The news is a bit more shocking than the speculation she wouldn’t seek re-election. She is actually resigning within weeks!

In a stunning announcement, Gov. Sarah Palin said Friday morning she will resign her office in a few weeks.

Speculation has swirled for weeks, perhaps months that Palin would not seek re-election in 2010 as she pursues a political career on the national stage. The former vice presidential candidate has long been rumored to be considering a run at the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

Palin did not address those rumors at the press conference at her Wasilla home, during which she did not take questions from reporters.

Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell will be inaugurated as her successor at the Governor’s Picnic at Pioneer Park in Fairbanks on Sunday, July 26, Palin said.

“I am determined to take the right path for Alaska even though it is not the easiest path,” said Governor Palin after the announcement. “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. It is my duty to always protect our great state. With that in mind, my family and I determined that it is best to make a difference this summer, and I am willing to change things, so that this administration, with its positive agenda, its accomplishments, and its successful road to an incredible future, can continue without interruption and with great administrative and legislative success. I look forward to helping others – to fight for our state and our country, and campaign for those who believe in smaller government, free enterprise, strong national security, support for our troops, and energy independence.

The lingering question is “why”? Many think this is the end of her national political career!

David Schuster is offering a typical sneering tone, but it doesn’t make it any less accurate: “If it’s true that she’s leaving the governorship before her first term is complete, her national political career is done.”

A broken clock can be right twice a day, and Schuster is right here. If Sarah Palin wishes to someday be President of the United States, then she had to serve at least one full term in statewide office. (Yes, Obama had been in the Senate for about two years before running for president, but he had a lot of stars align for him at the right moment. Beyond that, at some point, “but Obama did it that way” isn’t a persuasive argument.)

Departing with little or no warning, after about 30 months in office, is beyond surprising. I’m sure the Lieutenant Governor will do fine, but there’s definately a sense of leaving with work unfinished and as her career was just beginning to take off.

MSNBC is speculating a scandal. Maybe she doesn’t want to president and she is just tired of all the crap being thrown at her.

The Anchoress speculates:

I’m thinking…an ambitious woman like Palin would not do something so seemingly reckless and yes, career-damaging, unless politics is no longer an issue for her.

It’s wrong to speculate, but Palin is forcing speculation.

Some local AK reporters are saying “she feels she can do more outside of government.” Don’t believe that. If she has disappointed her base like this (and she most emphatically has) then she’s useless. Nope. Not buying it.

Is she going to become an Oprah competitor? Again, after pissing off her base, she’d have no audience, so no. Makes no sense.

I’m sticking with my original thoughts. Either she or someone in her family is ill, and she wants to keep it private and not subject it to the vulgarity of the Palin-hating beasts in the press, who savaged her last year, or…she and Todd are on the rocks, and she doesn’t want to subject her children and her marriage to the same vulgarity.

Ameripundit:

She will be absolutely slammed from all sides during any run for failing to fulfill her obligation to the citizens of Alaska. She abandons her elected post once something better opens up for her personal advancement? Like I said, not the best imagery.

Ace:

And that is that.

It’s over. You can’t resign from a governorship and then run for higher office. Barring some strong reason, like needing treatment for cancer.

K-Lo

Who knows all the reasons — Todd and Sarah Palin, presumably fully understand.

Listening to her, it seems like this is a combination of stepping back and moving forward. Stepping back, because it’s way too overwhelming to be Sarah Palin, political phenom, Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, and Sarah Palin, wife and mother. I don’t know that anyone can fulfill all those roles well, simultaneously. And we’re unrealistic, I think, when we assume people can or should.

Nice Deb:

Possible reasons for this development? Conservatives are tweeting that it could be health issues, some brewing scandal, or she’s “gearing up” for the 2012 Presidential campaign.

It doesn’t seem like a great political move, to me. Why so fast?

Also see Michelle Malkin.

Randy Brinson, a conservative political consultant in Alabama, has been fielding anxious calls for weeks from business interests across the South.

Their concern is a massive ad blitz on Christian and country-music stations across 10 states. The ads, funded by a left-leaning coalition, urge support for congressional legislation to curb greenhouse-gas emissions — by framing the issue as an urgent matter of Biblical morality.

