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"Pulling a Palin" now part of urban dictionary

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

News sources, including yours truly, continue to try and make some sense of Sarah Palin's decision to quit her job as governor of Alaska. The understanding isn't coming easy, given the convoluted rambling nature of her July 3rd press conference. But I'm keeping an eye on new information as it comes out, trying to sort speculation from specifics, and I've come up with a few items that deserve special mention.

Let's start with some excellent investigative journalism being done by Greg Sargent on his D.C. blog The Plum Line. In Palin's July 3rd press conference, and again in subsequent interviews given with every major news network, Palin repeats one statement with great insistence: the main reason she's quitting is to save the people of Alaska the millions of dollars it would cost to fight the many ethics complaints that Alaska citizens have brought against her (which she deemed "frivolous"). Most news outlets picked up Palin's talking point and ran with it verbatim, but Sargent decided to dig a bit deeper into the claim. He asked the Office of the Governor of the state of Alaska to verify Palin's statement, that the state of Alaska was spending millions in extra money to investigate the ethics charges. A spokesperson from Palin's own (soon to be former) office told Sargent that, umm, well, actually, the lawyers who are investigating the charges are NOT billing the people of Alaska anything extra, because (wait for it) this is their job. The lawyers are already on the Alaska state payroll, drawing their paychecks out of money set aside by the Alaska legislature, money that would have gone to them anyway, even if their governor was as clean as the proverbial whistle. True, the lawyers might have had more time to look into other legal matters, but the money as appropriated would still have been spent on legal matters; that money would not/could not have been used for "troopers and roads and teachers," as Palin has said (quite a few times). After Sargent broke the story it was confirmed by the Anchorage Daily News. But when talking to the Daily News the Governor's office decided to embellish the story just a bit, in hopes of backing up their current boss. The Governor's office said that even though, yes, the lawyers were already on the payroll and didn't cost Alaska taxpayers anything extra, "staffers from multiple agencies" were pulled from their normal jobs to assist in the investigation. To which Sargent commented, "Really? Staffers that would otherwise have contributed to police work, road repair, education and sea research were pulled to help the governor's office deal with the legal ins and outs of ethics complaints? That's the official explanation for Palin's claim now? Interesting..."

Interesting indeed. Great work as always at The Plum Line.

The other interesting piece of news concerns a second point that emerged from the wreckage of the Palin press conference: her happy (for some) claim that she's not going away, she'll be out there campaigning for other Republican candidates. In trying to interpret the press conference for British readers, that was actually the headline the U.K.'s Telegraph ran when they broke the story, Sarah Palin to campaign around America. One small problem: not everyone wants her. According to MSNBC, Republicans involved in two of the country's closest races for governor are lukewarm to the idea of Palin joining them on the campaign trail. A Republican spokesperson in New Jersey said they don't have any plans for having her, and a Virginia spokesperson confirmed they've spoken to Palin but wouldn't say they welcome her to come on out and help. Reading these decidedly tepid response, I found myself wondering if they were about to quote Palin herself ("thanks but no thanks").

But my favorite Palin update comes to us via Huffington Post. Although Palin may soon be out of an official job, she at least has a new claim to fame: Urban Dictionary has now officially added the term 'pullin' a Palin' to its website. The definition?

1. Quitting when the going gets tough; abandoning the responsibility entrusted to you by your neighbors for book advances and to make money on the lecture circuit.

2. Bizarre move that will damn ambitions for higher office.

An example of the term in context: "I bet when people saw Jade they were convinced that David Caruso was pullin' a Palin."

Wow. I keep wondering if this story can get any stranger. Oh, wait, did I just read Palin was spotted in Roswell, New Mexico? Stay tuned.