"My priorities have always been my faith, my family and my country, and at this stage in my life, and after nearly 12 years of public service in Florida and Washington, it's time I return to Florida and my family," Martinez wrote.

So... someone has his IM transcripts with Mark Foley? Or someone is dying, maybe? Who knows.

Martinez is not very popular in Florida, because he's too conservative, and he's not very popular among Republicans in the Senate, because he's unable to vote to kick the Mexicans out or against Wise Latinas.

Now Charlie Crist will have to appoint someone to the seat that he is running for himself next year.

Turn your TVs to CNN, kids: they have a sports style countdown clock readying this thing. Could they hide their glee any less? Not unless they got drunk in the lead-in to it, which: feel free to on their behalf. We're gonna be doing this from the comments, so remember: the newest comments go at the top of the thread, and keep it kinda clean?...Okay, fine, fuckit: go to town. This might be the last chance we have for a while. Have fun in there.

This statement just went out from Star:

Star Reporter Resigns Over Jon Gosselin

Star Senior Reporter Kate Major resigned this morning, Thursday, July 23, citing a conflict of interest between her reporting duties for the magazine and her relationship with Jon Gosselin.

Since Star was so happy about this in the first place, it seems impossible that they asked her to resign for (heh) ethical reasons. And since Major made sure to get herself photographed with Octo-dad in the first place, it seems impossible she didn't plan this advance. The only remaining possibilities:

1. Kate Major and Star decided that she can more effectively pump Jon Gosselin for scoops if he thinks she's really his girlfriend.

2. Jon Gosselin told Kate he wouldn't go out with her as long as she was a scumbag celeb reporter. She talked to Star and agreed that it would be worth "resigning" in order to stay with him, and pump him for scoops. See theory #1.

3. Kate's quote from press release: "I didn't mean it to happen, it just did. I went to do a story on Jon and ended up falling for him." Could this be...love? We refuse to believe it.

[Pic: INF]

Here's the text of the memo sent to Us Weekly staffers:

Dear Us Staff,

After six years as the editor of Us Weekly, I am leaving. In short, I
decided it was time to try something else in my life, do a little Gosselin
detox and occasionally go out on Monday nights. There are no immediate
plans, except to enjoy the month of August, take some tennis lessons, and
maybe finally edit my wedding album.

With more certainty, I can say that it has been an immense privilege working
with every last one of you here. What we've done with this magazine is
unprecedented — you have helped make Us Weekly into one of the greatest
success stories in publishing history. Back in 2003, the year many of you
started with me,the magazine's rate base was 1 million; now it is nearly
double that at 1.9 million; we didn't have a website until recently, and now
it's one of the biggest entertainment websites with more than 6 million
unique visitors a month (up 328 percent in just one year!). Along the way
the magazine has received countless accolades - among them Ad Age's Magazine
of the Year and Top Performer of the Decade by Cappell's Circulation Report.
Most significantly, you've made Us Weekly into a phenomenal buzz machine,
synonymous with all things pop culture and celebrity. In Chasing Cool,
author Gene Pressman of Barneys devotes a section lauding Us Weekly. He
calls our magazine "the iPod of its industry," adding, "like crack on
newsprint, it made an entirely dormant segment into a monster loyal
audience." Indeed, it's always been one of the most gratifying things about
working here: to toil for a magazine not in vain, but for one that 13
million people actually read every week.

Last year, the LA Times said, "It's Us Weekly's world, we just live in it."
And now I will be just a spectator looking in. But I speak from the heart
when I say thank you for all you've done: the endless hours, never saying no
to any request, and for being all around fun, kind and generous people with
whom to spend my days and nights. I've never worked with such a fiercely
talented, dedicated, collegial and quality group of people. You made being
here pure joy and sorely will be missed.

Now, please join me in congratulating executive editor Mike Steele in his
promotion to interim editor in chief. Mike will be returning early from his
vacation on Wednesday to begin work.

As for me, my last day will be some time next week - and hopefully we will
have some kind of celebration (that doesn't involve Sterno!).

All best,
Janice

Min's future plans are unknown at this time, but she hinted to the New York Times that she might be considering a career change:

"As long as I'm here, I can't really even begin to think about what I'm going to do next," she said. "But I'm 39 and I'd like to have another career. I felt like I'd done every possible thing at US Weekly to make it successful."

We phrased it as, "She Just Hates Governing." Today's Times story on the days leading to Sarah Palin's resignation suggests that "she just hates her life, and Alaska, and is not very good at governing" might more accurate.

So what happened is Sarah continued to be obsessed by every single petty attack against her, real or perceived, by any enemy, from any corner. When she talks about how she was unable to focus on helping Alaska because the governor's office was bogged down in frivolous ethics complaints, what she means is that she was personally consumed with everything bad said about her.

Like, here is one of those all-consuming ethics complaints that were hurting Alaska:

By all accounts, Ms. Palin became consumed with the complaints, no matter how small-bore - which many were - or where they came from.

When a local Democratic blogger accused her of becoming a "walking billboard" by wearing a jacket emblazoned with the logo of Arctic Cat, her husband's team sponsor at the Iron Dog snowmobile race, she issued a news release titled "Governor Comments on Latest Bogus Ethics Complaint."

"Yes, I wore Arctic Cat snow gear at an outdoor event, because it was cold outside," her statement read. A follow-up release was triumphantly titled "Ethics Complaint on Governor's Apparel Dismissed."

So, yes, Palin was fixated on attacking local bloggers, on responding to everything Levi Johnston said and did, and on taking on a late-night comedian for making a dumb joke. The Republican Governors Association tried to send an aide up to help her out, and party bigwigs tried to help her set up a PAC and a legal defense fund, and meanwhile the Alaska legislature just wanted her to govern, and Palin could not really handle all of those things, at once, and so she quit. But not before she randomly fired someone who annoyed her, again, because that is her style.

Dr. Butler said he resigned his post in June in part because the administration asked one of his highly regarded division heads, the state public health director, Beverly Wooley, to resign. "I felt that it was not a good time to be downsizing," said Dr. Butler, who is now working on a swine flu vaccination at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Butler said the governor's office apparently deemed Ms. Wooley insufficiently supportive of the parental consent bill backed by Ms. Palin.

Ms. Leighow would only say, inexplicably, that Ms. Wooley had been terminated by the health department, not the governor.

At least we can be confident that, while Sarah Palin has quit politics, she will never quit being a petty, thin-skinned liar, surrounded by sycophantic enablers.

And she will certainly not disappear from the public eye as long as Levi Johnston remains free, and on television!

And we are pretty sure we will continue to hear even more from Levi, in the coming weeks!

[Photo: Runner's World]

Palin announced at a "hastily convened" press conference earlier today that she will resign and transfer power to Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell at the end of the month. She didn't take any questions, or field any inquiries about her future plans. Common speculation has been that she's gonna make a run for the presidency in 2012.

Meanwhile: what's with the sudden press conference that has her surrounded by family? That's typically more indicative of a motion of support, less one of a political maneuver/preparation. Does someone have something on Palin that's going to come out in the following days? Was the Vanity Fair piece the last straw for her and/or her family? Or is this just a very, very preemptive move for the currently unannounced 2012 campaign? Some kind of analysis by lots of people who talk a lot to come, and more theories like that abound. God willing, she'll just embark on a TV career and sort out the marital disquiet of Gary Coleman.

The rumor started going around fast this afternoon; Nikki Finke broke the news, followed shortly by the NYO's own story. Kaplan has been at the paper for the past 15 years, following earlier stints at the NYT, the Charlie Rose Show, and as a magazine editor.

"I had a little newspaper in New York City! You can't beat that. No matter who you are. I had a little newspaper in New York City. That's as good as it gets. It's better to have a little newspaper in New York City than a big newspaper in New York City. Because then you only have to report and write for the people you care about. And nobody else."

Hear hear. The same goes for blogs! We wish Kaplan the best in his family man-ing and other endeavors.
[Related: Jared Kushner denies our earlier post saying he wants to sell the Observer. Pic via]

Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president in AIG's Financial Products Division, is doing a very good thing: He's donating his $742,000 bonus—that's after taxes, so the real number is well north of $1 million—to charity. He's also quitting AIG in a huff because he's upset that his boss, Edward Liddy, didn't do enough to defend the catastrophic failure of the company's hard-working and preposterously wealthy employees.

We sympathize with DeSantis. He says he didn't engage in any credit default swaps nonsense. He says his business unit was "consistently profitable" for the company, that he was working for a $1 annual salary, and that he's been spending "10, 12, 14 hours a day" trying to save the company. He even lost "a significant portion" of his life savings and "personally suffered from [AIG's] controversial activity—directly and indirectly with the rest of the taxpayers." He was repeatedly promised a gargantuan bonus in exchange for these hardships, and now his employer has abandoned him and attorneys general are demagoguing him. So he's washing his hands of the whole thing.

What he doesn't understand is that the blood-boiling rage that's been aimed at him and his colleagues isn't just about the money and the failure—it's about the vast and bottomless sense of entitlement that well-heeled Wall Streeters can't seem to shake. When he describes the AIG retention contracts as "ethical and useful," and when he compares himself to a "plumber" being "cheated" of his payment because an electrician burned down the house, he seems to be discovering for the first time that life is not fair. Also, he fails to understand that in this case, the humble plumber works for the electrician who burned down our house.

