Sarah Palin announced today that she was not running for re-election and stepping down from her office as Governor by the end of the month:

The top speculation is that Palin is resigning so that she can focus solely on running for the Republican nomination in 2012. But there’s plenty of other speculation too.

The full text of Palin’s resignation speech is available here. Stay tuned…

UPDATE: Via Think Progress:

Max Blumental reports on The Daily Beast that Sarah Palin may have quit her job today because she was trying to avert a major, yet-to-be-disclosed corruption scandal.

Discuss It: No Comments »
Filed under: Alaska, Gov. Sarah Palin, In The News, Pamela Leavey, Political News, Politics, Republicans | Get Permalink or trackback |

Via Consider This News:

Discuss It: No Comments »
Filed under: Democrats, In The Blogosphere, In The News, Obama Administration, Pamela Leavey, Political News, Politics, President Barack Obama | Get Permalink or trackback |

This says it all: “But it’s Republicans who are prone to preaching about other people’s intimate lives.”

Discuss It: No Comments »
Filed under: Conservatives, In The News, Pamela Leavey, Political News, Politics, Republicans, Scandals | Get Permalink or trackback |

Wal-Mart, America’s largest private employer has flipped their position on healthcare for employees and has come out saying that “it supports requiring employers to provide health insurance to workers.”

The support of Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, could give momentum to one of the most-contentious aspects of legislation taking shape in Congress to fix the health system. To help pay for covering the 46 million uninsured, lawmakers have proposed mandating that all but small employers provide insurance for workers or help pay for it.[...]

“We are for an employer mandate which is fair and broad in its coverage,” said the letter, signed by Wal-Mart Chief Executive Mike Duke. Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, also signed the letter, along with John Podesta, who led President Obama’s transition team and is chief executive of the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning think tank.

The National Retail Federation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce were not thrilled with Wal-Mart’s stance on the issue.

Discuss It: No Comments »
Filed under: Corporatism, Democrats, Healthcare, In The News, Jobs, Obama Administration, Pamela Leavey, Political News, Politics, President Barack Obama | Get Permalink or trackback |

Time’s come for Sanford to resign… How long will it take for Sanford to step down now that he’s revealed there were others?

He’s gettings calls all the way around the conservative realm to walk (or fly) away. Apparently Mark Sanford was really getting around.

UPDATE: The State has more on the calls for Sanford to resign.

Discuss It: No Comments »
Filed under: Conservatives, In The Blogosphere, In The News, Pamela Leavey, Political News, Politics, Republicans, Scandals | Get Permalink or trackback |

The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled today that Al Franken should be certified the winner of the long-running Senate race between Franken and Coleman.

Norm Coleman has finally conceded. It’s about freakin time!

Discuss It: 1 Comment »
Filed under: In The News | Get Permalink or trackback |

It’s a small consolation really to those who lost their life savings to Bernie Madoff, but atleast it’s something…

Madoff was sentenced today to 150 years in prison “for operating one of the largest frauds in Wall Street history, an operation that ensnared millionaires, private foundations, a Nobel Prize laureate and hundreds of small investors who lost their life savings to an investment guru they had trusted completely.”

In pronouncing the sentence — the maximum he could have handed down — Judge Denny Chin turned aside Mr. Madoff’s own assertions of remorse and rejected the suggestion from Mr. Madoff’s lawyers that there was a sense of “mob vengeance” surrounding calls for a long prison term. Mr. Madoff’s crimes, the judge said, were “extraordinarily evil.”

“Objectively speaking, the fraud here was staggering,” Judge Chin said. “It spanned more than 20 years.”

Jack Healy reports in the NY Times that before Madoff was sentenced he “stood up in a federal courtroom in Manhattan and turned to face the people who lost their life savings to his huge Ponzi scheme. “I’m sorry,” he told them. “I know that doesn’t help you.””

Madoff was sentenced at the end of “an emotional 90-minute hearing in which victims of the $65 billion fraud urged the judge to show no mercy and described how their lives had been upended by Mr. Madoff.”

A friend of mine was a victim of Madoff’s scheme. He didn’t lose everything as some did, yet I know he’s relieved that Madoff at least had the book thrown at him.

Discuss It: No Comments »
Filed under: Corruption, In The News, Pamela Leavey, Wall Street | Get Permalink or trackback |

A very good read: Dodd And Kennedy Know, Trust, And More Than Ever Rely On Each Other.

Discuss It: No Comments »
Filed under: Democrats, Healthcare, In The News, Pamela Leavey, Political News, Politics, Sen. Chris Dodd, Sen. Ted Kennedy, Senate, State Politics | Get Permalink or trackback |

Breaking News… Pop star Michael Jackson has died. He was 50 years old.

The NY Times sent out a news alert a short time ago that he had been rushed to the hospital. Shortly after that I recieved a call from a friend who said that WBCN in Boston was already stating him dead.

MSNBC is now reporting that the LA Times reports Jackson has been pronounced dead. NBC has now confirmed.

TMZ also broke the news early on that Jackson had passed away.

Michael suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this afternoon at his Holmby Hills home and paramedics were unable to revive him. We’re told when paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back.

A source tells us Jackson was dead when paramedics arrived. A cardiologist at UCLA tells TMZ Jackson died of cardiac arrest.

MSNBC has a slide show of Jackson’s career (already). Sad news… Very sad news. I liked Jackson’s music years ago…

Farah Fawcett also died today. More on both later.

UPDATE: There’s more at Bohemian Women.

Discuss It: 13 Comments »
Filed under: In The News | Get Permalink or trackback |

Some columns are easier to write than others.

This is one of them.

Providing all of my research were the “family values” Republicans.

This week, second term Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina disappeared for six days, leaving the state without a chief executive who could make decisions in an emergency. His Republican lieutenant governor didn’t know where he was, and had not been given any authority to make decisions in his absence. The state police said they had not been informed. His wife told the Associated Press she didn’t know where he was, wasn’t worried about him, and thought he was “writing something and wanted some space to get away from the kids” over the Father’s Day weekend. His senior aides said he was walking along the Appalachian Trail to “clear his head.”

But it wasn’t his head that he was clearing. When he returned, after first lying to a reporter for the Columbia State who caught up with him on his return to the Atlanta airport, he finally admitted he went to Argentina to meet with a long-time lover.  Read more…

Discuss It: No Comments »
Filed under: Newt Gingrich | Get Permalink or trackback |

Why am I not at all surprised by the news that Governor Mark Sanford, whose strange dissapearance for a few days was the talk of the press and the blogosphere, is (or was?) having an affair.

Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina said Wednesday that he had been having an extramarital affair with a woman in Argentina for the last year, ending the mystery surrounding his disappearance over Father’s Day weekend and considerably dampening his prospects for a national political career.

Duh! Sanford’s wife supposedly had no clue where he was — of course she was trying to save face because evidently she knew about the steamy affair.

Chalk up another hypocritical conservative to the long list of those who have fallen from their high horses.

I’m with Kerry… Too bad Sarah Palin didn’t go missing.

Discuss It: 1 Comment »
Filed under: Alaska, Conservatives, Gov. Sarah Palin, In The Blogosphere, In The News, John Kerry, Pamela Leavey, Political News, Politics, Republicans | Get Permalink or trackback |

Roger Cohen’s latest on Iran: The End of the Beginning.

Discuss It: No Comments »
Filed under: In The News, International, Iran, OP/ED's, Opinions, Pamela Leavey, World News | Get Permalink or trackback |