Former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin resigned as the governor of Alaska on Friday before the holiday weekend in the US. Palin said she was resigning because she wanted to avoid the “lame duck” status she would have held before the next Gubernatorial election in November, and transferred power to her Lieutenant Governor. She easily could have run for re-election, but it’s thought that she’s choosing to enter politics on a national level again, and there’s speculation that she might run for President in 2012. Still, it makes you wonder what motivated her to quit, seemingly abruptly.

Palin’s father-in-law told People Magazine that he had “no idea” that Sarah was going to resign. This is a kind of cute story about how he caught the biggest salmon of his life on Friday, yeah right, and then got the unexpected news.

On the night before Sarah Palin resigned as governor of Alaska, her husband Todd Palin dialed the cell number of his father, Jim. “Sarah’s making an announcement tomorrow. Can you be there?”

Jim Palin was more than 200 miles away in Kenai, preparing for a salmon fishing trip with friends. He had no clue why his son was calling, or the nature of the announcement. “I didn’t know what was coming and I didn’t ask,” he said. “I couldn’t get back because I had a commitment. If I had been home, I would have been there,” he says.

Early the next morning, Jim went fishing and landed his biggest salmon yet – a 60-lb. King. Then a little after 11 a.m. he got another whopper – news that his famous daughter-in-law was quitting her job as governor of Alaska. “Wow!” he said after reading the bulletin on his email. “We had no idea it was coming. Nobody seemed to know; they’re extremely private people.”

Jim, who along with his wife Faye, joined Todd and Sarah on the campaign trail last fall when Palin was running for vice president on the GOP ticket with John McCain, says he wasn’t privy to the details that went into Sarah’s decision.

“Obviously, Sarah and Todd had thought it through and as far as the future lies, and based on what she said, I feel confident they have several options available to them and we will support them in whatever they do,” he says. At the very least, he says, Palin will have the freedom to speak without the specter of ethics complaints lingering. “If she’s not in office, they can’t file frivolous ethics complaints against you. That becomes a waste of time and money,” he says.

[From People]

That last line, “frivolous ethics complaints,” may explain why Palin resigned so suddenly, but we’ll have to wait and see if there’s more than just the investigation into her dismissal of the Public Safety Commissioner. Celebrities usually announce divorces and breakups on Fridays because we’re all anxious to go home and they get the least coverage. Add a holiday weekend in there and people are even less likely to talk about your announcement. It seems uncharacteristic of Palin to time something for the least amount of publicity, especially if she plans a return to national politics. She was upset over that joke by David Letterman about her daughter, but that was a few weeks ago and it’s all died down now. Palin didn’t shy away from the controversy and went on the Today Show denouncing the joke. Is this going to be all we’ll hear about Palin’s resignation, or will more information come out soon?