The Fourth Picture, Ctd.

A reader writes:

Sorry, Andrew.  Having lived with a woman who gave birth to four children (one still born at eight months), Palin looks very pregnant to me, especially considering the fact that she’s wearing a loose overcoat.  The fact that she had what looks like excessive weight gain with an earlier child does not prove anything.  Weight gain with each pregnancy varies depending on the health of the mother, the health of the fetus, and the mother’s diet and exercise regimen.  I see nothing in that photograph that makes me think she’s faking a pregnancy.

Another adds:

Just a quick note to say that from my skeptical, untrained eye, you can't say for certain that she's clearly not pregnant from the picture. I only say this because my co-worker down the hall, who's 6 weeks away from delivering her third, is an expert at hiding it. When I talk to her, I regularly forget that she is pregnant, and a picture of her wouldn't convince anyone that she was.

Keep pushing and asking, though.

This fact pattern is surely bizarre, and we have to keep demanding real answers from these people in the age of "truthiness." You're not in tin foil hat territory ... yet. I am worried that this may turn into your "windshield wiper" moment.

Another adds:

From a journalist’s standpoint, I’ve been interested in your pursuit in this, which I think is certainly within the bounds of reasonable journalistic inquiry. There’s one thing that has bothered me about this whole episode: faced with the rumors that swirled that first weekend after she was announced as McCain’s VP pick, the simple and obvious path would have been to make a copy of the birth certificate available to the press. Instead, she chose to address the rumor by outing her teenage daughter as pregnant, just as the family was preparing to take the national stage at the RNC. How much more horrifying could that be for a young woman? As a parent, this seems unfathomable to me.

Another writes:

The photo was not photoshopped. I am the person who found the photo which I passed on to Audrey at Palin Deception. My partner and I also found that the photo had been taken at the Museum in Juneau and from there it was a simple thing to connect the dots. After the photo's publication the photographer contacted my partner and confirmed her presence on the day in question and the fact that she took the photograph. There can be absolutely no doubt that this is an original photo.