She just has problems with facts

The problem with Sarah Palin is that you never know if she is telling the truth or deceiving herself -- forget about the rest of us. Dozens of conversations over the course of the years since Palin was mayor of Wasilla, not to mention years of observation while she was in state government, lead to the unavoidable conclusion she doesn't think -- let alone care -- about what realities exists outside her own mind.

This is what makes her a maverick or, as she has now officially self-proclaimed, a rogue. This sort of of self-involvement is neither bad nor good. It simply is.

I have friends who adamantly believe Palin is a liar. They like to point to the case of Ketchikan's famous "bridge to nowhere,'' a label I hate to use because of its inaccuracy. The bridge went somewhere. It would have connected the city to the airport with a road, the way most cities are connected to their airports by roads. But let's ignore this for the sake of convenience and call the bridge by the name everyone else is calling it.

Palin was for the bridge to nowhere as a candidate for governor in 2006, against the bridge to nowhere as governor in 2007, and claiming by 2008 that she'd never been for the bridge at all. There are those who insist that you can't put these three things together without being a liar. You are either for the bridge or against the bridge. You can't have it both ways.

These people do not understand the thinking of Sarah Palin. She lives in the moment, not in the past.

If she says today she is against the bridge to nowhere, well then, it doesn't matter what she said yesterday, because what she said then doesn't really matter. Even if she was for the bridge in 2006, she really wasn't "for" it all that much; she was just saying that because she was a candidate, and saying things is what you do to get elected.

Every candidate knows this, right? It's how the system works.

You make promises to everyone. And then you try to keep as many promises as possible. But since you've made so many promises, some of them contradictory in ways big or small, you can't be expected to keep them all. So you juggle them.

This isn't lying. This is making the pieces of your world fit together. This is what might be called rationalizing, and for Sarah Palin it is a struggle, which brings us to her latest bizarre claim.

According to ABC News, Palin tells Barbara Walters in a television interview set to air tomorrow that  Mom and Pop Palin did not know teenage daughter Bristol was sexually active with boyfriend Levi Johnston. Johnston, for his part, has insisted the opposite. He has claimed the Palins were well aware. He has even said Todd was concerned enough that he tried to break up the relationship.

But let's ignore the he-said, they-said of this affair for  a moment and accept at face value what Sarah now claims -- the she did not know her daughter was sexually active.

Is not knowing in this case somehow better than knowing?

Your teenage daughter is seriously dating a hockey player, and you fail to sit her down to have a talk about sex and birth control? Is Palin the only parent in America who fails to understand that hockey players like to "shoot the puck,'' so to speak? Has Palin somehow forgotten how teenagers behave? The strongest willed among them might be able to limit themselves to merely making out. The rest?

Well, can any responsible parent ignore the statistics on teenage sexuality in this country:

-- About 50 percent of teens engage in sex.

-- More than three-quarters of female teens say their first sexual experience is with a steady boyfriend.

-- Sexually active teens who do not use contraceptives have a 90 percent chance of becoming pregnant within a year.

If you're a parent of a 17-year-old daughter, and she has a steady boyfriend, shouldn't you be very concerned about the 50-50 odds she will have sex with him? Shouldn't you be even more concerned that if she does start having sex the odds are frighteningly high she is going to get pregnant unless she uses some sort of contraception?