Sarah Palin

There is a truly heartbreaking moment in "Game Change," the HBO film about Sarah Palin's run for vice president. It comes after Palin (Julianne Moore) has made her galvanizing speech at the Republican National Convention accepting the nomination as John McCain's (Ed Harris) running mate and is drawing jaw-dropping crowds to her meet and greets. Footage is shown of the people waiting hours to meet her, including one rather large and nondescript woman who looks straight at the camera and says: "I have five kids.

An unflattering statue of Sarah Palin that doubles as a functioning stove -- yes, the cooking kind -- has found a home in Chicago. The work of public art, created by a Chicago artist named J. Taylor Wallace, will take up residence at the Bridgeport Art Center. "We're havin' a Tea Pear-ody" is a large-scale metallic rendering of Palin's head, with signature glasses, tight bun and mouth wide open as if shouting. Smoke from the stove emerges from the top of the head, according to reports.

I met Christopher Hitchens only once. It was in 2007, at BookExpo America, the publishing industry trade show, where we both were on a panel about the ethics of book reviewing. Hitchens, who died Thursday of esophageal cancer at age 62, dismissed the very premise of the discussion — ethics, he suggested, was a matter of action more than intention. To illustrate the point, he told the story of someone who had reviewed one of his early efforts badly; when, sometime later, Hitchens was asked to review a book by the same writer, he jumped at the chance.

Guess those fans of "The Killing" weren't kidding when they said they were angry. AMC's moody crime drama returned for its second season Sunday with a two-hour premiere that averaged 1.8 million viewers, plunging one-third compared with last year's premiere, according to Nielsen. The key to the drop-off may be last year's season finale cliffhanger, which outraged fans by not wrapping up the mystery surrounding teenager Rosie Larsen's death. AMC pointed out that the Sunday ratings slipped a more modest 16% compared with last year's overall season average.

Going Rogue An American Life Sarah Palin HarperCollins: 413 pages; $28.99

After Birth Certificate Day, we could all use a little palate cleanser. So, take a look at this recently released photo of actor Julianne Moore in full Sarah Palin regalia. Moore as Palin is part of the cast of HBO's "Game Change," an upcoming film based on the book by political reporters John Heilemann and Mark Halperin about the 2008 presidential race. Veteran actor Ed Harris has been cast as John McCain. Woody Harrelson, Ron Livingston (from "Office Space"), and Sarah Paulson have also been cast in the film, with the role of Bristol Palin going to Melissa Farman.

Sarah Palin told President Obama this weekend that the "game" is "on. " But it remains less than clear what that game is. Was Palin’s speech this weekend at an anti-union "tea party" rally in Wisconsin a sign that the combustible former governor is growing more serious about a presidential bid? Or will she instead continue to lob anti-Obama rhetorical grenades from the sidelines? After a busy campaign season in 2010, Palin has largely avoided public speaking engagements like the one she attended in Madison on Saturday.

In 2008, Alaska adopted a ban on text messaging while driving. On July 2, 2008, while engaged in a back-and-forth with staffers, her aide, Kris Perry emailed Palin: "U textin and drivin? Didn't you just pass a law... ;)" RELATED: Read the Palin emails Palin replied: "Um, no ;) I pulled over. " (In the language of emoticons, the semi-colon-and-parenthesis symbol is a wink.) RELATED: Palin emails: Governor's team scrambled to respond to 'Troopergate' affair Palin emails: Governor stood with Ted Stevens Palin emails: Former Miss Congeniality sought to defend pageant snub Palin emails: Palin took note of rival's pipeline criticism Palin emails: Selection as vice presidential nominee sparked jubilant exchanges

First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" anti-obesity campaign, celebrating its first birthday this week, might seem like a post-partisan cause everyone can get behind. After all, about a third of children are either overweight or obese -- and those conditions come with a host of medical risk factors and social stigma. But as it turns out, everything has a political angle. At a White House luncheon Tuesday , Obama was asked about remarks by Sarah Palin, who said back in December that the first lady did not want people eating dessert.

Sarah Palin is traveling to Wisconsin this weekend to provide some in-person support for embattled Gov. Scott Walker's push against state labor unions. The former Alaska governor is scheduled to speak Saturday at a tea-party rally at the state Capitol in Madison, according to organizers of the event. For Palin, the decision comes at time when her political future--or lack of same--is being fiercely debated. Recent polls, including one this week conducted by CNN, show her tumbling down the ranks of potential GOP 2012 contenders.

