The Palin Emails I

You may recall that MSNBC managed to get the state of Alaska to release them and they showed a deep enmeshment by Todd Palin in the affairs of state. Dish coverage here. MSNBC story here. And Christian Science Monitor story here. Andrew Halcro gave his interpretation of the role Todd Palin played in state politics here. In the best traditions of the Internet, I invite you to peruse them at will and send me anything interesting you find. I'll post any of salience.

Some, of course, give a glimpse into the Palins' lives around the birth of Trig - about which we have almost no independent confirmation or records. Here's an email that gives an independent glimpse into those hair-raising hours before her trans-continental flight half a day after her water broke. It's from an eye-witness in the waiting lounge for Alaska Airlines as Palin was ready to go back to Alaska because giving birth at world-renowned Dallas Childrens Hospital (with Down Syndrome experts on hand) would have violated her husband's insistence that the child be born in Alaska. You may recall that when the Anchorage Daily News asked Alaska Airlines how they allowed a woman eight months pregnant with a child with special needs get on a trans-continental flight, they got the following response:

Alaska Airlines ... leaves the decision to the woman and her doctor, said spokeswoman Caroline Boren. Palin was very pleasant to the gate agents and flight attendants, as always, Boren said. "The stage of her pregnancy was not apparent by observation. She did not show any signs of distress," Boren said.

My italics. In Going Rogue, she tells us her state of mind as she realized she was in labor earlier that day:

Desperation for this baby overwhelmed me.

Please don't let anything happen to this baby.

It occurred to me, once and for all. I'm so in love with this child, please God protect him! After all my doubts and fears, I had fallen in love with this precious child. The worst thing in the world was that I would lose him.

Her italics. Half a day later, preparing for a long two-plane flight trip all the way back not just to Anchorage but to Wasilla, she was sitting in the Seattle airport lounge in a lay-over when recognized by a fellow passenger. All her earlier anxieties appeared to have disappeared, as she delivered her fate - and Trig's - into God's hands. What an incredibly cool and collected woman - someone with amazing reserves of steel. A day later, the stranger emailed to congratulate her on her birth and amazing composure. This seems to confirm Palin's version of the flight:

It was a calm, relatively restful flight home.

Since I long ago committed to publishing any evidence I could find related to Palin's remarkable pregnancy stories (she steadfastly refuses to provide any), I post it below: