It’s So Cold in Alaska.

“Let me go back to a comfortable analogy for me – sports… basketball. I use it because you’re naive if you don’t see the national full-court press picking away right now: A good point guard drives through a full court press, protecting the ball, keeping her eye on the basket…and she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can WIN. And I’m doing that – keeping our eye on the ball that represents sound priorities – smaller government, energy independence, national security, freedom! And I know when it’s time to pass the ball – for victory.“

Sarah says that she wants to know, why she’s given half her life to people she hates now… Or, in other words, members of the press, you won’t have a certain maverick to kick around anymore…or will you? With a rambling farewell speech that probably won’t be remembered as a model of the form, former veep nominee Sarah Palin resigns the governorship of Alaska. Whether this is due to 2012 calculation or impending scandal is yet to be determined, although the hurriedness of the preparations would seem to suggest the latter.

Inside Men at the FEC.

“That’s happened with increasing frequency at the FEC lately. Election-law experts, supporters of campaign-finance regulations, and even some members of the commission itself are expressing growing concern about a string of cases in which the three Republicans on the commission — led by Tom DeLay’s former ethics lawyer — have voted as a block against enforcement, preventing the commission from carrying out its basic regulatory function.” Pete Martin and Zachary Roth of TPM Muckraker delve into how Republicans antithetical to campaign finance reform have effectively sabotaged the FEC. “The FEC, he said, has been made ‘ineffective’ — and not by accident. ‘This is what McConnell had in mind.’“

“Of course, the one person who could do the most to get the commission back on track is President Obama…Most experts believe that the White House supports stronger campaign-finance laws as a goal, but, with a host of other issues on its plate, is reluctant to pick a fight with the GOP Senate leader. ‘They’re picking their priorities, and they don’t want to take on Mitch McConnell right now,’ said Hasen. ‘I consider that unfortunate.‘” Anyone else sensing a pattern?

Atlas Hemmed and Hawed.

“Somewhere in literary-character hell, John Galt is spending an eternity getting beat down by Tom Joad & his pick handle.” Ah, Ayn Rand…come for the vaguely kinky sex, stay for the self-serving, thoroughly reprehensible philosophy. Salon‘s Andrew Leonard asks if the recent economic downturn has discredited Rand’s Objectivism once and for all, prompting — as you might expect — a war in the comments section between the true believers and the gleeful cynics.

Among the many funny comments, this one, reposted from here: “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”

Forty Years and Counting.

“The cultural climate is far different today, besides. Now, roughly 75 percent of Americans support an end to Don’t Ask, and gay issues are no longer a third rail in American politics. Gay civil rights history is moving faster in the country, including on the once-theoretical front of same-sex marriage, than it is in Washington. If the country needs any Defense of Marriage Act at this point, it would be to defend heterosexual marriage from the right-wing ‘family values’ trinity of Sanford, Ensign and Vitter.”

The NYT’s Frank Rich reflects on the gay rights movement on the 40th anniversary of Stonewall. “No president possesses that magic wand, but Obama’s inaction on gay civil rights is striking. So is his utterly uncharacteristic inarticulateness…It’s a press cliche that ‘gay supporters’ are disappointed with Obama, but we should all be.“

The Serpent on the Staff.

“As a society, we trust doctors to be more concerned with the pulse of their patients than the pulse of commerce. Yet the American Medical Association is using that trust to try to block a robust public insurance option as part of health reform. In fact the A.M.A. now represents only 19 percent of practicing physicians…Its membership has declined in part because of its embarrassing historical record: the A.M.A. supported segregation, opposed President Harry Truman’s plans for national health insurance, backed tobacco, denounced Medicare and opposed President Bill Clinton’s health reform plan.“

And don’t forget Sheppard-Towner: In his column this week, Nicholas Kristof take aim at the powerful American Medical Association. “‘They’ve always been on the wrong side of things,’ Dr. Scheiner told me, speaking of the A.M.A. ‘They may be protecting their interests, but they’re not protecting the interests of the American public.‘”

Where’s Waldo (the Lobbyist)?

