6:17 PM -- Reaction to Governor Sarah Palin announcing she wil resign at month's end...Palin said in a statement that once she decided not to seek re-election in 2010, she also decided she didn't want to be a lame duck. Obviously this will be seen as the first step on the road to the 2012 presidential race. Is this a good idea?

Republian strategist Ed Rollins doesn't think so, telling CNN this move makes Palin look "terribly inept:"

"I think everyone is shocked by this, and I think to a certain extent everyone is going to assume there's another story. You don't just quit with a year and a half to go. You certainly don't do this as a stepping stone to run for president. You finish the job that you're in, and obviously she's not doing that," he said.

I disagree. The media is determined to "Dan Quayle" Palin; to paint a picture of her as an intellectually empty "pantsuit" if you will. Conventional wisdom said that if Palin wants a shot at 2012 she should go back to Alaska, keep her head down, study up on the issues and come back in three years. Palin has been doing exactly the opposite, staying in the limelight and now taking that to the extreme by resigning.

I strongly disagree with Rollins and think that as a practical matter this is a smart move. Her effort to position herself for 2012 was drawing fire for not paying enough attention to her current job. And spending another year worrying more about president than being governor wouldn't be fair to Alaskans and would only hurt her presidential prospects.

Rollins certainly knows more about this game than me, but I can't help but wonder if those who urged Palin to "go back to Alaska" really felt it was a good idea. Maybe they just wanted her to go away.

Essentially Palin is going "all in" for 2012, regardless of her contention about doing anything "outside" of government. I've come to believe that Palin was literally a last minute pick by the McCain camp for running mate, and I mean LAST minute. She wasn't prepared for that limelight. And truthfully, she probably wasn't as prepared as she could have been on the issues.

It seems obvious that Palin is set on running for the Republican nomination for president in 2012. Given that, this move makes sense to me. Whether she can overcome the media groupthink effort to marginalize her as an intellectual lightweight remains to be seen. Conservative elites who don't care for the moose hunter from "up north" won't make it any easier for her.

12:00 PM -- Follow-up to the pictures of the state vehicle in Utah. The person with the state responsible for vehicles finally got back to us. He says it's probably a vehicle used on a university field trip, which certainly would be a legitimate use.

But what's interesting here is dealing with a state bureacracy: His "database" is down and he can't immediately track down who owns the vehicle. I'm not saying he's hiding anything, but isn't it interesting how much more often that seems to happen with a government entity than with a private entity?

1:06 PM -- Last week we did a topic on how much texting in class, even though virtually all schools ban phones in the classroom. I said the problem is administration needs to back up teachers when parents confront them about their little snot losing their cellphone. That prompted this letter from a teacher. Pay particular attention to WHOM students do a lot of their in-classroom texting:

Thanks for devoting some airtime to the cellphone debate.  I teach at a public high school, and cellphones are out of control.  Students will go to great lengths to "sneak-text" during class and if a teacher wanted to, they could spend all of their time and energy just trying to catch students at it.  The most creative (and pathetic) sneaking I saw was a student who cut a small hole in the lining of their backpack to stash their phone in if they got caught, then they'd open up their backpack and empty it all out, showing no cellphone in the backpack because it was hidden in the lining.  As a teacher, we are not allowed to search backpacks, the most we can do is say "I know you were texting and your phone is in your backpack, please give it to me." but we legally cannot search a backpack against a student's will.  I finally got smart and made a classroom rule that all backpacks be left on the back table, which took away a lot of the texting (or at least their barrier between myself and their texting).     I still have to play super-sleuth to catch those that have them in their pockets, but it's a lot harder for them to sneak-text.  During class work-time, when I walk around to help students, it's amazing when I focus on helping a student 1-on-1 how many kids used to try to sneak out their phones when they thought my back was turned.  I do A LOT of filtering around the room and looking over my back, eventually the kids realize mine is NOT the class to text during.  You said that 25% of texting occurs during school hours(?), I'd love to know the percentage of parents that are texting their kids during school hours.  I had a parent irate with me for taking away their child's cellphone... not upset with their kid about breaking the rules or being distracted from their studies, but because they had been trying to text their daughter all morning and weren't getting replies.  I asked her why she didn't just call the school and relay her message that way, and she said "Well, it wasn't an emergency or anything, I just wanted to know how her English test went.  I have a right to know how my child is doing."  This is the mentality of many parents.   They expect instant communication and don't understand why we would rob their children of "their right" to carry a cellphone and cut off their communication.   A colleague of mine took away a cellphone from a student during class and put it on her desk.  She forgot to turn it into the office (at our school, a first offender gets their phone back at the end of the day)...  The mom called her at her house and demanded she drive to school and let her in her classroom to get her daughter's phone.  She threatened having the teacher charged with theft.  The parent was at school and refused to leave without the phone, ended up getting a janitor to open up the teacher's room so her precious princess didn't have to go without her phone for ONE NIGHT!!!!  What are these parents thinking???  It wasn't "Why were you breaking the rules and texting during class?" it was "How dare they keep your cellphone over night!"
I could go on and on.  The solution?  More people (administrators, parents, school board members...) need so agree that it's a problem rather than shrug it off as "not a big deal" or make policies that put a band-aid on the problem because there is such a wide spectrum of beliefs about appropriate use of cellphones.  The people who think it IS a problem need to make some noise... it can't just be teachers, we need more parent complaints... too bad there aren't enough parents out there who see it as a problem!
Thanks again for putting this on the air.  It IS a big deal and hopefully people will start to realize it!