Quittin’ time!

Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin gave her final speech as Alaska’s governor Sunday before stepping down from her post, telling a Fairbanks crowd that she is resigning ‘to chart a new course to advance the state.’

‘Now people who know me, they know how much I love this state … I feel it is my duty to avoid the unproductive, typical, politics-as-usual, lame-duck session in one’s last year in office,’ Palin said, just moments before Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell was sworn in as governor.

‘With this decision, now I will be able to fight even harder for you, for what is right and for the truth,’ Palin continued. ‘And I have never felt you need a title to do that.’

Bless her whackjob heart, she remains incomprehensible to the end. She somehow made quitting her job mid-term into doing her “duty” by quitting so she wouldn’t be involved in the last year of governing. Or something. We knew all about conservatives and their disdain for actual governing (they prefer to run for office, cut taxes for the wealthy, deregulate big business then sit back and reap the profits as infrastructure crumbles) but this is a new low watermark. The Palin mark.

An independent investigator has found evidence that Gov. Sarah Palin may have violated ethics laws by accepting private donations to pay her legal debts.

The report obtained by The Associated Press says Palin is securing unwarranted benefits and receiving improper gifts through the Alaska Fund Trust, set up by supporters.

An investigator for the state Personnel Board says in his July 14 report that there is probable cause to believe Palin used or attempted to use her official position for personal gain because she authorized the creation of the trust as the ‘official’ legal defense fund.

The Legislature’s top lawyer, Tam Cook, has come out with an opinion that Craig Campbell can’t become the lieutenant governor on July 26.

But she conceded that it’s muddy and there are unresolved legal questions.

July 26th is the day Palin is to resign as governor and hand power over Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell. Palin picked Campbell, who is the head of the state department of military and veterans affairs, to replace Parnell as the lieutenant governor.

But the state Legislature already confirmed a line of succession under which corrections commissioner Joe Schmidt should be taking over as lieutenant governor.

Top Alaska legislators said Tuesday they’re likely to accept at least most of the federal economic stimulus money that Gov. Sarah Palin did not.

“I think at the end of the day we will end up taking most of the funds,” said Anchorage Republican Rep. Mike Hawker, who is leading the House effort on the stimulus as co-chairman of the finance committee.

Senate Majority Leader Johnny Ellis agreed. “I would be surprised if we give up much or any of the federal money,” the Anchorage Democrat said.

Alaska officials are investigating racist jokes about President-elect Barack Obama that have been circulating on state government e-mail accounts.

One of the five e-mails obtained by The Associated Press asks about the outcome of the Democrat’s victory after all the time and money invested and concludes: ‘Another black family living in government housing!’

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens has lost his bid for a seventh term. The longest-serving Republican in the history of the Senate trailed Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich by 3,724 votes after Tuesday’s count. That’s an insurmountable lead with only about 2,500 overseas ballots left to be counted.

I mean, what kind of people run the government up there???? Oh.

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens was convicted of seven corruption charges Monday in a trial that tainted the 40-year Senate career of Alaska’s political patriarch.

The verdict, coming just days before Election Day, adds further uncertainty to a closely watched Senate race. Democrats hope to seize the once reliably Republican seat as part of their bid for a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

In all, the commissioner and his aides were contacted about Mr. Wooten three dozen times over 19 months by the governor, her husband and seven administration officials, interviews and documents show.

‘To all of us, it was a campaign to get rid of him as a trooper and, at the very least, to smear the guy and give him a desk job somewhere,’ said Kim Peterson, Mr. Monegan’s special assistant, who like several other aides spoke publicly about the matter for the first time.

Ms. Peterson, a 31-year veteran of state government who retired 10 days before Mr. Monegan’s firing, said she received about a dozen calls herself. ‘It was very clear that someone from the governor’s office wanted him watched,’ she said.

Macbeth – Act I Scene V

The raven himself is hoarse

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan

Under my battlements. Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts! unsex me here,

And fill me from the crown to the toe, top-full

Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,

Stop up the access and passage to remorse,

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,

And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature’s mischief!

GOP vice presidential pick Sarah Palin accepted at least $4,500 in campaign contributions in the same fundraising scheme at the center of a public corruption scandal that led to the indictment of Sen. Ted Stevens.

The contributions, made during Palin’s failed 2002 bid to become Alaska’s lieutenant governor, were not illegal for her to accept. But they show how Palin, a self-proclaimed champion for clean government, has been part of an Alaska political system that is now under the cloud of an ongoing FBI investigation.

Officials of the Alaskan Independence Party say that Palin was once so independent, she was once a member of their party, which since the 1970s has been pushing for a legal vote for Alaskans to decide whether or not residents of the 49th state can secede from the United States.

And while McCain’s motto — as seen in a new TV ad — is ‘Country First,’ the AIP’s motto is the exact opposite — ‘Alaska First — Alaska Always.’

Here is video of Sarah Palin addressing the pro-secessionist Alaskan Independence Party at their convention:

UPDATE: Here’s what the founder of the Alaska Independence Party said:

“I’m an Alaskan, not an American. I’ve got no use for America or her damned institutions.”

And Sarah Palin signed up.

Then Dean wanted to know how many organizers the state party now had on the ground, and Teeters told him there was just one: Teeters himself. The D.N.C. created his job — along with a position for a communications director — last year as part of Dean’s signature program, known as the 50-state strategy. Under this program, the national party is paying for hundreds of new organizers and press aides for the state parties, many of which have been operating on the edge of insolvency. The idea is to hire mostly young, ambitious activists who will go out and build county and precinct organizations to rival Republican machines in every state in the country. “We’re going to be in places where the Democratic Party hasn’t been in 25 years,” Dean likes to say. “If you don’t show up in 60 percent of the country, you don’t win, and that’s not going to happen anymore.”

In paying for two new staffers, Dean had, virtually overnight, doubled the size of Alaska’s beleaguered state party, which used to consist of only an executive director and a part-time fund-raiser. But now, as Dean considered the vastness of the state’s landscape, he decided that one organizer wasn’t enough. “In most states, we have three or four,” Dean said, thinking out loud. “Seems like you should really have more. We should be able to find that money in the budget.”

That night, after meeting with Dean at the sad little storefront office that houses the state party, Alaska’s party chairman, Jake Metcalfe, announced to 400 assembled Democrats at a fund-raiser that Dean had just promised to hire an additional organizer for the state. The ballroom erupted in grateful applause as Dean sat there beaming. The members of his staff, gently rolling their eyes, began calling back to Washington, warning the political staff that they would need to find the money for yet another salary in, of all places, Alaska.