Meet Sarah Palin ... Our next Vice President?

Congratulations to the 'Draft Sarah Palin for VP bloggers -- they must be overjoyed and this is certainly their day.

• Official bio from the State of Alaska
  
• A very informative Wikipedia entry on Sarah Palin.
  

• John McCain's official press release announcing his pick.
  

• Some facts on Palin's children:

  On September 11, 2007, the Palins' son Track joined the Army. Eighteen years old at the time, he is the eldest of Palin's five children.[10] Track now serves in an infantry brigade and will be deployed to Iraq in September. She also has three daughters: Bristol, 17, Willow, 13, and Piper, 7. On April 18, 2008, Palin gave birth to her second son, Trig Paxson Van Palin, who has Down syndrome. She returned to the office three days after giving birth. Palin refused to let the results of prenatal genetic testing change her decision to have the baby. "I'm looking at him right now, and I see perfection," Palin said. "Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking, in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?"

  
  
• Five Things You Didn't Know About Sarah Palin - didn't know her husband is part Eskimo. He runs a "family commercial fishing operation in addition to a full-time job as an oil company production operator."
  

• David Freddoso @ The Corner: "She is everything Obama is not.":

  A real reformer who took on her own party's corrupt establishment and won, defeating an incumbent governor, 80-20. Don't forget that she's also a mother who chose life for her Down Syndrome baby — we can probably guess where she'd fall on the Born-Alive act. If this is the future of the GOP, they're in good shape.

  
  

Reactions from the Catholic online community

• Deacon Kieth Fournier on Maverick McCain's selection of the Alaska Governor (Catholic.org August 29, 2008):

  The Maverick has indeed gone bold.He has just infused this 2008 presidentail campaign with a jolt of raw energy. The entire Press corps is fixated on the Republicans this morning, even though Senator Barack Obama gave his much anticipated acceptance speech last night. Senator John McCain turned 72 years old today. With this historic decision he has proven that he still has a lot of life and courage.

• Babies, Guns and Jesus! Hot Damn! - Patrick Archbold (Creative Minority Report).

• Some Have Hats on the Obama campaign's condescension toward small towns:

  I just watched an Obama Camp spokeswoman explain, with a look on her face like she just stepped in a cowpile, that Palin's only experience is that she has been a "part-time mayor of a town with a population of under 9,000." ...
  

  I'd just like to say, as a person who grew up in a town of 1,200 and was raised by the Vice-Mayor: Obama's elitist, condescending, small-town-bashing bigots can kiss my ignorant, gun-toting, Bible-clutching @ss.

  
  
• Radical Catholic Mom @ Vox Nova approves, and gives 5 reasons why Democrats shouldn't underestimate her:

  I have known Sarah Palin for years. How? I met her through AK Right to Life. She always came to our fund-raising dinners, she always came to pro-life events (even when she took time off from politics to be home with her children), and one of her kids became AK RTL’s baby mascot for our stationery. She is the real deal when it comes to pro-life matters. This became even more clear when at the age of 44 of this year, she gave birth to a baby with Down’s Syndrome. BTW: No one knew she was pregnant until 1 month before giving birth!
  

  She worked under previous (Catholic-pro-life) Governor Frank Murkowski’s Admin and ended up resigning because the corruption was so blatant and so bad she could not effect change. She gave up her 6 figure income to do so. This catapulted her into stardom for Alaskans. ...

  Fellow contributor Jay Anderson has a nice roundup on Palin @ Pro Ecclesia... -- critical as he is of John McCain, he asks: "is this a ticket I can support?".
  

• Howard Wolfson, a A Hillary Clinton campaign worker concurs:

  Yesterday I argued that picking a woman for veep would help re-establish McCain's reputation as a maverick. If the pick is indeed Sarah Palin you are going to have a lot of women voters wondering why Senator Obama didn't tap Senator Clinton as his running mate.

  
  

Pro-life mother of five, former two-term mayor of Wasilia (where she cut her own salary!) and governor of Alaska with an 80-90% approval rating; bane of Alaskan Republican and 'Big Oil' corruption; she sold the state's private jet on E-Bay because it was "government waste" ... she hunts moose and fishes and is a lifelong NRA member. Feminist for Life and staunchly pro-life.

She also knows how to handle an M-16.

She's not a Catholic, however -- but in this case I'll settle. =)