A lot of people are excited about the screen grabs of Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email pages. How they were gotten is less important than what they indicate; Sarah Palin and her staff, like many of us, comingle personal and business email. The difference is that for most of us our business isn’t government business and the use of a Yahoo, Gmail, or Hotmail account isn’t partially aimed at avoiding the sunshine that state business requires. Palin’s does that in several cases.

Now that we know that Palin transacted the business of the state of Alaska in this manner, those emails belong to the people of the state and should be available via FOIA or by subpoena. Further it would be illegal for Palin or anyone else to destroy those emails (those that transact state business).

What anonymous has done is to reveal what she has, possibly illegally, hidden.

Now that the purloined emails are known to exist, let the press, the people and the courts do their work.

Update: Palin ordered to preserve emails on private accounts if they regard state business. October 13.