The announcement is stunning as it is abrupt. I did not catch the press conference but glanced at the press reports coming out of Alaska. Here's the report from KTUU-Alaska:

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.

Parnell said he will seek election to the governor's office in 2010. Parnell ran for Congress unsuccessfully against Rep. Don Young in the Republican primary last year.

Palin made the announcement flanked by Parnell and all of her cabinet. She said that recent incidents brought up by national media and the spate of ethics complaints have been taking away from her mission to serve Alaska.

She felt that it would be best to step aside and let Parnell and her cabinet continue. Palin said she discussed the decision with her family, and they were united in their support of her decision to step down.

Palin's impending resignation will no doubt send shockwaves through Alaska's political landscape. Already among the Democrats, Bob Poe has announced he will run, state Sen. Hollis French has started the ball rolling toward a run, and former congressional candidate Ethan Berkowitz said that if he were to run for anything in 2010 it would be for governor.

"With so many fronts that have been left in a state of stagnation while Governor Palin has been pursuing her national goals, I think that it's a good statement on the governor's part that she's recognizing we do need a fulltime governor," Poe said. "She's stepping aside from that, I think that the campaign is obviously going to get much more interesting very quickly and I look forward to the debate and discussing with the future candidates how we can move Alaska forward."

I suspect that there is more news to come. Are there more serious ethics complaints that are yet to surface?

She's not wired? Seriously, please tell me she didn't say that.

Or just not running for reelection. Hearing both...

What are you hearing?

Update [2009-7-3 15:37:21 by Josh Orton]: Resigning. Wow:

Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK), the unsuccessful 2008 nominee of the Republican Party for Vice President, has resigned her office, effective at the end of the month.

A friend sent me an e-mail she received from the Iowa Farm Bureau. Excerpt:

Mary Kay Thatcher, AFBF director of public policy, tells Agriculture Online that Farm Bureau doesn't anticipate the massive climate change bill passed by the House last week to pass the Senate this year.

And the New York Times reported Tuesday that opposition from Farm Bureau and other agricultural groups threatens to kill the bill in the Senate. The Times reports that groups such as AFBF wield greater clout in the Senate, because members there must be protective of an entire state, rather than a small congressional district.

Here are the links to the Agriculture Online piece and the New York Times article.

The American Farm Bureau Federation lobbied members of the U.S. House to vote for Collin Peterson's lousy amendments to the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act but against the bill intended to address climate change.

I have my own problems with the ACES bill, especially the deals made to appease the coal industry and Peterson's colleagues on the House Agriculture Committee. That said, the objections big agribusiness and their Congressional allies have raised against the cap-and-trade approach are off-base and short-sighted.

It wouldn't surprise me if Farm Bureau's vote-counter is correct and the Senate rejects the Waxman-Markey bill for the wrong reasons. Frankly, that might be better than letting senators like Claire McCaskill make this flawed bill even worse.

Quote of the day, from Levi Johnston:

"That was ridiculous," Levi says of the RNC. "I was just like, `Uhhh.' "

I had the same reaction.

From the New York Times:

"Essentially what they are trying to do is create and sustain a productive presence in Helmand Province, including both combat power and civil-engagement capabilities," a senior military officer said.

"This is not simply to remove Taliban influence, but to replace that influence with security operations and reconstruction," the officer said. "It is not simply about killing the enemy, but about protecting the population and improving their lives, which will help prohibit the return of insurgent elements."

That, in a nutshell, is the American mission in Afghanistan. To hold more territory, prevent the enemy from returning so as to allow reconstructive and development efforts to take place and take root. The risk is twofold. One, will the local Afghan population welcome their presence? And two, will the troops be sufficient in number to hold off attacks from the Taliban as they spread further away from the major population centers?

Still, it would be hard to foresee an American exit from Afghanistan before the end of Obama's first term.

