The sky was falling, the sky was falling!

As mentioned in my previous post, my good friend Linda at Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis talked me down from my original apoplexy over the missing Palin press releases on the official State of Alaska Governor's website. She posted an update and sent email with the proverbial "remain calm!" command. Since I implicitly trust her and her word -- and I have absolutely no reason not to -- I went frosty. It probably prevented a coronary. She had found the missing evidence at an archive website and shared the URLs in an update to my diary post at the Oasis. Whew.

Allow me to state for the record that I certainly don't mind playing the role of Chicken Little if it brings attention to something potentially as troublesome as the destruction of public records, most especially if those records were potentially libelous and could be used in a lawsuit against the issuer of said libel. Did I overreact? I don't think so. Until Linda revealed her online find it DID appear that the records were illegally expunged. Do I feel embarrassed for all the work I put in on the larger blog post, sleuthing out the truth? Not really. Linda has skills, skills she used to help "talk me down" (ala Rachael Maddow) and for that I give her a big, huge, she just won the Masters Tournament loud and not so polite golf clap. Bravo, I say! Brav-effen-O! Well played! Well played indeed.

Here's a link to the article Lisa Demer at the Anchorage Daily News posted about the incident including the part about my "tizzy". Heh. Tizzy is such a nice word compared to the abject dismay and sinking feeling I experienced at the time. The word "tizzy" seems most kind and motherly, considering... so thanks, Lisa. A polite golf clap for bringing in info from both Linda and I and then adding in some necessary back story to her column in the "dead trees" sponsored main stream media of ADN online. I say it this way because I believe her post is only available online and is fairly well burried. Nonetheless I appreciate the article and the effort. It's not front page news nor do I necessarily think it should be... unless it proved to be true that all of the records were deep-sixed. THAT would have been front page news.

So here are the archives of the records removed from the SOA governor's website, safely held at a site that Sarah and her minions do not and cannot control. I'll give you the raw links:

http://www.archive-it.org/
http://www.archive-it.org/collections/1200

My thanks to everyone involved including the Alaska State Library system for having the foresight to preserve this warped little bit of Alaskan history, for better or worse. I have many librarian friends and the real reason most of them are dead sexy is because many of them know and fully realize that information and free access to it is and should be a right. Especially if it is public records.

Now ladies and gentlemen, START YOUR LAWYERIN' ENGINES! Or satisfy your historical curiousity. Either way, for now I'm moving on to other more important things. Like getting a good single payer/public option health care plan in place. I will try to ignore S.P. v. 1.0 as much as the rest of America and the MSM now seems to be doing unless and until she finally works up the nerve to follow through on her "twitter promise" to let the "...less politically correct twitters fly frm my fingertps outside the state site...". Like they were ever PC. And wait -- does that sentence mean her fingertips are outside of the state [site]? Always pushing the word salad envelope, Sarah. Baffle 'em with bullshit, as usual. You stay classy, Sarah Palin. You maverick.

If she ever IS allowed by her lawyers to unleash the dogs of her twitter stupidity again, you can bet Alaskan progressive bloggers will be all over her like a defenseman on Scotty Gomez. Like lipstick on a pitbull. Like. Stink. On. Shit. Because in many ways Alaskan progressives have been the ONLY ones to attempt to hold this elusive hockey mom, to use her own words, "transparent and accountable" during her brief reign of seemingly unethical and unlawful terror as governor of the great state of Alaska.

-Laz