Sarah Palin Now a Grandmother as Daughter Bristol Gives Birth

Those vaunted Republican family values were in full view today as Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol gave birth to a bouncing baby boy.

Sarah's an awfully young grandmother, but, last we heard, Bristol is still unmarried. And her future mother-in-law (assuming an eventual marriage) is in trouble over illegal drugs.

Coincidentally, a new report on abstinence-only sex education shows—surprise!—that it doesn't really work. Here's a summary from the Washington Post.com:

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.

The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a "virginity pledge," but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.

"Taking a pledge doesn't seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior," said Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose report appears in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics. "But it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking."

Based on the Palin's chaotic family life in the Great North, it might be time for the Republicans to reconsider their so-called family values, which look a lot less effective than the GOP claims they are.