NEW YORK—Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin spent her 58th birthday listening to a closing argument by one of her attorneys, as well as one from the defense, in her defamation trial with The New York Times on Feb. 11. Her lawyer, Kenneth Turkel, said as a public figure, Palin, a Republican, “suffered plenty of jokes, plenty of insults” and “slings and arrows” but with the newspaper’s editorial linking her to a mass shooting, “[i]t became time to draw the line” with a lawsuit. “Ultimately, civil lawsuits are about money, but that’s not why we’re here,” he said. Turkel reviewed many of The New York Times’ internal emails that had been submitted as evidence, showing the biased genesis of the editorial. He looked at the two sentences from the editorial that are in question, which Judge Jed Rakoff referred to as “challenged statements” later in the day. Turkel went over the …