Sarah Palin, grandmother

Bristol Palin, the 18-year-old daughter of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, gave birth to a baby boy Saturday, said Lorenzo Benet in People.com. The child, Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston, weighed in at 7 pounds, 7 ounces. Tripp’s father, apprentice electrician Levi Johnston, has said he and Bristol plan to wed next year.

Congratulations to the new parents, said Robert Stacy McCain in The Other McCain, but also a note of “cultural criticism”—“What’s up with this ‘baby first, marriage later’ thing?” Would it have been so hard to organize “a private, hurry-up wedding” before Tripp’s birth? After all, “conservatives ought to support real traditional values,” such as shotgun weddings.

The news of Bristol’s pregnancy “shocked a lot of people” just as her mom became the GOP’s vice presidential candidate, said Andrew Malcolm in the Los Angeles Times online, but “the conservative crowd seemed to see the situation as a familiar family one.” And Grandma Palin got more good news than a first grandchild this weekend—she was also named the “nation’s second most-admired woman,” after Hillary Clinton, in a USA Today–Gallup poll.

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Grandma Johnston’s news was decidedly more mixed, said Lisa Derrick in La Figa. Levi’s mom was busted “for peddling Oxycontin, aka hillbilly heroin, to state troopers” last week. Still, even that helped the new parents, as the arrest pushed up the bidding price for Tripp’s first photos—People reportedly paid $300,000 for the “snap-rights,” from a starting bid of $100,000.