Andrew Sullivan addresses Weigel's assertion that he called the Mat-Su Regional Medical Center.

From the Daily Beast:

The Dish did call Mat-Su Hospital in 2008 and were told that Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy rules prevent them from talking about individual patients. But we confirmed, like Wiegel, that the list of newborns is voluntary.

I will confirm that I ALSO called the hospital, at least twice, and was told that because of HIPAA they simply could not answer any questions about their patients without the express permission of said patient. In fact I was quickly adding it up in my head and can confirm that over a dozen bloggers, journalists, and authors have made similar requests, and that ALL of them were told what Sullivan and I were told.

So the fact that Weigel received an actual answer is, to say the least, shocking. Either he has mad journalistic skills or......

Andrew also mentioned the amount of research he did concerning the "wild ride."

We also interviewed ten OB/GYNs to check whether the story Palin tells, of her water breaking in Texas and flying back to Alaska, was plausible. None would say it was impossible, but all of them agreed that Palin should have gone to the hospital in Texas and that a woman getting on a plane after her water breaks is extremely dangerous. Neither Dave nor Salon really want to touch the wild ride, for good reasons. Because any sane person would immediately ask questions.

I can also confirm that I have spoken to about four or five doctors specifically about this as well.  Hmm I wonder how many Weigel has interviewed on this topic? 

Let's face it Wiegel's incredibly lazy brand of "journalism" simply cannot measure up to the hours of research, number of interviews, and incredible dedication that many of us who have been focused on this story have dedicated to it in these last three plus years.

So for him to strut around as if he has miraculously repudiated the idea of Sarah Palin faking her last pregnancy with a mere phone call to Wasilla makes him look like a idiot and a phony.

BTW speaking of interviewing doctors, Laura Novak has her second interview with a pediatric specialist up on her blog.  Go take a look and see if it makes Sarah Palin's version of Trig' birth any more likely.