Alaska Beat saw this item at the end of last week, but held off passing it along until it gathered more response from Newsweek's online readership ... sorry about that. After noting how little news gets made in Washington DC during August, the magazine's blog "The Gaggle" decided that it was "high time to toss around the idea of kicking Alaska out of the union—or the state leaving on its own accord." The blog entry mentions the recent New York Times piece detailing Alaska's contradictory fiscal love and regulatory loathing of the federal government, and then starts off an open discussion thread and "thought experiment," with a question: "If the 49th state were to leave the union, the impact would be, at first, economically devastating, according to Gov. Sean Parnell. But over time, could Alaska, by taking control of its own regulation over oil and gas, open the state for new business, perhaps allowing it to boom in a way that, until now, Washington has apparently stifled?" Read what readers said, here, but brace yourself, Great Land, some of it's pretty hard to stomach.