In the most shameful “gaffe” since Watergate, socialist prime minister Barack Obama’s press office has apparently put some crappy best-seller book on his vacation reading list even though he was supposedly reading the book last year. God, this guy. Why not just put him in jail now? MORE »

Ooh hot tawdry news regarding the dippy videographer who had sex with John Edwards and then, some months later, had a baby, which is maybe just coincidence! This woman, Rielle Hunter, was spotted entering a courthouse in Raleigh earlier this morning. MORE »

According to “Wonkett” bylaws, everything Larry Craig does is 30% funnier by virtue of the fact that it was done by Larry Craig, the winsome bathroom goblin who repeatedly tried to appeal his own guilty plea after he was arrested in a “cruisy toilet” looking for a hot slice of man to get down with. The former senator has opened a consulting firm and has four whole clients! How much would you pay for his professional advice? MORE »

Senator John Ensign isn’t quitting his job just because he had the poor taste to sleep with his friend’s wife and then stick his parents with the most expensive “here’s a little something for your trouble” tab ever, but his chief of staff might be! According to one report, Ensign COS John Lopez is “leaving” the senator’s office. Is he quitting? Getting fired? Laid off, like a common employee of Huck Pac? Who knows, ’cause Ensign’s office ain’t telling. Our money’s on quitting, because most Senate chiefs of staff want to bow out at the pinnacle of their careers. [The Hill]

All that Mark Sanford business has gotten pretty boring, so let’s turn our attention to the other Republican extramarital romancer, John Ensign. Remember this guy, and how he made beautiful love with his friend’s wife even though the friend repeatedly implored him to quit with his beautiful love-making? Ensign’s not quite as good a writer as Sanford. Or maybe it’s fairer to say he’s sort of Hemingway to Sanford’s Faulkner. MORE »

Well, that is a very alliterative and twee headline, isn’t it? Mark Sanford probably wrote this on a Twitter to Argentina, while hiking naked on the Appalachian Trail of his Soul (Mate). But, bad news for the terrible husband and father and lousy governor who will not resign, like a man, because he’s really just some weird emo teen-ager locked in the body of a washed-up S.C. politician: The South Carolina GOP Knights of the Round Table just decided to CENSURE this sleazy character with his multiple passport stamps and many poetically erotic nights with his Argentine Firecracker. MORE »

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 »

Really, come on, what the hell? South Carolina state senator and fellow Republican Jake Knotts has this to say about Mark Sanford’s secret sexytime: “I found out that he was taking frequent trips at odd times of the night in a South Carolina Law Enforcement Division car with no security. He would be driving. I got wind that he had taken another one of these types of capers last Thursday, and that nobody knew who he was with.” [CNN]

Not enough evidence, apparently: “Sangamon County State’s Attorney John Schmidt said that while some of Burris’ statements were vague, they wouldn’t support a perjury charge.” Illinois Senator Roland Burris, who at first appeared to be just another grandstanding egomaniacal doofus with a mausoleum fetish, has navigated the halls of the Senate — to say nothing of the vagaries of the Law — with catlike grace, and has made everyone from Harry Reid to Chris Matthews look like an asshole (maybe not so hard?). Anyway, three cheers for Roland Burris. [Washington Post]

What kind of DC buildings generally require a large room called a “confessional,” hmmm? Maybe churches? But nobody builds churches anymore. Maybe Michael Steele’s dream plans for the new GOP headquarters, where the Republicans can boozily admit to their various crimes of racism and pedophilia? NO EVEN BETTER, this is a scoop from the Washington City Paper: Actual blueprints for the Real World DC “weeping chamber,” where the young and talentless stars of this year’s edition of some old MTV comedy will be forced to admit to terrible, terrible things. MORE »

We knew there had to be a “paying off some 19-year-old boy” aspect of this dull John Ensign story, and here it is: A Republican committee paid Nevada Senator John Ensign’s illicit girlfriend’s son $5,400 during the SAME EXACT TIME Ensign and the lady were humping. This teen-ager was given the dirty GOP money for “research policy consulting,” which is even more bogus-sounding that our business expenses. ALSO: Our friends at the Las Vegas Gleaner inform us that Ensign was putting his peen into this lady before he was legally separated from his wife. MORE »