Joining what she has dubbed the “lame-stream media,” if only for a brief time, Sarah Palin ended up throwing as many jabs at herself as at President Obama during an appearance on the “Today” show Tuesday morning. Introduced amid a pile of newspapers, acting flustered, Palin immediately harkened back to her infamous interview with former “Today” host Katie Couric. “Oh man, she's doing her homework!” current host Matt Lauer joked as the former Alaskan governor then dove into an anecdote about being mistaken for Tina Fey, known for her pitch-perfect impersonations of Palin on “Saturday Night Live” during the 2008 election cycle.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin hasn't ruled out running for president, but her next job will be a bit less challenging: doing a stint as a "special guest host" on NBC's"Today Show" on Tuesday. It's easy to understand NBC's motivations: not only is Palin a star in the political firmament, she has a unique ability to draw viewers to "Today" this week. That's because Katie Couric, former "Today" star and "CBS Evening News" anchor, is spending the week as guest host of a rival morning talk show,ABC's"Good Morning America.

Last week, in a column about Rush Limbaugh's verbal attacks on Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke, I mentioned that there were those on the left who are also guilty of using crude language against women. For example, I wrote, Bill Maher has said things about Sarah Palin that are "wholly unacceptable. " A number of readers, some Limbaugh fans and some not, found that assessment wholly unacceptable too. They were right. I didn't say enough. So even as the Fluke flap gets absorbed into larger questions - like whether President Obama's "super PAC" should return Maher's recent $1-million contribution and just how much damage the GOP has sustained by threatening to erode the long-standing rights of the crucial female voting bloc - I'm going to dig deeper, past the platitudes, to figure out how we decide what's acceptable and what's not. First, Maher.

Supporters of Sarah Palin who fear HBO's "Game Change" will present a negative portrayal of the former Alaska governor will have their own viewing options this weekend. Palin's political action committee, SarahPAC, emailed supporters Friday to direct their attention away from HBO and instead to the Reelz Channel, which will have the cable television premiere of the pro-Palin documentary "The Undefeated" on Sunday night. "Please tune in to see the real Sarah Palin story," the email stated, without reference to HBO's depiction of Palin.

"The Undefeated," a documentary about former Alaskan governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin drawn from her memoir, "Going Rogue: An American Life," seems to have been made as a piece of political promotion for the 2012 presidential race. But before "The Undefeated" premiered in a tiny number of theaters, Palin announced that she would not run. The film did not do well, either financially or critically. Now it has found a secondary purpose — running on Reelz Channel as an answer to the much-touted HBO film "Game Change.

There is a truly heartbreaking moment in "Game Change," the HBO film about Sarah Palin's run for vice president. It comes after Palin (Julianne Moore) has made her galvanizing speech at the Republican National Convention accepting the nomination as John McCain's (Ed Harris) running mate and is drawing jaw-dropping crowds to her meet and greets. Footage is shown of the people waiting hours to meet her, including one rather large and nondescript woman who looks straight at the camera and says: "I have five kids.

In the summer of 2008, wildfires were raging in California, and crews of Alaska firefighters, experiencing a slow season in their state, were helping out in the Lower 48. Alaska State Forester John Maisch shot a note to Natural Resources Commissioner Tom Irwin and a few other colleagues about Alaska pitching in, and attached a photograph of Yukon firefighters posing with then-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. RELATED: Read the Palin emails Irwin forwarded the photo to Palin: “Governor, you will enjoy this.

Sarah Palin frequently complains that the media treats her unfairly. But this time, she's sticking up for -- you guessed it -- Donald Trump. Appearing Tuesday evening on Sean Hannity's program on Fox News, Palin said the press is "hammering" him on the Obama birth-certificate issue. "He's merely answering reporters' questions about his view on the birth certificate and then reporters turn that around and saying that's all he's got," the former Alaska governor said.  "Donald Trump is running on the issue, bottom line, that President Obama is so far over his head.

Sarah Palin cast a vote tonight for one of the Republican presidential candidates. But for whom? A CNN producer caught the former vice presidential nominee after she voted in a presidential preference poll at the Alaska district convention in her home town of Wasilla. Video is below. While she would not say which candidate was getting her vote, she again said she wants the nominating process to continue -- and would not rule out being an option for Republicans in the case of a brokered convention.