While the progressive’s progress through the various stages of the syndrome known as “batsh*t crazy” over Sarah Palin’s candidacy, breathlessly following the story of her daughter’s pregnancy, and now in the “what did McCain know and when did he know it” phase (more here and here), we see in an excellent new story in Time revealing that, as a matter of fact, everyone knew it.

So his name is Levi.

That’s about the only thing that I didn’t know about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy. The rest of the details I picked up almost without trying, while talking about other things with townsfolk — some who know the governor and her family well, some who don’t. It was, more or less, an open secret. And everyone was saying the same thing: the governor’s 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, the father is her boyfriend, and it’s really nobody’s business beyond that…

Sarah Palin is a longterm member of a group called Feminists for Life, which is not opposed to birth control. So you probably can’t tag her for consigning young people to unwanted pregnancies.

I’m not even going to speculate about what MSNBC is doing with the story …. but in any case, I blame Karl Rove.