Sarah Palin is stepping down as Governor of Alaska with almost a year and a half left in her elected term.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin shocked the political word Friday by announcing that she will step down at the end of the month and transfer power to Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell.

Palin made the announcement from her home in Wasilla, flanked by her husband, Todd, and family and state commissioners.

“I am determined to take the right path for Alaska even though it is not the easiest path,” Palin said after the announcement, according to a press release from her office. “Once I decided not to run for re-election, I also felt that to embrace the conventional ‘Lame Duck’ status in this particular climate would just be another dose of ‘politics as usual,’ something I campaigned against and will always oppose.”

The announcement came on the same week that one of her top public health officials says she was forced out of office because Palin felt she wasn’t in step on social issues.

Palin’s decision now allows her to avoid the difficult task of running for president while serving as governor.

► Palin Quits as Alaska Governor

This is exactly the opposite of what I thought (and said) she needed to do if she hopes to have an active role in national politics. Her national credibility—outside of a highly enthusiastic core of true believers like yours truly—desperately needed the boost that would have come from winning re-election from the people who know her best, her own voters in her own home state. Carrying on a successful governorship in bald contradiction of her portrayal as a flighty lightweight would have helped dissipate those negative stereotypes inflicted on her by the likes of David Letterman and the Beltway GOP elites who soil their bedsheets at night dreaming that Barack Obama would switch parties if only Palin would go away and Rush Limbaugh shut his big fat mouth.

That’s it. I’m through. Sarah Palin has sunk her chances.

Of course, three years ago I didn’t think she had any chances...

Whatever. I didn’t think much of Ronald Reagan in 1977 either. Who the hell knows?

I think a case could be made that Florida’s judicial nominating commission is violating the Civil Rights Act or something.

The Florida Supreme Court says Gov. Charlie Crist can’t reject an all-white list of appeals court nominees, even though he wants to appoint someone who will make the judiciary more diverse.

The justices unanimously ruled Thursday that the Florida Constitution leaves Crist no choice but to pick one of the six white candidates submitted by a judicial nominating commission.

Crist refused to make an appointment to the Daytona Beach court after the commission refused to give him a more diverse slate. The 10-member court has no black judges.

► Fla. high court: Crist can’t reject all-white list of
judicial nominees in quest for diversity

At least, back here where only I can go, it’s a rat’s nest. I don’t know how all these tangled wires and paper-clip-fastened connections manage to keep the website looking as good as it does to you visitors.

On the one hand, I really want to clean up back here, getting my templates and categories better organized—not that I haven’t already been doing quite a bit of tinkering none of you will ever detect—but on the other hand why go to all the fuss over a site that barely has a pulse even on its good days?

If over the next few days or weeks you happen to notice things looking a little hinky around here, it’s not this blog or the website itself dying (though I can’t speak for the server, that’s my host’s concern), it’s just me rearranging the deck chairs to my liking, back here where you can’t see.

Temps are still high hereabouts, but the dewpoint is way down, meaning it’s a lot less humid. Naturally the day the heat humidity wave broke was also the day we had our air conditioning serviced. Here’s hoping if we do have another streak of 70-plus dewpoints this summer, the AC really is up to it.

Today’s “Mallard Fillmore” comic strip:

...at least they’re right that it shouldn’t pass.

The sad thing is, one has to be an incorrigible news wonk even to know about Waxman-Markey and what it does—even without absconding governors and dead celebrities clogging up the “news” cycle.

...all this “news” coverage about Michael Jackson is making me queasy.

The fact a governor of a state disappears and nobody seems to know where he is, is mildly interesting, at least until he turns up unharmed.

The fact he had his staff cover for him isn’t by itself a big deal. When Bush flew to Iraq on Air Force One he did the same thing.

The fact he was cheating on his wife while he was gone, is titillating but not by itself something I care about. It’s important to him, his wife and his family, but not to me as a resident of one of the other 56 49 states.

The fact he had his staff cover for him while he was away cheating on his wife, however, is a betrayal of public trust.

Gah. Look at that, 91°. Good thing I got the lawn mowed yesterday after the sun was mostly down behind the trees. This heat wave just isn’t breaking.

Coweta County commissioners voted last week to deny a business license to the owner of a would-be “adult” store just across Highway 34 from the Methodist church Wife-o-sferics and I used to attend. There will almost certainly be a lawsuit, but after all this time I’d be really surprised if it turned out the county hadn’t researched the issues thoroughly and determined they were on a firm legal footing. Meanwhile the building still has the chain’s signs on it and I doubt they’ll be removed until either the county wins a court case or the chain’s owner decides not to pursue it. No real way to know at this point.

Meanwhile the Walgreens and Tractor Supply stores nearby appear to be within weeks if not days of opening.

A couple of road projects in Newnan proper are moving right along; the intersection of Jackson Street and Roscoe Road, near the original Sprayberry’s barbecue restaurant, is about to be realigned to meet Sprayberry Road more cleanly, thus affording Roscoe Road the use of Sprayberry Road’s traffic light. For years now Roscoe has come into Jackson Street at an odd angle with only a stop sign in the face of cross traffic that either flows freely, or backs up from the Sprayberry light.

A two-lane highway bypass that has become congested, with frequent extended backups during peak traffic times, will finally see a four-laning project beginning in August, right about when school starts up again in these parts—there is an elementary school right in the path of the project and some other elementary and middle schools not very far away from the corridor. On the one hand the work will complicate traffic flows for months before things get any better. On the other hand, people who use that stretch of road regularly have been wondering for a long time how much worse it could possibly get, and curiosity like that deserves to be rewarded.