THE EARMARK

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Disgraced South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, apparently eager to hold on to his favorite monikers, rambling and incoherent, gave a rambling and incoherent interview to the Associated Press today.  In it, he revealed that:

- Maria Belen Chapur, his Argentinian mistress, is his “soul mate.”

- In addition to his affair with Chapur, he had repeated sexual encounters with other women outside his marriage.

- But he never went all the way.

It seems that Sanford is embracing the logic of his old foe, President Bill Clinton.  Clinton, of course, was the one who came up with the brilliant legal theory that fondling a woman’s breasts and genitals and then penetrating her with a cigar does not constitute “sexual relations.”  Now Sanford seems to be on board, saying that it’s really not so bad as long as it’s not intercourse, which after all he did with only one woman who was not his wife:

Sanford, at times crying and unabashedly emotional, acknowledged in the AP interview that he had casual encounters with other women while he was married but before he met Chapur. They took place during trips outside the country to ”blow off steam” with male friends.

”What I would say is that I’ve never had sex with another woman. Have I done stupid? I have. You know you meet someone. You dance with them. You go to a place where you probably shouldn’t have gone,” Sanford said, declining to discuss details. But he said those encounters were nothing like his relationship with Chapur.

”If you’re a married guy at the end of the day you shouldn’t be dancing with somebody else. So anyway, without wandering into that field we’ll just say that I let my guard down in all senses of the word without ever crossing the line that I crossed with this situation.”

OK, Governor.  So it’s not cheating on your wife (or, for that matter, on your mistress) when you, for example, get a blowjob in a Bangkok alley.  We’re sure that logic will be more than sufficient for both of your significant others, as well as for the media and the people of South Carolina.

Now you owe Bill Clinton a cigar.

Take yourself back to Election Day 2008 and ask yourself what, at the time, would seem more plausible?

a) June 30, 2009 would be the day Norm Coleman conceded his Senate race.

b) On this same date, Joe the Plumber would still be in the news.

Fortunately both are correct answers!  Well, we’ve already heard about Norm, but good ol’ Joe (whose watch stopped running 14 minutes and 59 seconds after he bought it) dropped another nugget of wisdom on our proverbial front lawn over the weekend.  It comes in the form of this remark about the Founding Fathers’ economic ideology…

Referring to the Constitution as “almost like the Bible,” Wurzelbacher said of the Founding Fathers: “They knew socialism doesn’t work. They knew communism doesn’t work.”

The only problem here is that the Constitution was completed in 1787, while communist ideology did not formally exist until the 1848 publishing of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto.  Translation from the original Plumber-ese: Not only were the Founding Fathers economic visionaries, they were able to time-travel!

Now in truth, said Founding Fathers were mostly against the economic system wherein a king gets everyone’s possessions, declares ill-conceived wars, and generally acts like a lunatic.  Yet it seems to us that this king-based system fits in nicely with Joe’s own political dispositions, as it very clearly does not involve “spreading the wealth around.”

Joe concluded his comments by praising the Founding Fathers for never betting on baseball, never spamming anyone online, and never abusing crystal meth.

Former Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) came to his senses today in the wake of a unanimous decision by the Minnesota State Supreme Court.  Following the Court’s ruling that Democrat Al Franken’s victories in the general election, recounts, trial motions and judicial panels were all valid and legitimate, Coleman finally found it in his heart to concede defeat in the 2008 election, 239 days after it occurred…

“The Supreme Court has made its decision and I will abide by the results,” Coleman told reporters outside his St. Paul home.

Coleman, appearing relaxed and upbeat, said he had congratulated Franken, was at peace with the decision and had no regrets about the fight, which started almost immediately after the Nov. 4 election.

“Sure I wanted to win,” said Coleman, who called the ruling a surprise. “I thought we had a better case. But the court has spoken.”

