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Opinion: In today’s pages: Sarah Palin, abortion and the White House

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Columnist Jonah Goldberg, writing from the Republican National Convention, gushes about the excitement surrounding John McCain’s choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. If McCain’s instincts are right, Goldberg opines in typically understated fashion, the selection could prove to be ‘one of the most brilliant political plays in American history’:

... although the GOP base generally agrees with McCain’s fiscal conservatism, they don’t get excited by his reformer shtick. Palin reinforces the reform theme but, at the same time, she reassures the base enough that McCain has the maneuvering room to woo moderates and independents.

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Goldberg doesn’t mention the governor’s pregnant teenage daughter, so he either was writing before the news came out or was following the admonition of his usual column topic, Barack Obama, not to sully this race with talk of the candidates’ children.

Elsewhere on the op-ed page, Dickinson College philosophy prof Crispin Sartwell argues in favor of a recent Bush Administration regulation cutting federal dollars to hospitals and clinics unless they allow physicians to refuse to perform procedures -- most notably, abortion -- that run counter to their personal beliefs. Unfortunately, he doesn’t try to reconcile his views with the recent California Supreme Court decision barring health-care personnel from refusing to perform procedures for gays or lesbians that run counter to their personal beliefs, most notably artificial insemination. Maybe next time.

Over in the editorial stack, the board urges the White House yet again to reach a deal that would allow former counsel Harriet Miers and other top officials to discuss the U.S. attorney firings with congressional investigators. It sheds light on a seemingly insane effort by Ecuadorean officials to endow nature with enforceable legal rights. And it urges Mark G. Yudof, president of the state university system, not to support a proposal that would reserve space at UC schools for far more high school students with less-than-stellar grades:

There should be a place for flexibility in the admissions process, and for crediting nontraditional achievement. But a switch to admitting a fifth of freshmen through subjective review runs a risk of lowering standards, eroding public support for UC and shortchanging students who have put their all into meeting the university’s academic rigor.

The photo of Sarah Palin, John McCain and Palin’s daughter Bristol holding four-month-old brother Trig at a recent campaign event in Ohio is courtesy of EPA/Mark Lyons.

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