John Hayward remarks:

So did Lisa Jackson submit her resignation from her own email account, or did she use an alias?

— John Hayward (@Doc_0) December 27, 2012

This is the same Lisa P. Jackson also known as “Richard Windsor” in her alias e-mail account. The Competitive Enterprise Institute is now suing for access to 12,000 e-mails to and from that address, as I wrote last week:

So, the head of one of the most active and heavy-handed regulatory agencies in the federal government does a bunch of her business with colleagues on an e-mail address, that while it’s a .gov address, has no obvious connection to the EPA administrator herself. Among the regulations the EPA released just last year were five classified as “major” and expected to cost $4 billion annually. The administration has twice neglected to publish a Unified Agenda— a compendium of regulations coming down the pike, which it is required by law to produce twice a year. No other administration has failed to publish this vital public record since the requirement became law. But I’m sure there’s nothing the public would want to know about going on in “Richard Windsor’s” e-mail.

Chris Horner, author of “The Liberal War on Transparency,” who discovered the alias e-mail, said the government acknowledged last week there are 12,000 “Richard Windsor” e-mails addressing the war on coal, cap-and-trade issues, global warming regulation and other issues of public import. Competitive Enterprise Institute sued for access to the e-mails, and the administration will have to release them, several thousand per month, starting in January, Horner said. I’m sure there will be nothing fishy among them.

Now, Jackson is outta there, with no immediate announcement of where she’s going:

Ms. Jackson, 50, told President Obama shortly after his re-election in November that she wanted to leave the administration early next year. She informed the E.P.A. staff of her decision on Thursday morning and issued a brief statement saying that she was confident “the ship is sailing in the right direction.”

She has not said what she intends to do after leaving government, and no sucessor was immediately named, although it is expected that Robert Perciasepe, the E.P.A. deputy administrator, will take over at least temporarily.

Ms. Jackson’s departure comes as many in the environmental movement are questioning Mr. Obama’s commitment to dealing with climate change and other environmental problems. After his re-election, and a campaign in which global warming was barely mentioned by either candidate, Mr. Obama said that his first priority would be jobs and the economy and that he intended only to foster a “conversation” on climate change in the coming months.

There are rumors she’s interviewing at Princeton. My, these officials do seem to make their exits at convenient times.