First of all, Sarah Palin, go to HELL for ruining your editor’s day of patriotic rest and BBQ. Second, why did you really quit, crazy lady? We admit to “jumping to conclusions” (trying to hurry up and get back outside to our cocktails and friends), but the story may be more complicated than “Sarah Palin is a sociopath who will just quit being governor of Alaska THREE-AND-A-HALF YEARS before the next presidential election, just to show her, uhm, Leadership Credentials, which means constantly yelling at David Letterman about a joke she couldn’t comprehend.” But there are so many more crazy theories about America’s craziest Alaskan Anger Bear, the snowbilly grifter and strip-mall Ice Queen of Wasilla. Let’s examine them, together! MORE »

THE SAD ROMANTICAL BALLAD OF MARK SANFORD: “Of course, when you’re a middle-aged man facing the collapse of your life’s work and abandoning hope of being with the woman you call your ‘ soul mate’ rational decision making or a clearly considered plan may be too much to expect.” Illustration by our pal Lauri. [TPM]

Mitt Romney thinks he can get elected the Republican president of the United States someday, even though he served as the governor of the People’s Republic of Taxachusetts and instituted a Cuban healthcare regime while in office. To commemorate his unhappy tenure as a hostage of the Massachusetts state legislature’s overwhelmingly Democratic majority, the state unveiled an official portrait of the former governor yesterday. If he looks uncomfortable, it’s because of the rectal spindle that attaches him to the desk. UPDATE: MORE »

When Governor Mark Sanford tearfully admitted last week that he had an affair with some gal who he actually liked a lot, many people wrote approvingly of his candor, and the fact that he didn’t say “Meh, I was just boning some slutty slut, it meant nothing.” He had feelings and things, and maybe a decent amount of respect for his mistress! But now we learn that all of his “dear, dear friend” claptrap was just a precursor to a torrent of undignified, cruelly narcissistic oversharing. MORE »

Ever gotten one of those wacky “trivia for reading on the toilet” sorts of books for your birthday, the kind that says, “an antiquated law in Missouri dictates that anyone who puts a mule in a bathtub must be publicly flogged”? Here is another bit of trivia you might find in such a book: apparently South Carolina decreed in 1880 or so that adulterers must pay up to $500 in fines and serve a year in jail. MORE »

Today, in our ongoing celebration of profane Republican lawmakers, we bring you the beloved Ohio smoke-mummy John Boehner. On Friday he very coyly suggested that Nancy Pelosi’s “Let’s All Give Anal Beads to the Polar Bears for Christmas” enviroterrorist legislation was not quite to his taste … MORE »

So this guy Lee Terry, he is from Nebraska — a state which, as anyone who has spent an hour and a half getting lunch in Omaha can tell you, is surprisingly tolerable! Rep. Terry is very feisty, as well, as evidenced by his reportedly telling a DC driver “Fuck you” when the driver pointed out the other day that he was jaywalking. He also got into a vulgar shouting match with Jesse Jackson Jr. once on the House floor. This alone equipped him with a one-way ticket to Awesome. [CQ via Glenn Thrush]

Well, that’s what this dingus gets for not carrying around a pocket-sized copy of The Communist Manifesto, which was pretty clearly published in 1848, MANY MOONS after the drafting of the Constitution. At a recent appearance in Wausau, Wisconsin, he said that the Founding Fathers “knew socialism doesn’t work. They knew communism doesn’t work.” On the other hand, the Founding Fathers knew two things did work: leeching, and slavery. [Wausau Daily Herald]

NEW YORKER STAFFERS QUITE FAMILIAR WITH EXCLUSIVE NEIGHBORHOOD OF MARK SANFORD’S MISTRESS: Sparkin’ Sanford’s Buenos Aires’ pied-à-terre is in a rather lovely area where the better people congregate. “The well-kept doorman buildings feature underground parking garages and balconies. It’s winter now in Argentina, but in summer you can smell the animals in the zoo across the street from my grandfather’s balcony—and from Maria’s place as well, no doubt. Guido’s bar and restaurant at 2843 is probably the street’s most iconic feature, a quirky Italian place with no actual menu, where you are at the mercy of your waiter. The surrounding neighborhood, Palermo, is a fashionable residential neighborhood featuring a large namesake park, a major shopping district, bars and restaurants. We’ve yet to find out much about Sanford’s mistress, but the charms of her neighborhood are obvious.” [New Yorker]

We don’t know what this “emo” stuff is really about, either — it’s just boys who dress like The Strokes and wear Robert Smith eyeliner and whine-yell a bunch of misogynistic nonsense about their hurt feelings, right? How the hell this goes back to Ian MacKaye, we cannot even pretend to understand. And being a slave to your banal Emotions is about as far from the Path as you can get, but whatever, this is America. And, according to cultural anthropologist David Rees, disgraced blabbermouth Mark Sanford is an emo kid! Look for his new album on MySpace next week, Tears of Argentina (Maria), by his vanity project “the sparkin’ thing.” BREAKING UPDATE: Or is Mark Sanford actually Jude Law from a Kate Winslet movie we never saw? David Denby sure has a comment, about this comparison! [David Rees]

Well here is a sort of sad but interesting angle on the Sanford Firecracker Love Scandal, straight from The State reporter Gina Smith, who drove 200 miles to corner the exhausted governor of South Carolina at 6:15 in the morning yesterday as he was arriving back at the Atlanta airport, probably all morning breath-y. MORE »