Most people who earn less than $700,000 a year have understood for some time that life is not fair. It's a hard lesson to learn, and it's generally a good idea to speak out in the face injustices large and small. But when the economy is cratering because of the company you work for, and unemployment is heading to double digits and everyone is scared out of their wits, to complain about how hard you work and make a show of being wealthy enough to turn away $742,000 is not the note you want to hit. You are not a plumber, Mr. DeSantis. You are a fabulously wealthy and fortunate man, and you ought to appreciate that and give your money away, if that's what you want to do, without aggrandizing yourself in the process.

Anonymity is also a virtue in its own right, as Sir Fred Goodwin, the former chief of the Royal Bank of Scotland who refused to give up his post-bailout pension, learned today when vandals smashed his windows and damaged his car. Things are still pretty dicey, Jake! Good thing you gave up the bonus, but you'd still be wise to keep your head down and stay off the op-ed pages until this whole thing settles down.

Back when Spitzer was a crusading Attorney General, he was maybe the most respected and beloved man in New York politics, especially by the sort of New York City residents who both ignore Albany politics and are exhaustingly cynical about New York politicians (this is the Bloomberg electorate). But how could we not love our tough-talking liberal fighter? He seemed as happy in a scrap as mean old Giuliani, but unlike Giuliani, he went after the fucking banks, not modern artists and ferret-owners.

Spitzer waged high-profile campaigns against AIG and investment banks and even anti-abortion "crisis pregnancy centers." He was the great hope of reform in Albany and he won his gubernatorial election in a landslide. With his reputation the way it is today, it's hard to remember how much he was beloved back then. The Daily News even wrote a story on how to deal with your straight man-crush on him.

Then he was suddenly the Governor of New York and everything went to hell for him. He immediately came up against a state assembly full of life-long gridlock enthusiasts who refused to change the way they did business and hated newcomers. They frustrated him, and the real Spitzer emerged. He's an angry asshole, it turns out, who doesn't play well with others. The fact that starry-eyed New Yorkers hadn't noticed this when he was "crusading" (i.e. expanding the purview of his former office to take on high-profile cases that endeared him to said starry-eyed New Yorkers) says more about them than him.

30 days into his Governorship, Spitzer said to Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco, "I'm a fucking steamroller, and I'll roll over you and anybody else." That remark, immediately and widely reported in the tabloids, proved to be as utterly untrue as it was impolitic. Spitzer has accomplished nothing but the creation of bullshit scandals (gold star to the first commenter who can succinctly explain STATE TROOPERGATE, in a way that actually makes it seem worthy of a "-gate" suffix). All of these things, from the Steamroller comment to the flap over his plan to give licenses to illegal immigrants, were the mark of a man who, it turned out, was not actually all that good at politics. But this? The hooker thing? The mark of a man who's a fucking idiot.

As AG, Spitzer had prosecuted prostitution rings. He knows, especially with the classy ones, that the client lists are well-maintained, and they get out, eventually. So to head down to DC and hook up with a whore the night before a CNBC appearance (at 7 a.m.!) and a Congressional appearance is the height of abject stupidity. D.C. is quite boring, in Eliot's defense, but still.

Now he's maybe retiring, and everything in Albany will return to normal, and the Democrats probably won't pick up that Senate seat they need to secure a majority and force reform bills through. But you know what? We think he should stick around. Not even just to piss off Joe Bruno.

2010 is a long, long, long ways away, especially in politics, and especially in New York politics. If he doesn't resign, he can redeem himself (after the storm of boring moralizing bullshit that is sure to follow). How long could it be before the golden boy long since brought down to size would be able to recast himself as a changed, meeker man, human as everyone else, and enjoy a quiet resurgence in the polls? And Jesus, what better way is there to get everyone to forget the bullshit of his first year in office than this? Doesn't he see? Getting caught up in a high-class prostitution ring could've saved Spitzer's legacy!

You missed deadline, you're in over your head, your screaming boss just called you a blundering half-wit in front of all your colleagues (some of whom you're almost positive you saw smirking into their monitors) and you're quite sure that whoever made the absurd decision to hire you might just be less competent than you, which at the moment is saying a lot.

But there really is no crying in a newsroom. Hold it. It is possible to postpone bursting into tears, though usually only for a limited amount of time. Search for exits while you can, pretend something has gone terribly wrong with your contact lens and take your leave gracefully. Everyone will know that you're on your way to bawl your eyes out, but don't worry. The only reason they know it is because last week they were the blundering half-wits in over their heads. Be sure to replace the Kleenex box in the utility closet when you leave.

Watson, whose history of preening egotistical bullshit has endeared him to maybe Harlan Ellison, has held his position at the laboratory—and even "led" America's portion of the Human Genome project—largely because of the one day he attached himself to a brilliant idea, won a prize for it, and ended up in every single high school biology text book that ever was or will be printed.

In his statement, Watson kinda apologized again, though still didn't really clarify, and also made odd mention of "his Scots and Irish forebears, saying their lives were guided by faith in reason and social justice." Not to mention alcohol and spousal abuse am I right?

James Watson Retires After Racial Remarks [NYT]