A good day or Alaska... hopefully

In under an hour, Palin will no longer be our governor. Hallelujah.

I have no idea what her plans are after this, and the only way this could be a bad thing is if she decided she still wanted to run for office. If she wants to do some entertainment/newsy thing, go for it - I don't care. It would be easy to turn her off and ignore her - something I can't do while she's making (or, more likely, not making) huge decisions that will affect me and everyone I care about.

This Juneau Empire article did a great job, I think, of explaining some of the "ethical dilemna" Palin faced (or, again, didn't face) and is leaving us with. Basically, a great big mess. It really goes into the ethics complaints issues, and exposes all the PR lies about them from the Palin camp. Ironic that the BULK of the money the state is being made to pay on these "frivolous complaints" is from the complaint Palin filed against herself.

Palin's claims, from the article:

Those claims are contradicted by records released under the Alaska Public Records Law and interviews with administration and other sources. They show a pattern of the Palin administration using public resources and the state's ethics laws in an effort to block and discredit both frivolous and credible charges made against the governor.

Is this the "ethics reform" she was talking about accomplishing?

But as much as, yes, she's abanding the post with tons of unfinished business, and I STILL can't figure out what she was talking about on all her administration's "accomplished," I'm still glad she's leaving. It was pretty likely she was going to leave those things unaccomplished anyways.

From the other big newspapers around the state:

The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner on the state vs. national access Palin's given, and her "open access" fail.

The Anchorage Daily News pondering some of the questions around why she's leaving. Might be because NOBODY believes the "Why can't you people believe it's totally atruistic?" defense Palin has given.