Bristol Palin Sues for Full Custody

Sarah Palin's daughter takes on former fiance Levi Johnston

Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol is suing for full custody of her son, embroiling her in a legal battle with former fiance Levi Johnston. Cue the three-ring media circus! The Associated Press reports a struggle between media-loving Johnston and the Palin daughter over open court proceedings. Johnston hopes that exposing the tussle to the public will prevent Sarah Palin from getting involved. But that's only a tiny morsel in this feast for political gossip.

• Irony in Identity Fight  Politics Daily's Tom Kavanagh points to a fight over Levi Johnston's Twitter account, which is being used by Bristol Palin's legal team to show his unfitness for parenting, based on a tweet about seeking "weed." Johnston's team claims the account is fake. "If true," writes Kavanagh," there is an irony here. In 2008, Bristol's mother was victimized by a similar scam in which a Los Angeles screenwriter who'd never met Sarah Palin masqueraded as her on a fake Facebook page."

• How Many Babies Can This Family Fight About?  "All feuds, legal and otherwise," snickers Wonkette's Julie Weiner, hearkening back to questions over Trig Palin's parentage, "between Sarah Palin and her teenage daughter's ex-boyfriend can be handily expressed in Mad Lib form: Sarah Palin and Levi Johnston ______ (synonym of 'bickered pettily') about the treatment of ______ (member of Palin family under the age of 3), defenseless infant, in a very ______ (antonym of  'private') fashion today in ______ ('Alaska')."

• 'Palin-Johnston... Four More Years?' quips Gawker's Adrian Chen:

Here is a 19 year-old kid who is either utterly terrified of his ex-potential-mother-in-law or extremely savvy about the hazard a public, drawn-out custody battle could present her carefully calibrated image. Levi has admitted some of the mean things he said to Vanity Fair about Palin was "retaliation" for her keeping him away from Tripp. Now he gets to say mean things under oath! And anything Sarah Palin could do in her defense will just reinforce Levi's "meddling" and "vindictive" claims

• Typical Palin  Palin-watcher Andrew Sullivan says he's "not sure why Palin wants a knock-down drag-out fight with the father of her grandson, but she acts so often out of spite, anger and with no solid grasp of the full consequences you never know what she might do next."