“When 22 senators started working over the first health care overhaul bill on June 17, the news cameras were pointed at them — except for NPR’s photographer, who turned his lens on the lobbyists. Whatever bill emerges from Congress will affect one-sixth of the economy, and stakeholders have mobilized. We’ve begun to identify some of the faces in the hearing room, and we want to keep the process going.” Clever, clever: Also on the health care front, an NPR photographer initiates a game of find-the-health-care-lobbyist. “Know someone in these photos? Let us know who that someone is.“

Palmetto Low.

So, the big political story of the week: the strange disappearance and eventual mea culpa of my home state governor. As I said here, I try to avoid posting on sex scandals as much as possible — In a perfect world, all of this private behavior would be off the table for both parties. Still, regarding this imbroglio, my feeling about his press conference yesterday was very akin to Gary Kamiya’s at Salon: “[T]his was not another blow-dried, prefab confession. It was unscripted. It was so intimate it was almost unwatchable.“

Now, I disagree with Gov. Sanford quite a bit politically, obviously. I was impressed by his op-ed on Obama during the SC primary last year, but he lost a lot of goodwill with me with his grandstanding on stimulus funds a few months ago. Regardless, whatever the moral hypocrisy and dereliction of duty involved in this case, it’s just sad to see a guy so obviously lost in the wilderness of amour fou. For whatever reason, he didn’t have the usual politician’s armor on at all yesterday, and it was painful to watch somebody writhing on the horns of a dilemma of the heart so publicly. He screwed up, big time, and his behavior is indefensible on several levels. Still, I have to admit, I sorta feel for the guy. (And, while I think John Dickerson’s recent hectoring in Slate was a bit much — particularly since he usually revels in the manufactured controversies and studied glibness that characterize so much useless political coverage these days — to my mind nobody deserves the godawful nightmare of having one’s mash notes published for all to see. That’s just a special kind of Hell.)

The Final Frontier.

“The future is here and we are not too far off a new age of space. It is not just about private astronauts going up, it is about bringing the cost structure down and about new medicines, solar power in space and the entire range of scientific benefits that can come from it.” After many years of discussion and planning, ground is broken on Spaceport America in New Mexico, “the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport.” Any and all donations to GitM for one of the $200,000 spaceshots soon to commence from there will be greatly appreciated.

Dead 4 Left?

“While one can certainly use zombies to express all kinds of ideas, I would argue that at heart, the genre is a progressive one…Surviving the tide of zombies requires community and mutual responsibility. What could be more progressive than that?” In The American Prospect, Paul Waldman ruminates on the political economy of zombie flicks. It is true, we on the Left tend to be more interested in braaaains… (Via FmH.)

Farewell, Froomkin.

“That’s why this Froomkin firing is so revealing. The fact that one of the very few people to practice real adversarial journalism in the Bush era was decreed not to be a real ‘journalist’ — and has now been fired by the Post — is one of the most illustrative episodes of the past several years regarding what the real function of the establishment media is.” Glenn Greenwald, Paul Krugman, Steve Benen, and Andrew Sullivan, among others, respond with justifiable outrage to the WP’s recent firing of Dan Froomkin.

What they said. So, let me get this straight: Froomkin — a guy who’s spoken-truth-to-power during both the Bush and Obama administrations, and who’s been one of the few “killer apps” in the WP’s dwindling journalistic arsenal — is shown the door while paleolithic dinosaurs like Charles Krauthammer are still on the payroll? Riiiight. Particularly in light of the death spiral of academia, it’s just plain depressing to watch the establishment media burn away its last vestiges of integrity these days. It’s just not a good time for people of the writerly persuasion, no matter how you cut it.

Update: “When I look back on the Bush years, I think of the lies. There were so many.” Froomkin signs off.