Let’s see how well this one follows the Palin “scandal” template. Step one: Some provocative yet murky detail emerges about something she said or did. In this case, that’d be her admission that as a kid her family once crossed the border to seek medical care for her brother in Canada. Step two: The media assumes the worst and beams out the shocking allegations. Can it be true? America’s conservative champion bypassing the 45-minute trip to Anchorage so that her brother could indulge in some freebie socialized medicine 15 hours away?

Step three: The truth. First, the full quote from her speech:

“My first five years of life we spent in Skagway, Alaska, right there by Whitehorse (180km away. see map). Believe it or not – this was in the ‘60s – we used to hustle on over the border for health care that we would receive in Whitehorse. I remember my brother, he burned his ankle in some little kid accident thing and my parents had to put him on a train and rush him over to Whitehorse and I think, isn’t that kind of ironic now. Zooming over the border, getting health care from Canada.”

And then the inconvenient part:

Little did these bloggers know that the source from which they were quoting either deliberately or unintentionally left off the fact that Palin clearly said that the story emanated from when her family lived in Skagway. Skagway is pretty close to Whitehorse [Canada]…

According to the summary of Canada’s health care system by Health Canada, it was only until 1972 that Yukon “create[d] medical insurance plans with federal cost sharing.”

So the day-long Yukon trek to feed from the socialist trough turns out to be a short drive to a nearby hospital where they paid for the treatment. Given her age at the time, why this would constitute a scandal even if her parents had gone there for free care is beyond me, but per our template, “too good to check” is the guiding principle in all things Sarahcuda.

But wait. An emerging scandal from the non-scandal?

Palin has also told an alternate version of the story that had her family traveling south by ferry to Juneau from Skagway for treatment of her brother’s burned foot, rather than to Canada, according to a 2007 report posted by the Skagway News.

Palin caught lying red-handed? Or Palin maybe having had her memory refreshed about her brother’s hospitalization in the course of talking to her parents while writing her book? We’re on the cusp of step two!

Exit question: Why on earth would she even talk about her family crossing the border to get treatment for her brother? Doesn’t she know that the left’s going to do this to her?