I can’t imagine a worse pick for VP than Sarah Palin, but I won’t stoop to calling the lady dumb. Not now, not ever.

While historically y’all may have a point, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to call “support for a federal system (i.e. separate states rights)” federalism. That’s really a “gotcha” point. Can’t you just enjoy the fact that she can’t answer any questions without overstating the argument?

Well, maybe Palin is book smart, but she lacks knowledge – much like Barack Obama does – but unlike Barack, when she speaks and says nothing it sounds like nothing. Or it makes you feel like your chewing on aluminum foil when you listen.

No doubt she’s clearly out of depth, but like Dubya I don’t think she’s dumb.

Watch this clip from CNN and tell me again she is not dumb.

I fear that the Fereralists were correct.

Listen, I honestly don’t think Palin is a dumb person

I do. I don’t remember much of what Dan Quale said in his time, but it couldn’t possibly be worse than this.

Whaaaa?? Read this link, and then get back to us on whether it was wise or lucky that she not oppose another Supreme Court ruling: http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2008/08/veep-nominee-pa.html

This wasn’t a gotcha question, it was a GIVEAWAY and she completely blew it.

The RvW one isn’t really controversial because her position is already well-established. And most folks are fairly familiar with it.

But the follow-up is really an attempt to put her on the spot as to how well-versed in general she is with SCOTUS jurisprudence.

I’ll go ahead and agree that Palin fumbled this question. That she couldn’t really speak to it knowledgeably reflects poorly on both her knowledge base and her poise. That doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a gotcha question.

But she was either wise or lucky not to cite a specific case as one she opposed. The overwhelming majority of Americans is unfamiliar with the handful of other rulings viewed as controversial by one side or the other. Were she to have come out against Kelo, for example, that could easily be spun against her, because most folks know little in the way of details.

Again, gotcha questions are not necessarily bad. I think the questions the media asks the candidates should be judged as a set, and each candidate’s set compared to the others. I’d like to know what Barack Obama thinks about Kelo, for example. I’d dearly love to know whether he thinks its OK for the government to force property owners to sell to other private enterprises.

Let’s consider how Couric slipped in the notion of privacy. The vast majority of Americans (including myself) believe this is a right we deserve. Even though there isn’t current either a good definition of it or a working legal definition. The word does not, to my knowledge, appear in the constitution, at least not in the context of granting this as a right. Any fair reading of the constitution and the RvW ruling leads reasonable folks to conclude that there was no legal reason to think this was a constitutional right until RvW essentially declared it.

This leaves pro-privacy folks with something of a conundrum. At this current point in history, Americans sorely lack the sorts of specific privacy rights we need to protect ourselves from a host of 21st-century invasions.Yet we can’t pass an amendment, because apparently this right is already constitutionally protected. Which would be great, if only we knew what it was and what we were therefore guaranteed.