The National Enquirer has the details of what the tabloid dubs its "exhaustive" and "extensive" probe of Sarah Palin's extramarital dalliance this week. It was not with that guy who had his divorce papers sealed, but with a city council member in nearby Palmer (pop: smaller than Wasilla) they say! And from the looks of his facial hair, he is a total Toddpelganger.* It went down in the nineties, when David Foster Wallace and Elizabeth Wurtzel were an item, and it involved: snowmobiles, remote cabins, polygraphs, declarations of love, small-town politics and another one of those wackjob ex-brothers-in-law that are such a rich natural resource in Alaska. Full story after the jump!Okay, Brad Hanson. Born in Montana, he grew up in small town Alaska, was a high school jock and is basically the exact same as Todd Palin down to the facial hair but not nearly as totally awesome, which sort of stands to reason why Palin would fall in love with him. A supporter of strip malls and self-professed enemy of "small-town charm" the Palmer football/hockey coach and property developer bonded with Todd over sports and hunting-type activities and ran a snowmobile dealership together until Todd discovered Brad and Sarah had been bonding, according to the Enquirer, over a shared interest in politics. The Enquirer says Sarah Palin told friends the relationship was never "consummated" but you know how they get around that in Islam. Here's their evidence: 1. This guy they picture, Jim Burdett. He's the ex-con former brother-in-law of Brad Hanson's wife Carolyn's brother Craig Bratton, and boy is he a piece of work. Served three years in some unspecified clink for some sort of "theft," he filed for bankruptcy in 2001, he supposedly "turned his life around" and now "speaks regularly with family members" - that may change! - and says that everyone always knew Brad had had an affair but that it wasn't until recently that word went down the family pipeline that the affair had been with Sarah Palin, and that if the Enquirer came calling they had better deny that the affair had been with Sarah Palin. Just to make sure, the Enquirer strapped him to a polygraph and he passed with flying colors. 2. When the Enquirer initially called the Hanson household, Carolyn reportedly said: "I would prefer not to talk about it. It's a nonissue." Then she hung up. Then she called back. And then said, "There is absolutely no truth to this story. It is a complete rumor." 3. Than Brad got on the phone and said, hilariously: "Todd and I are still friends. We own a cabin together. I talked to him four times this week. Does that sound like there was a disagreement?" Um, I have had boyfriends I didn't talk to on the phone four times in a week unless something was SERIOUSLY UP so yeah. Anyway, thoughts: 1. Brad owns a cabin with Todd. Todd also owns a cabin with that other guy with the sealed divorce papers, Scott Richter. The Palins are looking like the Treasury Department with all those ownership stakes in the housing market! 2. Unless it's the same house, in which case, with the affairs and divorces and procreation and prescription pill-popping and Divine Energy Policy Intervention going down, that house is more zeitgeisty than the Real World house circa 1992! 3. I hated the movie American Beauty, so why can I not get it out of my mind with this crew? 4. Sigh, speaking of, as Wonkette pointed out, Peggy Noonan sorta said it best about these scandals back on Friday. Yeah, we will bite on this, of course we will bite, but our teeth are sure getting rotten from the attention deficit drugs..

Here is one of the many charming emails your editors have received since we reposted some emails that were hacked and originally posted by Anonymous earlier today, and then called a phone number. Now the "bloggers post their hate mail so you can point and laugh" routine is dead tired, but this one invokes your day editor's mom! "You obviously are too immature to realize that this is a pregnant woman you are bothering. Ask your mom if she approves." We went to your day editor's mom for comment.

Among the messages in Sarah Palin's hacked Yahoo email account is a photo sent earlier this week from a cellphone. The subject line: "LOOK AT TRIG!!!!!" (In case you weren't watching the Down Syndrome baby being passed around at the Republican Convention, Trig is the name of Sarah Palin's youngest child.) We called up the Alaskan cellphone number from which the message was supposedly sent. Click the thumb to listen to the voicemail.

Bristol Palin smoked weed on camera, the Enquirer reports today in the latest installment of the tabloid's investigation into the Republican running mate's family values. And Bristol's boyfriend Levi could desensitize Cindy McCain under the table! (Also, cocaine.) See the full sordid story after the jump, along with our attempt to explain Whether Christians Will Care.A lot of churches ban the use of drugs and alcohol and even coffee, which is ridiculous, but pot is a particularly thorny issue. In the late seventies the religious right was widely credited for galvanizing public sentiment against the strides the Nixon and Carter administrations made toward the decriminalization of drugs and raising the political capital to fund the endless gazillion dollar War On Drugs. Those religious rightists did all this because they were creeped out by their kids under the influence of pot. Still, the Christians have never imposed any sort of Islamish ban on mood-altering substances, namely I would venture because "Thou Shalt Not Kill Brain Cells" is nowhere to be found in the Ten Commandments, perhaps because Moses was high on hallucinogens when God revealed them to him, and a couple thousand years later when God sent down that community organizer son of his to save us from our original sins, Jesus seemed to develop a keen understanding of the value of the "addictive personality" to the propagation of his cause. There is nothing like an addiction to drugs to keep a guy sinning, and there is nothing like compulsive sin to remind you how much you need Christ's forgiveness. So Father forgive Levi and Bristol for they have committed the sin of premarital sex on at least one known occasion and here are maybe some clues as to the demons that led them so terribly astray:

Mostly lost in the furor over the purity ring comments made by VMAs host Russell Brand were the even more scathing jabs he threw the Republicans' way during the telecast. Never afraid to be politically controversial (a formerly crack-addled Brand was fired from British MTV for showing up to work on September 12, 2001 dressed as Osama Bin Laden), the comedian called President Bush a "retarded cowboy" who "wouldn't be trusted with a pair of scissors," then dismissed the teen pregnancy of Sarah Palin's daughter as a "PR stunt." Now, Brand is telling the UK's Daily Telegraph that he had one even more outrageous Palin joke in that vein, but MTV wouldn't let him tell it:

An expanded version of this story about the Republican running mate's son—with details from the National Enquirer's print edition—is here.