“As our seas rise, crops wither and rivers run dry, God’s creation cries out for relief,” begins one ad, narrated by an evangelical megachurch pastor. Another opens with a reference to the Gospel of John, slams energy interests for fighting the bill, and concludes: “Please join the faithful in speaking out against the powerful.” (snip)

Emboldened by what they see as a kindred spirit in the White House, progressive and liberal Christians are stepping up their political activism in a big way.

A religious coalition called the American Values Network spent nearly $200,000 placing the global warming ads. Some political analysts credit the campaign with boosting support for the Waxman-Markey climate bill, which narrowly passed the House last week.

During the past 8 years, the Left’s assault on Christianity grew to record levels, particularly because George W. Bush was a Born Again Christian. Now that they have their own Born Again Christian in the White House, they are all for using Christianity to achieve their goals. And, as the article points out, there are even more ad campaigns coming. Of course, the hard left will just use their Leftist Christians (not sure how you can be a Christian when you believe in the primacy of abortion on demand) as yet another group to abuse and then ignore.

Interestingly, I wonder how much good $200k could do if it was put into humanitarian relief efforts here in the USA, rather than an ad campaign over a fake issue?

Imagine your power bill going up by $200 a month.

Progress Energy spokesman Mike Hughes said Thursday that it’s a possibility under President Barack Obama’s energy plan that narrowly passed the U.S. House of Representatives last week.

The bill, which Obama has said will reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil and clean the air, calls for a reduction of carbon emissions by 17 percent by 2020, and for 20 percent of the nation’s energy to be renewable – such as wind and solar – by 2020.

The bill also includes a consumer protection to keep down energy prices.

But Hughes said it does not add up.

“If there are fundamental changes to national policy, particularly as it pertains to electricity, then the cost is going up,” he said.

Hughes said that because there is no proven technology to meet the proposed federal standards, it’s unclear how high rates might go. Based on congressional debate, Hughes said it could be drastic.

“There were estimates from a few pennies or a few dollars a month, and estimates I heard all the way to $4,000 a year for a typical household,” Hughes said. “It’s probably somewhere in the middle.”

PSNC predicts that the bill, in its current form, could potentially cause rates to go up by 5 to 15 percent by 2016.

Remember those words: in its current form. Because your bill could change substantially as more and more regulations are slapped on power companies, meaning more and more taxes added to said bill. Of course, on the flip side, since Democrats won’t allow new power plants to be built to keep up with the demand an ever growing population needs nor for the amount of “electric” cars they want on the roads, we could be using less power as the rolling brown and black outs hit where we live. Essentially, Obama wants to turn us into California.

“The bill is a first step toward solving global warming and putting our economy back on track with clean energy, like wind and solar (power),” said Margaret Hartzell, an advocate with Environment North Carolina.

I thought the Generational Theft Act was the first step towards putting our economy back on track, but, moving on, I’d like if Ms. Hartzell could explain how it does what she says it does, when the bill itself only reduces CO2 output a tiny bit, in reality land, and the clean energy tech is still in its infancy in some cases, and Liberals block the use of them, such as stopping the transmission line from a solar farm to Los Angeles and, of course, Ted Kennedy blocking the Cape Wind Project, among others.

Anyhow, she states you will pay $15 more a month. The EPA estimates $80-$110 more a year. Republicans say could be $770 a year. Do you see the common thread? No one really knows. The cap and tax bill is so huge and unwielding, and, more importantly, leaves so much in the hands of the Administrator to be named later, that your first indication will be a whopper of a bill. Change you can go poor on.

Frank Lombard, associate director of Duke University’s Center for Health Policy, has been accused of molesting his adopted five-year-old African-American son and offering him up for sex with strangers on the Internet. Lombard’s homosexual partner, who resides in the same house with Lombard, was allegedly unaware of the activities.

Mike Adams is a professor at UNC-Wilmington and has written several pieces on the case. “The conduct that he was accused of engaging in, in front of a webcam with his five-year-old son, includes molestation,” Adams explains. “There was oral sex that was involved, and other very unhealthy practices that are too grotesque for me to describe….”

In a 2006 rape case involving white lacrosse players from Duke who were accused of raping a black stripper, more than 80 university officials and professors signed a statement accusing the players of racism. The players were eventually found innocent of all charges.

Adams wonders where those professors are now in this new rape case at the university. “I expect to see a continued silence on this,” he relates. “I don’t expect them to ever speak out on the issue — and I expect, as a result of that, Duke University to take a severe, severe hit in the court of public opinion.”

If convicted, Lombard faces up to 20 years in prison.

