get knocked up and make big bucks

So who says getting pregnant before graduating high school can get in the way of a lucrative and easy career of giving speeches to high school kids about not getting pregnant before graduating? Or to be specific, about practicing ABSTINENCE - which clearly Bristol Palin and Levi Johnson were avoiding.

In Palin-land, all things are possible. $15,000 to $30,000 a pop for speechifying about keeping your zipper zipped. Quite a cushy job for a 19-year-old with no obvious qualifications, apart from being a teen mom.

But seriously, don't expect this to be a valid career path, unless your mom is Sarah Palin or somebody like that. Wonder if there will be any attempt to steer money and support towards the half-term ex-governor via her fecund daughter? Do you even have to ask?javascript:void(0)

"just say no"

Scholars at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health studied teens who took the virginity pledge (i.e., no sex before marriage) and compared them to other teens who didn't. They chose non-pledging teens with the same characteristics as the pledgers - religious, and similar attitudes about sex and other things.

And the results? The kids who just said no were just as likely to have premarital sex as the kids who didn't take a pledge.

That's too bad, right? It gets worse.

The pledge kids were significantly less likely to use condoms or other sorts of birth control than their similar but non-pledged counterparts.

So to sum it up... Asking kids to just say no makes no difference on whether they decide to do the horizontal bop before marriage. And it makes them more likely to risk disease and pregnancy by foregoing condoms.

Because condoms imply planning and it's one thing to give into those teenage hormones in the heat of the moment to do the nasty - but it's something else when you think far enough ahead to actually get some rubbers.

john edwards

Lots of rumors about John Edwards and whether he is the father of Rielle Hunter's baby. I have to say, being spotted coming out of her hotel room at 2:45 AM and hiding in the bathroom does not look good. This may well be true.

So I'm glad Edwards didn't do better in the primaries. Look, getting nookie on the side and fathering children by women other than your wife does not necessarily impede your ability to govern well. But it ain't a good look in a candidate, to say the least.

Should this hurt Barack Obama? Well, Republicans will try to make some sort of case. To which the Democrats should quietly make sure that the story about how John McCain, Married Man chased (literally) the young rich hottie Cindy Lou Henson and dumped his first wife for her.

Again, that does not disqualify McCain for the Presidency. But if you want to try to hurt the Democrats by spreading salacious stories (which are likely true) about a Democrat who isn't even running for President any more, then salacious stories about the Republican who IS running for President are fair.

Heck, McCain isn't even the first Republican candidate to meet somebody and then dump his first wife. See the family history of Bob Dole and Ronald Reagan for further proof of the Republican Way. Not to mention Newt Gingrich's sordid marital history.