In Affair, Mark Became Marco, 'Canoodling Lothario'

Nothing but 'disgusting politics,' she says

(AP) - Here we go again: A South Carolina lobbyist resigned from a rival political campaign yesterday and then became the second man to claim he had a tryst with Nikki Haley . Lobbyist Larry Marchant says he and Haley, who's running for governor, had a "one night indiscretion" in a Salt Lake City hotel room in June 2008, but admitted he had no proof to back up his allegation. "You can't have any evidence on a one night affair," he says. More»

'Broken' governor vows to be more 'humble' leader

(NEWSER) - A “broken” Mark Sanford says the fallout from his admission of an extramarital affair has been like attending his own funeral, but he’s “thankful for the perspective it has afforded.” In a column for the Greenville News, the disgraced South Carolina governor shares the life lessons his “tragedy” has taught him, acknowledging “this column does not do justice to the process of saying 'I am sorry.'” More»

Commerce secretary didn't know where to reach guv

(NEWSER) - Mark Sanford’s recent Argentine excursion wasn’t the first time he had gone missing: His commerce secretary didn’t know where to reach him in June 2008, either, emails reveal. “Need contact number for (Sanford) ASAP,” the secretary wrote to a Sanford staffer on the 28th—a day the South Carolina governor saw his lover, he has since admitted. The email was part of 3,300 pages of communications released to the State. More»

Gov bolted because country's 'going to hell in a handbasket'

(NEWSER) - Rush Limbaugh has a novel theory about why Mark Sanford left the US: He was sick of the way the country’s being run. The South Carolina governor's disappearance, it seems, was President Obama’s fault, the Huffington Post reports. “This is almost like: I don't give a damn! Country's going to hell in a handbasket. I just want out of here!” Limbaugh said on his show. More»

(NEWSER) - Mark Sanford went before the cameras to confess and apologize yesterday, a ritual that is typically “a schtick, a plastic act of absolution performed by men who are just as plastic,” writes Gary Kamiya of Salon. But not this time. Sanford “got all weird and human on us.” Suddenly “instead of a press conference, we had been carried into some Eternal Bedroom of Misery.” it was a trainwreck, Kamiya writes, but it was also that rare thing in a politician: an unscripted expression of emotion. More»