Palin Lashes 'Mean' Exhibitionist Levi

Palin reflects on life with a special-needs child

(NEWSER) - When Sarah Palin learned her baby, Trig, would be born with Down syndrome, she was so scared she "dared not discuss my pregnancy for many months," she writes in the Daily Beast . "All I could seem to muster was a calling out to God to prepare my heart for what was ahead." But her son soon taught her "what true joy could be," and now that he's almost four, Palin often finds herself wondering what her family would do without him. "He’s our 'everything that really matters,'" writes Palin in the essay, which was also published in Newsweek. More»

Wasillan releasing tell-all memoir

(NEWSER) - There's no love lost between the Johnston and Palin clans, and Levi's new tell-all memoir is set to keep the feud going. In Deer In the Headlights, to be released later this month, Johnston claims that Bristol became pregnant with his child to get even with her mother for Sarah's pregnancy with Trig, reports the New York Daily News . He says Bristol, then 17, believed that she, not her politician mother, should be having babies. More»

Plus, someone accuses Sarah of snorting cocaine

(NEWSER) - More of Mercede Johnston's Playboy interview is leaking, and—surprise, surprise—none of it is very complimentary to the Palins. The latest, from Playboy , USA Today , and TMZ :

• On Levi and Bristol's second engagement: "I don’t think Bristol wanted to be with him whatsoever, not at all. It was all about her using her body to get Levi to retract his statements, and it worked ... They only wanted them back together so they could control Levi, have him say he lied."
• On Sarah: "She’s never there for [her kids]. She doesn’t make her kids go to school. She’d rather parade them around and put on a show at book signings or conventions."

Alaska journalists 'believed she was pregnant because she was pregnant'

(NEWSER) - Now that the "Is Sarah really the mother of Trig?" question is back in play, an Anchorage Daily News columnist issues a plea: "Make it stop." Julia O'Malley dismisses a Kentucky journalism professor's paper on the matter as heavy on "innuendo" and Photoshopped images, while devoid of facts. "The journalists, including me, who covered Palin at the time believed she was pregnant because she was pregnant," O'Malley writes. "Even before the announcement, she seemed to be putting on weight. ... Later on, her face filled out. Her fingers swelled. She had a noticeable belly. And it wasn't made out of foam." More»

New academic paper asserts that 'conspiracy theory' is actually true

(NEWSER) - More than two years after it first emerged , the issue of Trig Palin's birth is back in the headlines, thanks to a Northern Kentucky University journalism professor. Brad Scharlott's 29-page academic paper on the matter concludes that all the conspiracy theorists were right: Sarah Palin is not Trig's real mother, but a "spiral of silence shut down the story" and the media basically ignored it. More»