Today in Sarah Palin news! This nice young man has gone to the YouTube to announce something very important: he is actually the father of Alaska governor Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol Palin's little fetus. Well. Keven, the nice young man in question, is from Los Angeles, but he says he lived in Wasilla for a while, with his dad, and he and Bristol were "really good friends" who made a baby together. That baby's life began at conception and Kevin went back home to make YouTubes. Oh, you might notice something about Kevin, as you watch this. There is something about him that makes him seem a little different from, say, reported father Levi Johnston. See if you can spot what it is! (Confidential to K.: we think it is pronounced "PAY-lin.") [Radar]

See, aw, now I think that is sort of cute. I didn't know people got tattoos on their digits, but apparently some AP photographer did and zoomed in on the "Bristol" tat on Levi Johnston's ring finger, and now the Huffington Post deems this somehow newsworthy, probably because it provides irrefutable evidence against the scurrilous rumor Levi was not ready for a lifetime commitment to the knocked-up daughter of the Republican vice presidential nominee. He already made one! Which brings me to: are the Pregos of Palingrad just revealing the media to be the "real" rednecks as my colleague Sheila put it because we are actually all, deep down, kind of trashy? You'll note that media attention has shifted from the "decidedly Alaskan" aspects of the Palin Family White Trash Suite Of Signifiers to focus on three more familiar, Kid Rockian elements of their inimitable Red American charm.

How does an unwed teen mother like Jamie Lynn Spears occupy her free time, now that the father of her baby is out touching tongues with predatory cougars? Why, by taking an interest in politics, of course! In the tradition of amateur pundit Lindsay Lohan and Swiftian theorist Albert Brooks, Jamie Lynn is the latest celeb to weigh in on the Sarah Palin Juneau scandal, but the starlet isn't content to confine her thoughts to a mere blog post. No, according to CelebTV, she's actually sending a gift to fellow teen mother Bristol Palin:

Levi Johnston just arrived in Minneapolis. I feel like this image conjures 13 jokes you can make employing the lyrics of "Come Together" alone but you guys have at it. Image via the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

You knew it was bound to happen: Oliver Stone's gauntlet-throw to chronicle a sitting president by Election Day would be one-upped by an ambitious upstart determined to develop, produce and release a film about a campaigning candidate by the same time. And just like that, from a Defamer operative, comes Juneau, the untold story of Bristol Palin, her babydaddy and one Alaskan governor/vice-presidential hopeful to rule them all. Who knew the sleeper hit of the season would come out of the GOP Convention and not Toronto? Even Roger Ebert is into it! Let the bidding war begin.

Palin Fever: Celebrities the world over are fired up about potential VP Sarah Palin and eager to weigh in with the fruits of their opposition research. The latest multi-hyphenate to opine is Albert Brooks, writing on the Huffington Post under the barely disguised pseudonym "A. Brooks." "Do we want a president who cannot communicate to their own child that possibly having a baby a year after you get your driver's license is not the smartest thing to do?" asks Brooks. "Is this the new way for women to break the glass ceiling? To have their daughters throw their babies at it?" Perhaps not, but it would sure make for a hilarious summer tentpole at 20th Century Fox! [HuffPo]

While all of Hollywood waits with bated breath to hear the reaction to VP pick Sarah Palin from the only actress who matters — her doppleganger, Tina Fey — headline-friendly Lindsay Lohan has decided to wade into the political waters, spouting off her own, unsolicited thoughts on the matter from her Myspace celebrity blog. Now that Palin has revealed that her 17-year-old daughter Bristol is pregnant, she's become fair game for the Us Weekly set (indeed, she's snagged that cover as well as the front panel of OK!) — and who knows that territory better than Lohan?

"Having been the editor-in-chief of teen magazine YM for five years, and now as the mother of a 17-year-old girl myself, there are a few things I know." What does that sentence tell you? That's right, it's time to hear another one of former Star editor Bonnie Fuller's unique screeds comparing the Presidential race to various moments in celebrity history! Here is why Sarah Palin is just like Lynne Spears:

There's already a fake blog for Levi Johnston, the young Alaskan man who impregnated his girlfriend, Bristol Palin, and as a result will soon be the son-in-law of Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska. The twist: levijohnston.com wasn't registered by an opportunistic domain-name speculator or a political troublemaker. The site previously hosted the real blog of Levi Johnston, a developer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. The kicker: He says he's voting for Ron Paul.

John McCain was likely clueless his running mate Sarah Palin had an underage daughter with a love child — or at least that's what the Times is implying this morning. Meanwhile it looks like everyone from Time magazine to the National Enquirer to the entire population of Wasilla, Alaska was hip to the scandalous pregnancy. How could McCain have been left in the dark? It seems the presumptive Republican presidential nominee settled on Palin at the last minute, after figuring out that social conservatives might use the convention to nuke his top two choices, pseudo-Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman and former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, both pro-choice. Republican operatives vetted Palin for four or five days, one of them told the Times anonymously, but it sounds like even that's a reach: