THE EARMARK

And before the Latina-loving governor gets his hopes up, may we remind him that headline does not say Colombia.

No, we’re talking Columbia, South Carolina where the hubristic conservative remains governor, despite a multi-week ordeal wherein he lied to his staff about an Appalachian Trail trek, hightailed it to Argentina to boink a TV reporter, and then came back to South Carolina to cry, suggest he could have been King of the Jews, and work on his Bill Clinton impersonation.

But now he’s going to have to do it without his wife and children.  Because they’re abandoning Sanford in his governor’s mansion…

Jenny Sanford, the wife of Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, will move from the governor’s mansion in Columbia to Charleston with the couple’s four sons, she announced on Friday, signaling that she intends to keep her distance from her husband.

While the news is obviously a setback for the governor, we’re confident that he could fill the vacancies in his mansion without too much trouble.  Topping the list of likely guests…

Maria Belén Chapur- This would be the aforementioned reporter at the heart of the Sanford affair.  Helping her cause for admittance is that she’s Sanford’s proclaimed soul mate.  (Sorry, Bill Maher.)

His Old Roomies From the Capitol Hill Christian Group House- Nothing could be more Christian than welcoming a stranger into your home, only in the case of Sanford’s old roommates John Ensign (R-NV) and Chip Pickering (R-MS), you’ll have to replace the word “stranger” with “fellow self-righteous blowhard who also cheated on his wife.”  Oh, and Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN) will tag along, too — although mostly just for the free cash.

700,000,000 Dollar Bills- That would be the stimulus money that Sanford refuses to spend after being knocked off his soapbox and being forced to accept money for roads, schools and hospitals.  The governor could use a cuddling partner right about now, and George Washington seems as worthy as anyone.

Fellow Philandering Governor Jim Gibbons (R-NV)- Gibbons is the Ying to Sanford’s Yang, as evidenced by the two men’s post-affair trajectories.  While Sanford was abandoned in his mansion as his wife headed home, out in Nevada, it was Gibbons who got kicked out of the mansion while his wife stayed!  Now Gibbons would have probably prefered some classier accomodations than downtown Columbia.  For instance, crashing with some fashionable gay friends in midtown Manhattan would be much more appealing — but hey, we can’t all be Rudy Giuliani.

It’s a ridiculous allegation, right? But throw in a little bit of transitive logic and it makes perfect sense.  First consider the news story…

Eight days after admitting to an extramarital affair, Sen. John Ensign gave $5,000 to the Tennessee gubernatorial campaign of Rep. Zach Wamp – a fellow Republican who lives with Ensign in a Christian group house on Capitol Hill’s C Street.

Now for those unfamiliar with Christian group house etiquette, understand that the last time Ensign doled out multi-thousand dollar payments, it was to a lady he had illicitly balled during a long-term affair.  (Okay technically his parents doled out the cash, but the senator is embarrassed enough as it is, okay?)

Now consider our logic…

Ensign cuts multi-thousand dollar checks to those he porks during affairs  +  He just gave Rep. Wamp 5000 big ones  –>  Ensign was having an affair with Wamp.

If you’re still skeptical, consider the behavior of two previous tenants of the home…

Two other former housemates, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) and former Rep. Chip Pickering (R-Miss.), both have also been implicated in extramarital affairs since the Ensign scandal broke last month.

In other words, if everyone in the house is having affairs and making cash payments and whatnot, why not just simplify things and start making those transactions among one another?

In conclusion, we fear that Christian group houses on Capitol Hill might not be achieving their intended effect.  Perhaps the congressmen should adjust their standards to those of a rival group house inhabited by Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Dick Durbin (D-IL), George Miller (D-CA) and Bill Delahunt (D-MA).  Their rules are simple: Restock the cereal, kill any stray rodents, and pile on Schumer until he makes his bed.

Oh, and if you feel the sudden urge to parcel out cash payments or conduct affairs, definitely wait until the New York Times reporter leaves the house.

