hour I first believed.”

Obama, in his remarks, asked, “May God bless the memory of those we lost.”

The ceremony began with Chaplin Michael Lemke asking for divine help to "sustain us in our sorrow and in time restore in us a spirit of join and hope."

Later in the memorial, Lemke quoted from the Book of Isaiah. In a way, the words seem to describe not just the fallen, but the soldiers who must find strength to carry on:

“He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 

“Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; 

“But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

-- Steve Padilla 

Photo: Reuters

You betcha! The Sarah Palin speech(es) we never heard one year ago tonight

This is Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin one year ago right now during the concession speech of her Republican running mate, Sen. John McCain, outside the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix.

Turns out Palin would have liked to give a little speech too, thanking some folks, graciously wishing the best to the Barack Obama winning ticket of Democrats and introducing with effusive praise the man who plucked her from the political obscurity of Anchorage and thrust her, unprepared but eager, onto the national stage.

Turns out now, we may be hearing more about her in coming years than the military hero who picked her.

Anyway, in their new book, "Sarah from Alaska," two journalists - Shushannah Walshe and Scott Conroy --  publish among other interesting information the two speeches the first female on a Republican national ticket was prepared to give, one a victory speech and one a concession. The Beast has published a story about the book over here.

The Ticket has independently confirmed that the speeches from the book are, indeed, the....

Obama's backup presidential pet walker for Bo

Presidents, of course, don't have time to walk their dogs, unless it's a scheduled photo op to make millions feel warm and fuzzy.

So the primary walker of Bo Obama is reportedly Michelle Obama. But even she is sometimes too busy.

So, Darlene Superville explains in a charming Associated Press story tonight, the walking job falls to a little-known, 57-year-old man named Dale Haney.

He's walked presidential dogs for decades now all the way back to 1972, which was, wow, in the last century back when Joe Biden first entered the Senate and Obama was barely in the sixth grade.

You think you've got a lot of leaves to pick up, besides whatever your dog deposits during his walks. As the White House's chief groundskeeper, Haney's got 18.5 acres to take care of.

He's been amazed over the years about how interested the public is in presidential pets, often showing more interest in them than the officeholder.

Haney likes Bo just fine. But he still carries a soft spot in his heart for George and Laura Bush's dog Spot. Spot was actually born to the White House, way back in 1989 as the daughter of Millie of the first President Bush. (see photo below),

Spottie, as George W.'s family called her, had a distinctive self-assurance that charmed many over the years including Haney. Before her reelection to the White House in 2000, Spot lived....

... in Texas and when the future president became governor, Spot took over the governor's mansion in downtown Austin, going pretty much wherever she pleased whenever she pleased.

But Spot quickly learned that tirelessly patrolling the block-square grounds was unnecessary if she just curled up in the security room. When the buzzer went off, Spot would explode from the room barking ferociously in search of the security breach. Spot left this earth in 2004 after several strokes.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Gerald Herbert / Associated Press (Haney takes Bo for a recent walk); Associated Press (The first Pres. Bush walks with a proud Millie and her new brood including Spot in 1989).

Anti-abortion Democrat Bart Stupak has a problem with Obama's health reforms

As far as northern Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak is concerned, no federal funding for abortions has been the law of the land since 1976.

And as far as Stupak is concerned, his fellow Democrat Barack Obama agreed that the president's idea of healthcare reform does not include federal funding of abortion.

But that seems about to change.

Stupak is a nine-term representative, a Catholic and a former police officer, who's destroyed recent Republican opponents with up to 69% of the vote.

Stupak says he's run up against a stonewall with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other fellow Democrats in seeking to protect that 33-year-old ban in the evolving healthcare reform legislation.

He says he's got 40 fellow House members who stand with him, most of them who'll vote against any reform bill without the antiabortion protection. And Stupak asserts he's prepared to lose his job over this stand.

Actually, he puts it pretty clearly and succinctly himself on this C-SPAN video. See what he says: right here

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Video courtesy of C-SPAN.

The Obamas pose for Annie Leibovitz. Will it help her avoid bankruptcy?

The photo was released by the White House today, the official portrait of the current occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.  -- President Obama, 8-year-old Sasha, First Lady Michelle Obama and 11-year-old Malia. The photo was taken Sept. 1, and the subjects were all smiles.

The back story is anything but. Leibovitz is best known for her celebrity photos -- like the famous one she did of John Lennon and Yoko Ono the day the former Beatle was gunned down, or the one she did of a pregnant Demi Moore, posing nude.

But lately the photographer to the stars has been embroiled in a financial mess that could lead to bankruptcy and the loss of her photographic catalog. As Gawker.com put it, the Obama photo was taken one week before Leibovitz's deadline to repay a $24-million loan to "high-end artsharks Art Capital Group."

Apparently, she managed to negotiate a deal to extend the due date and retain control of her catalog, at least for now.

In the meantime, a spokesman said the White House did not pay for the photos, but did provide "behind-the-scene access."

-- Johanna Neuman

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