In 1830, Colombia sent General Simón Bolívar Palacios packing. Dispatched from power, Bolívar would die on his way to exile abroad melancholic and regretting that he plowed the sea. By any standard, Bolívar was a tyrant, an autocrat who wanted to perpetuate himself in power. That political tradition runs deep in the veins of Latin American history. It is called continuismo - the tendency of heads of state to extend their rule indefinitely - and it has been the lifeblood of Latin America's authoritarian tradition. One that unfortunately remains very much alive today.

More than any other country, Colombia has avoided continuismo by enacting strict term limits. For much of the 19th century, Colombian Presidents served two year terms. They are now allowed a four-year term though in Colombia the law allows for non-successive terms. Still, only one man, Alfonso López Pumarejo, managed to get elected for a second term. That is until Álvaro Uribe Vélez who will complete his second consecutive term in August 2010. Though he is still mulling a run for a third term and remains undecided, President Uribe would be undermining Colombian democracy should he choose to run just as Hugo Chávez Frías' tenure is undermining Venezuela's democracy.

Latin American political traditions favor a strong chief executive and weak legislative bodies. Presidents have wide appointive powers and sweeping powers of decree. Recall the protests in Argentina last year. Those protests were set in motion because President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner raised export tariffs from 35% to 48% on soy beans and other agricultural products by decree. Faced with six months of protests that shut Argentina down, President Fernández de Kirchner was forced to seek Congressional approval for her decree. She lost that battle by one vote in the Senate, ironically that of her Vice President Julio Cobos. This is one of the rare times that a presidential decree has been overturned.

Another week, another John Bolton op-ed in a major newspaper, this time in the Washington Post, arguing for an Israeli attack on Iran.

With Iran's hard-line mullahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps unmistakably back in control, Israel's decision of whether to use military force against Tehran's nuclear weapons program is more urgent than ever.

Iran's nuclear threat was never in doubt during its presidential campaign, but the post-election resistance raised the possibility of some sort of regime change. That prospect seems lost for the near future or for at least as long as it will take Iran to finalize a deliverable nuclear weapons capability.

Accordingly, with no other timely option, the already compelling logic for an Israeli strike is nearly inexorable. Israel is undoubtedly ratcheting forward its decision-making process.

That logic only exists in the minds of a demented few who fail to weigh the consequences of what such an attack would bring. While Iran is unlikely to respond in kind, it does have asymetrical options available. These might endanger the flow of oil out of the Gulf and place American strategic interests across the region in jeopardy. Former Ambassador Bolton seems to believe that one well placed bomb will bring the regime in Tehran down. That's unlikey.

Whether or not Iran is pursuing an actual nuclear weapon or a credible nuclear deterrent without actually possessing a nuclear weaopn remains unclear. Nonetheless reliable estimates suggest that the Iranians are still years from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Furthermore, a military strike is not an efficient or reliable way to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.  "Far from setting back Iran's nuclear programme, a military attack might create the political conditions in which Iran could accelerate its nuclear weapons programme," nuclear weapons physicist Dr. Frank Barnaby concluded in a March 2007 Oxford Research Group (pdf) report entitled, "Would Air Strikes Work?"

Yglesias weighs in on the new Senate balance:

In many respects the main significance of Franken's victory isn't that it brings us to 60 senators, it's that it increases by one the number of serious progressives in the Senate. But Franken or no, the balance of power still rests with a large block of centrist Democrats and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe on the other side. The situation by no means dooms Obama's agenda to defeat, but it does mean that legislative outcomes are overwhelmingly likely to be a fairly pale shadow of the agenda a majority of the public voted for last year.

There's two different issues. The first involves the centrist block - Senators are islands to themselves, and Dem leadership can't herd them easily. Obama's agenda will always face resistance - but I'd rather negotiate with Senators in my own party than with Republicans.

Yglesias also mentioned the second roadblock: until Senators Byrd and Kennedy return to full health, Democrats literally won't actually have 60 votes.