SOURCE

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me (John Ray) here

It is well known that John Adams had imagined that July second would be the day that future generations of Americans would remember as their day of independence from England, the nation’s birthday, if you will. It was, after all, on the second that it was proclaimed “(T)hat these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

But it was two days later that those gathered in defiance to the King declared a “Declaration of Independency” thereby adopting the famed document that carefully delineated the natural rights by which they claimed independence followed by a list of grievances that would explain why they invoked those rights.

So what are we celebrating? Is it our birth as a nation or are we celebrating the document of Independence? Early celebrations were mixed and a bit confused on that point. Additionally, celebrations on July fourth weren’t that common for a time after the Revolution was over. At first, not many felt a need to celebrate something that had happened and was over. It was time to move on from war in many American’s eyes.

Then again, not many Americans had much interest in the Declaration itself until the 1790s when the emerging parties began to vie for bragging rights over who wrote it. The Democratic Republicans proudly held that their leader, Thomas Jefferson, was the author of the document while the Federalists reminded everyone that their leader, John Adams, was also a member of the committee that drafted the document and that he, as much as Jefferson, had his stamp on the Declaration of Independence.

As the fame of the document and interest in it grew in the new United States of America, so too did a focus on celebrating the nation’s separation from England. By the time the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration neared in 1826, Independence Day had become a common day for celebration. And, despite a brief period in the South during and after the Civil War, the holiday atmosphere has grown and remained strong to this day.

The answer to the question above, then, is that we celebrate both the famed document and its purpose for having been drafted. We celebrate our birthday as a nation as well as those stated principles that announced to the world what we were, what this new nation was meant to represent. And so, it is properly Independence Day that we celebrate — a celebration of both the document and its famous ideas as well as our separation from England and the birth of our nation.

But one thing is sure, it is not “July Fourth” we celebrate. The fourth day of the seventh month is an inconsequential number. We are not celebrating a fourth day of anything and the bland, uninformative title of “July Fourth” should be banished from our minds as meaningless.

Why forget that title? Aside from the fact that we aren’t celebrating the numerology of the day, calling it “July Fourth” does nothing toward informing the world and our fellows of what it is we are celebrating. Do we celebrate December 25th, or do we Celebrate Christmas? Worse than a lack of identification, calling this sacred holiday merely “July Fourth” also dims from our minds the great purpose of what the holiday stands for.

Yes, Independence Day is more than a number and more than just a birthday party. It is the heralding of a new set of principles by which all men everywhere can declare their own freedom. It is the assertion that all men are created equal and have been given that status by God. Further, that because these rights are bestowed upon us by God, men have the right to insist that their government serve them, not that men be yoked to serve government.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

These were revolutionary concepts upon which to build a nation and it announced to the world that our revolution was a common cause for all mankind, not just we Americans. That day we declared that men have the right to cast off the oppressive yoke of government and live free.

Without doubt, these are heady concepts. And these are the high principles that we celebrate on Independence Day each year, that holiday that just happens to fall on the fourth day of July.

So, let’s cast off this bland appellation of “July Fourth” for a holiday of such important ideas. Let us proudly call it “Independence Day” so that we can keep in the forefront of our minds those great ideas we hold up as something worth celebrating.

It isn’t “July Fourth,” so let’s stop celebrating that holiday. It is Independence Day and nothing less.

If you listen to the blabbers and gossipers, the Huffington Post is the talk of the town. It is claimed that Arianna Huffington’s “success” is the “new journalism,” the future of the news. TechNewsWorld proclaimed it “appropriate” that Huffington appeared in the YouTube series on journalism apparently because she personifies it. The New York Times celebrated HuffPo as “hybrid journalism” for its Iran coverage. Jeff Jarvis of The Guardian claims that Arianna is “saving journalism.” She was even just awarded the Fred Dressler Lifetime Achievement Award in journalism from Syracuse University. She even testified before a Congressional committee on journalism. And the list of accolades goes on.

But, what sort of “journalism” does Huffington Post represent? Is it the well researched sort with multiple links, named sources, or other such common journalistic practices? Most often no. In fact, those that write for Huffington Post rarely even bother with the normal journalistic practices of research, attribution, or the habit of having more than one source. Sadly, the largest bulk of what Huffington writers do is merely opine whether they have sourced information or not. And more often than not they do so from the extreme left-wing perspective.

Huffington Post is not “journalism.” It’s really just that simple.

