So the big news in Alaska politics this week was the resignation of controversial Attorney General Talis Colberg. Poor Talis. When he was asked to be Attorney General, you've got to think that he was looking forward to four years of managing the Department of Law, signing off on motions and speaking at Bar Association luncheons. No way did this small-town lawyer foresee the hurricane that was about to come bearing down on him once Troopernof hit the national stage. But bear down it did, and he made the choices he made, and were I he I'd be more than happy to get the hell out of Juneau and head back to my storefront to re-hang my shingle, to be perfectly honest.

What I'll be interested to see now is what happens to House Joint Resolution No. 4, "Proposing amendments to the Constitution of the State of Alaska relating to the office of attorney general," which might more correctly be called the "Let's Punish Our Ambitious Governor By Wantonly Digging Up The Foundations Of Our State" Bill. Or something more catchy. Like the Colberg Amendment.

One of the issues that arose after people got all worked up about former AG Colberg's ill advice to state employees (and certain first spouses) who received legislative subpoenas in the Troopernof matter was the fact that Alaska's attorney general is appointed by the governor rather than elected by the people. This outraged a number of people, some of them even residents of Alaska, who felt that AG is too important a position to be a political appointee, and it ought to be decided by the people. (Side Note: Because the people, of course, in our infinite wisdom, have never been known to nominate unqualified individuals for crucial government positions.) And then a pre-filed bill materialized at the beginning of the legislative session, sponsored by Rep. Harry Crawford, proposing that the constitution of the State of Alaska be amended to require the election of the attorney general.

Okay, kids, get settled in. I know you're used to me babbling about hair and shoes and state government gossip. But this is going to be a long one, and I'm about to go a little wonky on you. Because if there's one thing that bothers me more than Crocs at the opera, it's people who want to mess around with Alaska's constitution, which is recognized nationwide as one of the greatest legal documents ever written in these United States.

Follow me back in time, if you will, to the winter of 1955-56, when 55 mildly insane visionaries gathered in an unpretentious room at the University of Alaska to hammer out a little document we like to call the Constitution of the State of Alaska. Why mildly insane, you ask? Because they met in Fairbanks in the dead of winter, which seems totally crazy given Fairbanks's proclivity for Antarctic-grade temperatures, but which probably made sense at the time because in the 1950s, Fairbanks was, in some ways, the center of Alaska's territorial universe. (Side Note: Actually, Fairbanks may have been the center of the actual universe; Michael Carey told me once that Edgar Cayce had some kind of theory about Fairbanks having major cosmic importance.) As far as Alaska statehood is concerned, for a few months in the mid-1950s, Fairbanks was Delphi, because that's where these visionaries (smart in the brain, maybe a little dead in the nerve receptors from the cold) met to draft the document that would end up becoming the fabric of Alaska's state government.

Alaska's constitution is a pretty beautiful thing. The fifty-one men and four women who drafted it knew what they were doing. Not one single word went unscrutinized. If you ever get the chance, listen to Vic Fischer talk about the constitutional convention and the deliberate voice that was developed for the finished document. There is not one wasted word in our constitution. In fact, even if the amendments that came later weren't so handily labeled as such, you'd be able to tell they weren't part of the original document because they're frequently about twenty times wordier than the passages to which they've been appended.