So, this past weekend was the big annual National Governors Association conference.  The good people of Biloxi, Mississippi, went all out to put on a great time for the governors, because they deserve it, and to be honest there’s not a whole lot else going on in Biloxi these days.  But attendance was kind of sparse.

Turns out a lot of the governors had a … thing.  That couldn’t be avoided.  Sorry, Biloxi.

Fewer than half of the nation’s 50 governors attended the gathering this year, including the group’s chairman, Gov. Ed Rendell, D-Penn.

Before introducing a videotaped message from Rendell, the incoming NGA chairman, Gov. Jim Douglas, R-Vt., opened the first session on Saturday by stating Rendell needed to stay put in Harrisburg to deal with his state’s “economic and fiscal crisis.”

Now it’s understandable that some governors couldn’t make it because they had incredibly important tasks to do, like checking their email or squabbling with local teenagers.  Some may have had urgent business to take care of with waitresses in parking garages.  And others may have tried to come, but forgot their IDs.

Still, they missed out.  Sure turnout was low, but the governors who did show up had a blast.  John Baldacci of Maine brought some great onion dip and Brad Henry of Oklahoma told his famous off-color joke about “flied lice.”

Oh, and nobody made fools of themselves by exchanging Senate seats for rough sex like two bad apples did last year.

Listen up, Washington!  Your former denizen, George Allen (R-VA), is about to lecture you, and he’s going to begin just as soon as he can get the American public to pay attention.

In a blog post entitled “George Allen’s Road Back?“, Politico’s Ben Smith writes…

A book is often a start on that road, and Regnery announced today that they’re publishing one by the former Virginia senator:

The book, due out next year, will be called, “The Triumph of Character: What Washington Can Learn from the World of Sports.”

Although the book’s publicists are revealing few details (apart from the exciting news that Allen was an excellent rugby player in college), we imagine that Allen plans to admonish his colleagues to:

- Display a noose in a tree at one’s law office in a former Confederate stronghold.

- Call a dark-skinned constituent “macaca” to incite taunts from a redneck audience.

- Allegedly use racial epithets against African-Americans.

- Deny being Jewish.

The only caveat is that, according to Allen’s book title, Washington politicians need to learn these lessons via the world of sports.  Well conveniently enough for our purposes, Allen personally has a NFL Hall of Fame father of the same name!  So all the tips listed above still apply!

Now as for Ben Smith’s prognosis of an Allen comeback, we urge GOP leadership to proceed slowly with this.  Sure, a book on “character” is going to vault Allen into the 2012 presidential dialogue, but will it really be enough to hold off the surge generated by Mark Sanford’s guide to a healthy marriage, Bobby Jindal’s public speaking manual, or Sarah Palin’s tome on perseverance in the workplace?

Because at the current rate, those books are definitely on their way!

Former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was arguably the most disgraced member of the George W. Bush White House.  As Bush’s personal lackey dating back to Texas days, Gonzales worked odd jobs around the West Wing until John Ashcroft was Raptured, clearing the way for him to become the nation’s top law enforcer.  There, as the head of the Department of Justice, he attempted to show how much he understood the nation’s lawbreakers, by promoting unwarranted wiretapping, torture, and the illegal firing of U.S. Attorneys.  He capped it off by perjuring himself in front of Congress.

After bowing to loud resignation calls that came even from Republican leaders, in 2007 Gonzales rode off into the sunset of private law practice, where he found that no one - no one - would hire him.  But nearly two years later, the former AG has finally found an employer: Texas Tech University, which has hired him to teach a “junior-level course” in the Political Science department.

You may remember Texas Tech from another career that ended in disgrace: basketball coach Bobby Knight!  After choking one too many students, Knight was fired from Indiana University, where he had coached for 30 seasons.  He was happily picked up by Texas Tech, which didn’t seem to mind the coach’s colorful vocabulary and penchant for throwing chairs at referees.

It’s anyone’s guess who will be the next to join Gonzales and Knight in Lubbock.  May we humbly suggest Mark Sanford to chair the Religious Studies department and Mark Foley to teach Adolescent Psychology?

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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.

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.