A Kid in a Candy Store

We weren't in the Xcel Center at the RNC for more than five minutes when I ran into Senator Orrin Hatch. We talked about various issues and then wound up getting into it over Sarah Palin's daughter's pregnancy, which he said was "terrible" to bring up. By that point several other reporters had gathered around, and they wouldn't let him back off it or silence the discussion. I'll play the interview on the show tomorrow.

Then I ran into Gary Bauer -- had quite an interesting discussion with him about "sinners" and Ballot Measure 8. I then headed for the floor of the convention, where they were only doing limited business (because of Gustav), and I got into quite a scrap with rabid right-wing California Congressman Dan Lungren, over the issue of marriage and the "activist judges" and the liberals who are destroying America. He did not like me!

I went to the Alaska delegation and spoke with a woman who is in Palin's cabinet. She assured me that Palin is not in favor of giving any rights to gays and didn't want to give domestic partnership rights to government employees but that she had to veto the bill that would have rescinded such rights because of the Alaska Supreme Court ruling. So can we please cut this crap Log Cabin and the McCain campaign have been trying to put out: Palin only vetoed an antigay bill because she had to, by law. This woman, Annette Kreitzer, who serves in Sarah Palin's cabinet in the Department of Administration, said, oh, well, it was the law -- drat! -- or something like that. I'll play it tomorrow. (Kreizter, by the way, is one of the officials who are focused on in the probe of Palin, now under investigation for firing a man who wouldn't fire her brother-in-law, who had broken up with her sister; Kreizter is portrayed as a loyal soldier who did Palin's bidding.)

I also caught up with the anti-tax conservative activist Grover Norquist, and asked him about the rumors that he is gay -- there was a silence before he answered (said he got married recently) and then explained why people think he's gay. (I will play it on the show, and I'll post some audio and video here too). Interesting stuff, and we've only been here a couple of hours!

Arrived in St. Paul

The mood here is not festive, I can tell you that. A look of trepidation on everyone's face, from the moment we stepped off the plane. And who did we run into at the rental car place? Right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham, who seemed a bit irritable at the counter. (They make you sign things, you know, and that can get really annoying, I guess).

Am at our hotel. Going to head down to the Xcel Center now, and we'll have yet another question to ask delegates and conservative family values politicians: What do you think of Sarah Palin having a daughter who is pregnant, unmarried, and a teen? I wonder if they think she's a sinner, the way that Alan Keyes' called Mary Cheney a "selfish hedonist" on my show at the last convention. Poor Bristol Palin. She deserves her privacy, and we will give her that. But I do think her mom's -- and the party's -- hypocrisy should be discussed. Also, doesn't this further underscore the fact that McCain didn't vet this woman? He'd probably still have chosen her, but the McCain campaign statement seemed to indicate they didn't know. They also didn't seem to know a lot of other stuff about Sarah Palin that is now coming out in the press and on the blogs. Is this a train wreck?