Moments ago in Juneau, Alaska, state employees started handing out 55-pound boxes full of paper to dozens of awaiting reporters. Each set of six contains nearly 25,000 printed pages, comprising the entirety of Sarah Palin's e-mail correspondence during her half-term as governor of Alaska. Get reading!

The release—which does not include roughly 1,100 pages deemed confidential by the state—is the culmination of a four-year battle under Alaska's open records laws for access to Palin's e-mail traffic initiated by Mother Jones' David Corn. (You can read his saga here.) Because current Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell is a dick, the state insisted on releasing the records in hard copies, rather than digitally, and charging each media organization more than $700 for copying. So now that the boxes have been handed over, a mad dash to document-feed scanners begins.

The New York Times and Washington Post say they will begin posting scans today, and are asking readers for help sifting through them for stories. The Post has set up this Twitter feed devoted to the e-mails. Mother Jones, MSNBC.com, and ProPublica—which has written up a handy backgrounder on what the cache may contain—are collaborating on a searchable online database here.

So enjoy your weekend reading some incredibly stupid things written by Sarah Palin, kids.


Update: Here's what we've found so far. If you find any good stuff, let us know.

[Photo via Getty Images]