The Republican governor of the US state of South Carolina has admitted to an extra-marital affair.

Mark Sanford also said he would resign as chairman of the Republican Governors' Association.

He had earlier provoked controversy by disappearing on a visit to Argentina without informing anyone.

Mr Sanford, who had been a potential Republican candidate for the 2012 presidential elections, did not say whether he would be leaving his office.

In an emotional news conference, Mr Sanford said he had "let down a lot of people".

He said he had been having an affair for about a year with a "dear friend" he first met "very innocently" eight years ago.

"What I did was wrong. Period. End of story," he said.

He said his wife and family had known of the affair for the past five months and that he was resigning his post of chair of the RGA.

'Something exotic'

--------------

see toon at top and read more at the BBC

From Carmen Lawrence, SMH

It may be that some of this was ephemeral, stemming from the shock of September 11; research derived from Terror Management Theory shows we are inclined to retreat to a shared world view when threatened. Many of the religious references were made during debates about terrorism and seemed to originate in an interpretation of the attacks as a "clash of civilisations" between the Christian West and fundamentalist Islam; a discourse in which religion was used to divide the virtuous "us" from the murderous "them". I listened with alarm as MPs lined up to claim Christian identity while seeking to justify the decision to join George Bush in the attack on Iraq.

However, there is more to it than this. While the very public embrace of religion as justification for particular policies may be confined to a minority of members, there is a risk that religious reasoning, not subject to the usual rational challenges, may grow in significance. As political philosophies have been eroded in favour of a pragmatic market-based materialism, and as the parties look more and more alike, elected representatives are often unable to explain why they make their decisions. Religion offers a possible way out, even if many of those espousing religious codes to justify their stances have only the haziest notions about scripture and theology.

------------------

My point exactly. see toon at top and read the memory of life...

Another day, another Republican sex scandal. In a now-eerily-familiar scenario, a rising star of the party's conservative wing has been forced to resign – amid allegations that he fails to practise the lifestyle he so dutifully preaches.

Mike Duvall, a California state assemblyman who has strongly championed traditional values, quit after a TV station broadcast footage of him telling colleagues about his extra-marital trysts with not one, but two, female lobbyists.

The graphic account, heavily bleeped-out in evening news bulletins, saw 54-year-old Duvall talk a colleague through his bondage sessions with the women, one of whom is 18 years his junior.

Not realising that a microphone at his desk was switched on, the longstanding crusader for the family decided to pass time in a Sacramento debating chamber by recalling a liaison that had occurred the previous day.

"So, I am getting into spanking her," he told a male colleague. "Yeah, I like it. I like spanking her. She goes, 'I know you like spanking me.' I said, 'Yeah! Because you're such a bad girl!'"

-----------------

See toon at top...

From the BBC

...

From the podium, Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor stoked the audience's fears with a joke about a man who goes to sleep in America and wakes up, after a year of Obama, to find himself living in Sweden.

To many foreign ears, the thought of waking up in Sweden might seem rather appealing, but to this fiercely patriotic crowd it would not have made much difference if Mr Cantor had substituted Sweden for North Korea.

Vin Weber, a veteran of the "Gingrich revolution", in which the Republicans wrested control of both houses from the Democrats in 1994, says the party is "tapping into deep anxiety and discontent about the magnitude of change" under the Obama administration, allowing Republicans to "get on their feet rather quickly".

--------------------

When will these rabid god devotees realise that their "value agenda" has actually crashed the economy? And when will they realise that sharing a bit more, in real terms, is more profitable for all than charitable crumbs from a few?

from the BBC

A US state senator who has regularly voted against gay rights measures during his 14 years in office has confessed that he is gay.

Conservative Republican Roy Ashburn came out in a radio interview in California, the state he represents.

He has been on leave from the Senate since his arrest last week on suspicion of driving under the influence.

Mr Ashburn said his votes reflected the way his constituents wanted him to vote, not his own "internal conflict".

"I am gay... those are the words that have been so difficult for me for so long," the 55-year-old father-of-four told KERN radio.

---------------------

No-one's perfect... see toon at top.