Five, Four, Three, Two, One -- It's the Whacky Sarah Palin Emails Race

By Kathleen

The long awaited release of Sarah Palin's emails is finally here. Nearly three years have elapsed since the first public record requests for the emails were received by the State of Alaska who gave countless and often bizarre excuses for not making them available to the various newspapers, online magazines and individuals such as Andree McLeod, described by Vanity Fair as Sarah Palin's worst nightmare, who had asked to see them. SOA even suggested that the cost of the emails could amount to a cool $15 million plus. The final fee was $725 for copying them.

So much for transparent and ethical government, Sarah.

In total the State of Alaska will release 24,199 pages of redacted emails. Most of the released emails were originally sent from Palin's private yahoo account and they cover a time span beginning with her new administration in December 2007 through to September 2008 when she first joined McCain's campaign.

In order to facilitate fast availability of the emails some newspapers and online magazines have sent reporters and database specialists to Juneau who will aim to get as many emails on line as fast as possible.

The New York Times reports:

The documents are to be released at 9 a.m. Alaska time on Friday — 1 p.m. in New York — and some news organizations are setting up elaborate systems for scanning them and inviting the public to help search them online.

MSNBC.com, ProPublica and Mother Jones magazine are working with a research company to create an online database of the documents. The company, Crivella West, created a similar database last year when the state released a much smaller set of documents related to the involvement of Ms. Palin’s husband, Todd, with state government.

The company has not said when exactly its new database will be ready. “But it’ll be as fast as anybody can do it,” said Richard Ekstrom, the company’s chief operating officer.

The New York Times and other news organizations intend to assemble their own searchable online databases of the documents, and some, including The Times, were asking readers Thursday to help reporters sift through the voluminous correspondence in the coming days

The reporters will also twitter out findings so be sure to keep an eye on the #PalinEmails twitter tracker that Patrick has placed in the sidebar at the top of the page. Who knows what morsels might be found there as twitter is often responsible for breaking many stories.

I know that many of you intend scouring the emails looking for those which Sarah claims "were obviously not made for public consumption" or which evidently should not be "taken out of context." Please email me kathleenpoliticalgates@gmail.com with any interesting titbits or leave them here in the comments. I will post any useable information received by email asap as updates to this post.

You can betchya that Patrick and I will be avidly reading and searching as well.

twitpic by Rachel Weiner -- h/t to HIG

Finally, please take this search seriously, but also remember that this should be a fun exercise so be sure to take lots of coffee and food breaks. Oh yes -- and sleep! Happy hunting!

Links to agencies who will have access to the emails from 1.00 pm Eastern Standard Time:

http://www.crivellawest.net/

http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/06/10/6825771-heres-your-live-blog-for-finds-and-comments-on-the-palin-email-release

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/jun/10/sarah-palin-emails-released?CMP=twt_gu

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/help-us-investigate-the-sarah-palin-e-mail-records/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/09/help-read-palins-emails_n_874591.html

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Happy Birthday Cherriogirl love from Patrick and Kathleen xoxo.