Arianna has set no standards, exacted no homage to journalistic practices, and requires no veracity. She just wants pages filled and advertising to flow. Perhaps she is successful at that goal, but what is this success doing to journalism? I’d suggest it is hurting it, not “saving it,” as Mr. Jarvis claimed.

Examples of the emptiness of Huffington Posts entries are legion and can be found any time one goes to the site.

Recently, for instance, a debate between an actual medical technician and a HuffPo pseudo doctor erupted. Posts by what is billed as Huffington Post’s “wellness editor,” Dr. Patricia Fitzgerald, raised the ire of some readers. It turns out that Miss. Fitzgerald is not really a “doctor” of much of anything and medical internist Peter Lipson called her on it earlier this year. Despite the embarrassment, Fitzgerald is still billed as the HuffPo “wellness editor” and still calling herself “doctor.” Lipson points out that several HuffPo “doctors” are either not real doctors or are doctors of fields apart from the subjects they write about on HuffPo. He says it is a bit hard to take their posts seriously because of this.

Then there is the political news that appears every day on HuffPo. For example, a straight out opinion was recently presented as fact by HuffPo writer Jennifer Donahue whose piece makes the claim that the Republican grassroots is lining up behind Mitt Romney, forsaking Sarah Palin, for the 2012 presidential election.

Donahue says it’s Mitt rising in the GOP and has two quotes in the story to support her assertion. However, there are no names attached to the quotes and no sources for them is given. She has no pundits from the right pointing to Mitt, no party members saying they like him and no seated politicians raising Mitt’s banner. She just says it is so and we are supposed to take it on faith. The whole story is thin as tissue paper. It may be true, but we get nothing to make us sanguine of the fact in Donahue’s story. Just her assertions.

Yet, Donahue is billed as the “Political Director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics” and sports a journalism background. She may do a fine job for Saint Anselem College, but for HuffPo, at least, this piece is junk.

Or perhaps we might address a post by Stephen Zunes on Ahmadinejad and Iran. Zunes, who claims to hold the “chair of the Mid-Eastern Studies program at the University of San Francisco,” made a bald-faced assertion in his headlined, “Why American Neo-Cons wanted Ahmadinejad to Win.”

Zunes starts his blather with this line: “The only people happier than the Iranian elites over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s apparently stolen election win Friday, were the neoconservatives…”

This is a pretty startling and pointed accusation. After all, Zunes is saying that a faction of America’s conservatives want a Jew hating, tyrant to win an election. Zunes follows this initial accusation with a lengthy piece on the situation in Iran yet offers not one single quote from any supposed “neo-con” to prove his thesis. No links to “neo-con” think tank papers are featured, no news stories, interviews or TV presentations included. No books or articles are quoted. Astonishingly no proof at all is offered for his wild-eyed claim. He just says it’s so and moves forward with that assumption.

Huffington Post also offers “celebrity news” even as it pretends at being a serious site presenting the important “news” of the day. We get things like the screen shot to the right that I recently saved. Notice that a photo of president Obama is included in with the salacious, sexually charged photos of barely clothed “celebrities” with the caption, “Better wetter? Who’s hotter when soaking wet?” Is this the way to treat a president? Is this the sort of mentality that befits serious journalism?

Look, I have no problem at all with HuffPo being a left-wing opinion site. How could I be? All my work appears on right-wing opinion sites. But, what I do IS opinion and I make no claims otherwise. Sure I’ve covered live, actual events, interviewed people in the news, appeared on CNN and Fox, been heard on numerous radio shows from coast to coast both local and nationally syndicated. But even as some of what I do is news and journalism, I only claim to be a columnist, opinionist, a talking head if you will. That is my primary purpose. And Huffington Post is nothing else but an opinion site, not journalism.

Granted there are plenty of folks out there criticizing Huffington Post and scoffing at its journalistic presumptions. It comes from the left and the right, from journalists and bloggers alike. I am not saying that Huffington is universally presented as “saving journalism.” Conversely, I am not saying that the site has no place on the web, nor am I saying it isn’t successful per se. What I am saying is that thus far Arianna Huffington’s site is decidedly not journalism. It is a successful blog, a fine site for left-wing talking points, sure. But it is not in any way a site built on journalism nor should it be taken as such.

The sad thing is, too many people don’t understand this salient truth.

