What happened to the comments section under the story about Sarah Palin's book tour?

I made the decision to turn off comments on this story. We offer comments on stories in the hope of some reasonable discussion of the topic being covered, or the handling of the story by the newspaper. Unfortunately, comments on stories about our former governor invariably seem to devolve into little more than food fights between people who like her and those who don't.

In addition, these stories, for whatever reason, particularly seem to attract individuals who are unable or unwilling to adhere to our commenting guidelines, and that consumes my time or that of other staff here that could be better used for other work.

Because the Daily News does not care to play host to food fights, I have closed one venue where they predictably occur. In the future, on the more substantive stories about Ms. Palin, we will allow comments as long as they amount to more than petty bickering among partisans. If they don't rise above that, we will shut them off.

Pat Dougherty