It's an odd move -- flaky might be a better word -- and will go down as a career-killer for her. I understand her reasons -- she wants to promote her book, make a little coin, campaign for other Republicans, and cherry pick national issues to her liking -- but that is not a president make. The speech itself was simply frightening -- disjointed, rambling, cliche-ridden, and non-sensical.

Palin needed to burnish her credentials as a political heavy-weight, and show that she has the intellectual bandwidth to hold our nation's highest office, but with this move she's done just the opposite. Palin once again confirmed that she has horrible political instincts, and all but conceded that she isn't willing to put in the time and effort to really learn the ins and outs of governing. The big winner (yet again): Mitt Romney. He must be grinning from ear to ear with this news; check off another contender from the list.

Kudos to Michael Brown, he of "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" fame.  He has an excellent blog, www.michaelbrowntoday, and seems to have turned a corner on his brush with infamy.  To paraphrase his old boss, good Job Brownie.  The blog is a very interesting read; I highly recommend it.

Congrats to Shoba Purushothaman of The Newsmarket for their acquisition of Medialink.  The Newsmarket provides an impressive service, and Medialink is clearly a victim of the digital era.  Truth be told, this was fairly forseeable; there's been less and less a need for SMT's, and VNR's have become all but extinct.  I think the combined company makes sense as Medialink will mostly serve (I'm guessing) as a production arm for The Newsmarket.  Good deal all around.

A wonderful story by Rachel Silverman in the WSJ on my two favorite topics: dead presidents and cryptology.  Ok, so I don't really know much about cryptology, but it's a fascinating read about a two-hundred year old cipher buried at the bottom of a Thomas Jefferson letter that was finally solved.

Hmmm ... I'm not sure if I'm understanding this Politico.com lead story, but evidently the Washington Post is getting into the lobbying/influending business.   Or maybe I'm totally confused on this one.  This is weird. My prediction:  This idea will be dead by EOD.

A fantastic piece in the New York Times yesterday about an amateur historian, Andrew Carroll, who is touring some of the more forgotten landmarks of the United States, such as the place where Chester Arthur was sworn in as President (hint: it was in New York city), and where Winston Churchill was hit by a car and nearly killed in 1931 (again in New York City).  I'm really looking forward to reading the book and watching the documentary.

As I've blogged and said on Fox Business several times, it's been a rough, rough six months for Sarah Palin.  Her post-election career has been nothing but a series of PR disasters, mostly, and Todd Purdum's forthcoming piece in Vanity Fair only adds gasoline to the fire.

It's a must read article, and has triggered an internecine war on the right between Bill Kristol and Steve Schmidt that has been bubbling beneath the surface for months.  Hats off to Politico.com for some brilliant "day 2" reporting on this ...

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Briant Stelter of the New York Times has a fantastic piece on how Twitter is changing the rules of journalism, as evidenced by the coverage of the unrest in Iran.

It's a seminal moment for journalism in a way, sort of how the Drudgereport's breaking of the Lewinsky story (that Newsweek had sat on) was a seminal moment, too.   Drudge showed that blogs could force the mainstream media to move stories, and now Twitter is showing that the mainstream media needs to figure out how to aggregate citizen journalism if it wants to remain relevant.  Clearly, it's no longer the gatekeeper.  Now it's just trying to keep pace.