The Associated Press is ominously reporting:

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin attended five colleges in six years before graduating from the University of Idaho in 1987.

Federal privacy laws prohibit the schools from disclosing her grades, and none of the schools contacted by The Associated Press could say why she transferred.

There was no indication any of them were contacted as part of the background investigation of Palin by presidential candidate John McCain's campaign.

And this is news because......????

The Obamessiah attended Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years before transferring to Columbia.  He then took five years off before going to Harvard Law School.  I never recall this being an issue with him.

I went to three different schools in four years.  Why?  For much the same reason that I'll bet that Palin, the daughter of school teachers, did: Money.  After one year at a private college, I had to transfer to a community college because I could no longer afford tuition.  I was able to obtain my bachelor's degree at another private college through a combination of scholarships and loans.

In addition to mangling his headline (going to the University of Idaho twice still counts as one school, so that would be FOUR colleges in six years) Spokane-based AP reporter Nicholas Geranios fails to mention other points about Palin's education and possible reasons for her transfers that have been reported in other newspapers, such as the San Francisco Chronicle, which stated:

She was the runner-up for Miss Alaska in 1984 and used the scholarship money to help pay tuition at the University of Idaho.

And the Spokesman Review reported back in 2006:

"Geographically and demographically, Idaho was closely related to Alaska - beautiful and friendly," Palin told [University of Idaho journalism professor Kenton] Bird. "I wanted to go out of state (for college), and when I arrived in Moscow, I knew I'd made the right choice."

There you go. Nothing nefarious. Palin was not trying to hook up with Richard Butler and the Aryan Nations.

Could it get any sillier? Maybe. Geranios concludes:

The University of Idaho is taking advantage of Palin's nomination. A prominent photograph of her is featured on the school's Web site.

Shocking.

UPDATE 9/5: Time has more information that apparently eluded Geranios:

She moved far away to attend college -- at the University of Hawaii in Hilo -- but she did so with a tight nucleus of three friends from high school, according to Kaylene Johnson, author of Sarah, a biography of Palin published earlier this year. The group quickly transferred to Hawaii Pacific University, but that didn't work out either; they missed the winters, Johnson says. Palin moved with one of the girls to North Idaho College in Coeur D'Alene in 1983. When Palin did finally strike out on her own, it was to transfer to the University of Idaho at Moscow -- where her brother was enrolled.

Geranios has modified his original story to change the headline and include the Hawaii-Hilo reference. Oops