Meghan Daum of the L.A. Times has had an epiphany. The story of adulterous South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford is still in the news, she’s decided, because America’s men see themselves reflected in him. Yes, Daum apparently feels that all men are adulterers, so they sympathize with him causing the story to keep bumping along.

Daum spies some “gasp–empathy” for the governor in various corners of the Old Media and this, she has decided, must mean that there is a “tiny bit of Mark Sanford” in men across the country. One wonders if Daum spied this same lecherous “sympathy” abounding among Democrats when a certain president was wagging his finger in our faces and saying he “did not have sexual relations with that woman, Monica”?

Betcha she didn’t. As a matter of fact, I’ll bet no such thing crossed her mind as the Clinton’s Monica-gate raged on and on.

Check out this baseless rumination.

So what’s left to say about the Sanford saga? Call me crazy, but amid all this finger-wagging, am I detecting just a little bit of — gasp — empathy? Is there something about Sanford’s puppyish comportment, not to mention the fact that, unlike many adulterous politicos, he seems to be truly in love with his mistress (or at least truly convinced that he is) that’s making him less a pariah and more a symbol of the male midlife crisis? For all his duplicity and entitlement, are some Americans — particularly men — feeling as much pity as outrage? Consider this small sample:

She answers herself thus:

But as we slog through another week of the Jackson postmortem-paloooza and wonder at the fact that we’re also still hearing about the South Carolina governor’s love for certain tan lines, maybe it’s worth asking ourselves why. Is it because we’re uncategorically appalled? Or is it because maybe, just maybe, there’s a tiny bit of Mark Sanford in, if not all men, quite a few of them?

So, what do you think, guys? Are you feeling sorry for the adulterer because you are secretly just like him? Do you have a stack of Argentine frequent flyer miles secretly piled up waiting for redemption at a later date? Is there redemption at a later date?

Is it impossible for men to really feel any outrage? Are they all just using the mask of outrage to cover their sympathetic feelings?

Or is Daum a she-male, man hater that is reaching too far for a column?

The latest Rassmussen poll was taken before we hit the new 9.5 unemployment numbers! Basically, the trust in Obama on the economy is dropping like a rock.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 33% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-five percent (35%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -2. This is the third straight day the Approval Index has been below zero (see trends).
A Rasmussen video report notes that 42% now give the President good or excellent marks for handling the economy . That’s his lowest rating to date …
Overall, 53% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance so far. Forty-six percent (46%) disapprove.

Let us hope America is waking up to the realities of socialism before it is too late.

Ed Morrissey:

Obama isn’t just coming back to Earth in the polling. He’s losing independents and demonstrating his radical bent on policy, and more and more Americans have begun to see it.

When Ed Jordan hung two flags from his front porch, one for his country and one for the Marine Corps he once served in, he thought no one would take issue with his gesture to honor the troops during the Fourth of July.

He returned home from an errand Monday morning to find the flags burned, their cinders scattered amid his azaleas.

The 70-year-old veteran was shocked when police told him that a flag at another house in his quiet neighborhood just north of Valley View Mall was also incinerated. …

“When I was on active duty, the flag always meant something to me,” he said. “I’d always take pride when I saw it flying in civilian areas.”

How others could take offense at the same sight was beyond his understanding.

“When you damage something that so many have died for, the symbol it represents, that, to me, is intolerable,” he said.

The word “intolerable” also describes the prevalence of the ideology that inspires these incidents.

You would think that putting a socialist punk in the White House – the ultimate desecration of everything patriots hold sacred — would leave moonbats satisfied. But a cancer isn’t satisfied until the patient dies – unless a way is found to cure it.

On a tip from Viking04. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

A U.S. soldier has been captured by militants in Afghanistan, the U.S. military and the Taliban said Thursday.

The unidentified soldier has been missing since Tuesday. U.S. forces are exhausting all resources to find the soldier, the military said.

“We are not providing any further details at this time, in order to protect the welfare of the soldier,” a military statement said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the abduction. The U.S. soldier was kidnapped along with three Afghan soldiers, Taliban commander Mulvi Sangeen said.

The U.S. soldier visited a military post in the Yousaf Khel district and got drunk, Sangeen said. He was ambushed while returning to his car and was taken to a safe place, Sangeen said.

I have no doubt the Taliban’s claim of the soldier getting drunk is a propaganda lie. If not, they should release him alive and unharmed with no propaganda. Please pray for this brave soldier’s safety and his family.

Mudville Gazette has more.