And while this concession was actually due almost eight months ago, it’s vastly preferable to a lengthy appeals process and a potential trip to the U.S. Supreme Court, which Coleman chose to waive.

Continuing forward on his own personal calendar, Coleman then departed the press conference to shovel his driveway and shop for a Thanksgiving turkey.

To hear Elizabeth Edwards tell it, her husband’s former campaign aide, Andrew Young, abetted more bad behavior than anyone this side of Rush Limbaugh’s pharmacist.

Although she opts to not identify Young by name in her bestselling book Reslience, Edwards still considers the ex-staffer guilty of everything from enabling husband John’s affair with a hack filmmaker to stealing her dead son’s baseball card collection.

Further stirring the pot is the fact that Young himself has a book coming out, and in it he claims to have viewed a sex tape made by his former boss and the aforementioned hack Hunter.  (Well, we’re just glad she successfully completed at least one film in her directing career.)  Comedy Central’s Mary Phillips-Sandy suspects the onscreen pillow-talk contained a lot of sultry references to regional health care markets.  But we won’t cite specifics because this is a family website.

What Young doesn’t mention is whether or not he personally was in those sex videos, as he has previously claimed to have knocked up Hunter himself.  Perhaps the two of them acted out a stolen baseball card fetish.  Or maybe they engaged in auto-erotic asphyxiation with one of those LiveStrong bracelets the campaign seemed to stock by the gross.

Either way, that baby has a lot of awkward family reunions awaiting her.

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has had a rough couple of weeks.  First his soapbox scheme to reject federal stimulus money blew up in his face, rendering him a national joke.  Then he set off for the Appalachian Trail, only to wander off course and end up in South America. Then he came back to South Carolina, admitted to an international love affair, resigned as chairman of the Republican Governors’ Association, and bawled like a schoolgirl on national television.

It’s time we took pity on this poor man by backing off, handing him a live microphone, and allowing him to compare himself to David: King of the Jews.

Here’s the erstwhile thru-hiker in his own words…

What I find interesting is the story of David, and the way in which he fell mightily, he fell in very very significant ways. But then picked up the pieces and built from there.

Sanford followed this remark with a prepared statement, in which he reminded reporters that after David’s own biblical sex scandal, he too served out the remaining 18 months of his term until state law forbid him from seeking re-election…

I remain committed to rebuilding the trust that has been committed to me over the next 18 months, and it is my hope that I am able to follow the example set by David in the Bible - who after his fall from grace humbly refocused on the work at hand.

Although we at The Earmark are happy that Sanford’s confidence and self-image haven’t been even remotely shaken by his own transgressions, we feel that he may have gone to far by likening himself to David: King of the Jews.  Perhaps a comparison to Elliot: Sheriff of Wall Street, John: Bore of the Senate, or Vito: Drunk Driver of Alexandria would have made a better starting point.

The Supreme Court ruled today that a Safford, Arizona high school had denied a 13 year-old girl her 4th Ammendment rights by submitting her to a humiliating strip-search on school property.  The 8-1 decision met widespread acclaim from consitutional scholars, while at the same time fetching blue-balled dismay from the Court’s lone dissenter, Clarence Thomas.

Using phrases like “deep intrusion” (while displaying impressive familiarity with the 2003-2004 social calendar at Redding’s middle school), Thomas issued a 22-page rebuke to his colleagues’ ruling, noting that “Redding would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her undergarments.”  This despite the fact that Redding did not, in fact, have pills in her undergarments.

By Thomas’s logic, because other students at Redding’s school were alleged abusers of “pills” (in this case, ibuprofen), the school’s invasive probe was merited.  But if mere proximity to drug abusers is grounds for a humiliating strip-search… well, let’s just say that Jeb Bush, Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN) and John McCain had all better drop trou’ right now to prove their innocence.

And by the way, if anyone has evidence that any of Anita Hill’s friends or relatives have ever smuggled pills at any time, please alert Justice Thomas right away.