Ahead, on my right, I saw the Alaska Right to Life (RTL) booth, where a poster caught my eye, taking my breath away. It featured the sweetest baby girl swathed in pink, pretend angel wings fastened to her soft shoulders.

“That’s you, baby,” I whispered to Piper, as I have every year since she smiled for the picture as an infant. She popped another cloud of cotton candy into her mouth and looked nonchalant: Still the pro-life poster child at the State Fair. Ho-hum.

Well, I still thought it was a nice shot, as I did every time I saw it on its advertisements and fund-raiser tickets. It reminded me of the preciousness of life.

It also reminded me of how impatient I am with politics.

A staunch advocate of every child’s right to be born, I was pro-life enough for the grassroots RTL folks to adopt Piper as their poster child, but I wasn’t politically connected enough for the state GOP machine to allow the organization to endorse me in early campaigns.

Time and again, Palin uses her large family for political purposes, and then complains that they’re “off limits” when she decides they’re under attack. We’ve seen it with the use of her son Trig–Palin put him on national TV at the 2008 Republican National Convention, and has occasionally accused liberals of wanting to kill him. We’ve seen it with Bristol Palin, whose pregnancy became a national story, and with Track Palin, whose military service Palin has referred to again and again. But it seems like Piper Palin’s star turn for Alaska Right to Life was the first political deployment of a Palin family member.

It was telling that Fey should be the actress who impersonated Palin. The two women may look like each other, but they could not be more dissimilar. Each exemplifies a different category of feminism. Palin comes from the I-can-do-it-all school. She is professionally successful, has been married for more than 20 years, and has a large and (from all outward appearances) happy family.

The “outward appearances” bit gives me pause, as I know that Continetti has made trips to Alaska to research the book. And the Palin family has been the target of lots of tabloid rumors — some of those rumors pushed by Levi Johnston, the father of Palin’s grandson. Is the book going to tackle any of this? Moving on.

[W]hile Fey is also pretty, married, and has a daughter, the characters she portrays in films like Mean Girls and Baby Mama, and in television shows like 30 Rock, are hard-pressed eggheads who give up personal fulfillment—e.g., marriage and motherhood—in the pursuit of professional success. On 30 Rock, Fey, who is also the show’s chief writer and executive producer, plays Liz Lemon, a television comedy writer modeled on herself. Liz Lemon is smart, funny, and at the top of her field. But she fails elsewhere. None of her relationships with men works out. She wants desperately to raise a child but can find neither the time nor the means to marry or adopt. Lemon makes you laugh, for sure. But you also would be hard pressed to name a more unhappy person on American TV.

This is all subjective, but I’d say even the fictional Liz Lemon has fewer problems than the real-life former governor of Alaska, who quit her job under the pressure of frivolous ethics complaints and who seems to get into monthly feuds with her daughter’s ex-boyfriend.

Before she was picked as Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) running mate, Palin’s favorable rating was at 80 percent.

Under the bill, only certain state and federal officials would retain the right to hunt from the sky, leaving exception for instances of “biological emergency.” The bill also bumps the fine for aerial hunting from $5,000 to $50,000.

“Shooting wildlife from airplanes is not sport — it is cruel and inhumane,” Feinstein said in a statement. “It undermines the hunting principle of a fair chase and often leads to a slow and painful death for the hunted animals. This practice should be banned.”

After a few jabs at the press, Palin ran through a laundry list of her accomplishments in office, including an ethics reform package (which, ironically, she now names as one reason for leaving office early, as “frivolous” complaints dog her) and kick-starting a public-private natural gas pipeline project — a longtime dream for the state. Palin, with a near unanimous vote in the legislature last year, has the state on the hook for $500 million for a completed proposal. The building portion will take years and billions of dollars, if it actually happens at all.

Certainly she was trying to end on good terms with Alaskans, but she didn’t forget about the CNN crew either. Since announcing her decision to leave office earlier this month, Palin’s been positioning herself as an “energy expert,” quickly penning on op-ed for The Washington Post that blasted President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plans. She spent a good portion of her  address today talking about “renewables,” her gas pipeline project and the need to tap into Alaska’s natural resources (but she did not invoke her 2008 campaign mantra, “Drill Baby, Drill”). She also claimed Alaska could wean itself off earmarks if it were allowed to more fully tap its energy sources. (Palin has taken credit for being an earmark reformer, despite many, many examples to the contrary.)

Arguably, her farewell speech’s best moment came when she tossed the crowd some red-meat on gun control. Blasting wildlife groups that recruit “Hollywood starlets” to run campaigns against her record on hunting rights — presumably referring to the Defenders of Wildlife attack ad describing Palin’s wolf bounty proposal (cash for every severed left foreleg turned in by hunters) — Palin yelled to the crowd, “We eat, therefore we hunt.”

Surprisingly, she steered clear of one of her signature issues, abortion. During her 2006 gubernatorial bid, she tended to avoid talking about her abortion views (its not a rallying point among Alaskans). On the 2008 trail the issue became part of her national persona and she had an arsenal of euphemisms and suggestive anecdotes, like “culture of life,” and her continued talk of her son Trig, born with Downs syndrome,  that made her point (none of which came up today).  As TWI’s David Weigel recently reported, anti-abortion rights activists are eager to welcome her aboard. With her sights apparently set on cementing herself as a national figure and legions of devoted fans supporting her, today’s goodbye is almost certainly not the end.

An independent investigator has found evidence that Gov. Sarah Palin may have violated ethics laws by accepting private donations to pay her legal debts.

The report obtained by The Associated Press says Palin is securing unwarranted benefits and receiving improper gifts through the Alaska Fund Trust, set up by supporters.

An investigator for the state Personnel Board says in his July 14 report that there is probable cause to believe Palin used or attempted to use her official position for personal gain because she authorized the creation of the trust as the “official” legal defense fund.

–

You can follow TWI on Twitter and Facebook.

Listen to how “rambling” and “disjointed” she is. Once upon a time in American politics, this was known as being “plain-spoken,” but that time has gone.

OK. From Palin’s speech:

We need those who will respect our Constitution where government’s supposed to serve from the bottom up, not move toward this top down big government take-over … but rather, will be protectors of individual rights – who also have enough common sense to acknowledge when conditions have drastically changed and are willing to call an audible and pass the ball when it’s time so the team can win! And that is what I’m doing!

Leave aside the idea that you can “call an audible” in basketball, the sports metaphor Palin was using. What is she saying in this paragraph? Shouldn’t a “plain-spoken” politician be able to 1) convey what she means and 2) say, without spin, what she’s going to do? As ever, self-conscious Washington reporters give Palin a pass on this sort of thing in a manner that seems more lazy than insightful.

On Fox News, Bill Kristol said that “the more he thought about it,” Palin’s decision looked like a “shrewd gamble.” On MSNBC, Pat Buchanan compared Palin to Richard Nixon, who made a political comeback in 1966 by campaigning for Republican candidates.

I’m checking the reaction from pro-Palin sections of the blogosphere, and the general sense is one of bewilderment. From the thread at Conservatives for Palin:

WHAT THE EFF????? Why is she resigning??

we need to pray.

I can see not running for a 2nd term, but resigning? That’s insane. She’s not even a 1-term governor then. And SarahPAC just sent out the email for more donations on Monday.

if you want to, please pray now- for her family, for her, her staff. we need to be behind her.

I AM GONNA THROW UP. WHAT THE F***

Some popularity drop-off isn’t uncommon right now, as states battle with their budgets, but Palin has really not adjusted well to her new role as a national figure from an obscure state.