Have you ever been to Alaska?  It is truly the most beautiful part of this country.  Denali (Mt. McKinley) is pretty much the biggest protrusion on the planet.  The wildlife and natural wonders are as big as the massive territory Alaska occupies.  And though it was many years ago that I visited, I was so taken with the people, the food and everything about the place.  It felt so amazing and so different and so far away, but it also felt like I was still home, even more so than the times I’ve visited Canada.  Maybe it’s my legal training, but there’s something about being within the bounds of the USA, even if not the ‘lower-48’.

Shannyn Moore is a writer and radio host I had never heard of until Sarah Palin decided to dump a bucket of crazy all over the political news cycle.  Palin abruptly resigns for no discernible reason and then gets her lawyer to threaten Shannyn Moore, thus elevating anything Ms. Moore had to see from the level of opinion and anlysis to national news story.  If we were talking about any other failed vice presidential candidate, I would think there was some scheme at work, some nefarious plot to draw our attention away with spectacle and distraction.  But Sarah Palin is not like the stage magician who shows you a puff of smoke with his right hand while deceptively making the trick happen with her left.  I can’t give her (or her lawyer) that much credit.

So now, thanks to Palin’s threats of defamation and protracted and expensive (and frivolous) litigation, all of the sudden tens of thousands of people who didn’t know Ms. Moore’s name are now regular readers and commenters on her blog.  Now a story of corruption that no one really cared about or reported on (except, perhaps a handful of concerned Alaskans, including Ms. Moore) is front and center.  Why?  Because the pit bull with lipstick started barking again.

So my hope is that Ms. Moore will now have an opportunity to become another progressive voice of reason in our national discourse.  She already has a presence at Huffington Post and her circulation should only grow wider from here.  GOPer and hard-line conservatives can Governor Mrs. Palin bringing a new voice into the fold – one that is strong and brave and proud of her heritage as an Alaskan; one that reminds me how lucky I am to live in a country that includes such an amazing place.