Spiro Agnew and Sarah Palin

For those of you too young to recall, Spiro Agnew, who had been the governor of Maryland, was Nixon's first vice-president. In 1973, Agnew was indicted on a slew of corruption charges. He plea-bargained it out, which meant that he pleaded no contest to one count of failing to pay income taxes and he resigned as vice president.

That may be the model for Sarah Palin's resignation.

Many political observers in Alaska are fixated on rumors that federal investigators have been seizing paperwork from SBS in recent months, searching for evidence that Palin and her husband Todd steered lucrative contracts to the well-connected company in exchange for gifts like the construction of their home on pristine Lake Lucille in 2002. The home was built just two months before Palin began campaigning for governor, a job which would have provided her enhanced power to grant building contracts in the wide-open state.

So it could be possible that what we are seeing are the public pieces of a secret plea deal. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Palin now files amended tax returns, which declares the work done on her big lake house as "income" and she pays a hefty fine for failure to file timely returns, all of which are administrative details within the IRS and not subject to public disclosure.

Given the abysmal record of the Public Integrity Unit of the Justice Department, which has vacillated between partisan witch-hunts and a seeming inability to competently prosecute a politician who was as corrupt as they come, this may have been the best deal they could have struck. For DoJ, they don't have to suffer through another inept trial and Palin gets to try and keep her reputation intact.

Place yer bets.