Tea Party’s Right Angle in NV, Pt III

Sharron Angle Nevada Republican senate candidate

The Washington Post
By Amy Gardner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 23, 2010; A01

Tea party favorite Sharron Angle emerges from the cocoon

LAS VEGAS -- Sharron Angle was about to do something unusual: answer a question. At a recent appearance here at a women's business lunch, the elusive Republican Senate candidate and "tea party" favorite went from table to table, listening to the concerns of potential supporters and trying to convince them that they should fire her opponent, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid.

A local actress named Dee Drenta asked Angle what she would do to help people find work. But instead of seizing what seemed like an easy chance to explain her jobs plan, the candidate revealed that she didn't have one.

"It really comes from the statehouse to incentivize that kind of stuff in our state," Angle said. "Truly, the lieutenant governor, Brian Krolicki, you should have this conversation with him. That's his job, to make sure that we get business into this state. My job is to create the climate so that everybody wants to come."

The woman gave her a puzzled look. "I'm sure you're probably planning on working with these people to do these things," Drenta said, hopefully. "Because it's the end result that matters, whether it's specifically in the job description or not."

After six weeks of virtual silence, Angle has emerged from the cocoon she retreated into after winning the Republican nomination. She has hired Washington consultants, raised money and gathered a staff. And for the first time, she has begun to release a public schedule of her campaign stops. (Though she still makes it a practice not to talk to reporters. At both of her recent news conferences, Angle declined to take questions.)

None of this has done much to convince Nevadans that she is a serious candidate. Reid, deeply unpopular in the state (his approval rating hovers below 50 percent), was once thought to be in great danger of losing his seat after 24 years in the Senate. But despite his association with Washington and Nevada's weak economy, he has adeptly taken advantage of Angle's stumbling -- and his own $14 million campaign bankroll -- to make himself look good by comparison.

The Democrat has flooded the Internet and the state's television stations with ads portraying her as a radical conservative. His campaign staff spins out releases that detail her "wacky" views. Now it is Angle, a former state assemblywoman, whose poll numbers are falling. In Nevada -- and back in Washington -- Republicans are beginning to wonder privately whether her campaign is finished.

That worry was evident on a recent weekday at Angle's Las Vegas campaign headquarters, where she offered The Washington Post a glimpse inside her organization.

"All of us true believers, we all know that polls are just a snapshot in time," Angle told her campaign team, which had assembled for a pep talk. "And really, we're going to have to roller coaster for a while. That's just the nature of a campaign. You saw it during the primary. We were up, we were down. But we always knew that it would all come together at the right time. And it did. And that's what we're looking forward to. . . . Don't lose your nerve in the beginning here, because we've got a pretty long road."

Instead of cheering Angle on, her staff members let loose with their frustration that the campaign and the candidate were floundering. They were buried in calls from voters wondering what to make of Reid's ads and upset that Angle wasn't responding. The two big topics were Angle's statements, now widely distributed courtesy of Reid, that she wants to "phase out" Social Security and that people who receive unemployment benefits are "spoiled."

"Sharron, the people who are working the phones a lot, especially the last couple of days, it's been really tough," said Jeri Taylor-Swade, one of the 20 or so campaign workers crowded into a sparsely furnished conference room. On the wall hung a painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

"These are not people who are opposed to you who are calling," added Kathi Minsky, who heads Angle's Las Vegas office. "These are people who love you, who are seeing distortions of your answers and they just want your answers. . . . They're hearing all this stuff, and they're afraid."

Angle said that until recently there was nothing she could do about Reid's attacks. She had emerged from the primary a winner but broke, and her campaign spent the intervening weeks raising millions of dollars. Before last week, Angle was operating her Senate campaign out of her house in suburban Reno.

"We couldn't" fight back, she said. "We didn't have the money to do it. We had to raise money, so that was the decision."

Angle insists now that she is ready to fight. After out-raising Reid in the second quarter, she reported $1.7 million in the bank and said she has brought in $1 million more this month. Campaign staffers imported from Washington are starting a big-donor fundraising effort. They are getting ready to negotiate with the Reid camp on the rules of coming debates between the candidates. On Tuesday, Angle began running a television ad of her own, a feel-good spot trumpeting her conservatism.

Angle continues to draw energetic support from at least one segment of the population: the tea party base that propelled her to victory in the primary. During her tour of the new Las Vegas office, she learned that busloads of volunteers would be coming from across the country before November to help her try to beat Reid.

"Oh, my gosh," she exclaimed.

The tea partiers love her for her deep skepticism of government. She fiercely defends gun rights in part so citizens can be prepared in case Washington tries to grab too much power from the people. She has said she favors eliminating the departments of Education and Energy. At the women's lunch, she answered a question about how she would help pay for programs for young children by citing the Constitution and arguing that such matters are best handled by the states.

Most Nevadans don't share these enthusiasms. According to a new survey by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research published in the Las Vegas Review-Journal last week, Reid is inching ahead, and Angle is bleeding support among independents -- the very voters Republicans were sure a few months ago they could win away from Reid.

"Nevada is struggling right now; it's really bad," said Nan Okuda, a Las Vegas business consultant who attended the lunch with Angle. She's no fan of Reid, but she didn't come away very impressed with Angle.

"It's like, 'Hmmm, what are you doing back there in Washington?' " Okuda said of the majority leader. "But if he's the best of what's happening, then yeah, I'll go with him."

Personal comment: Senator Reid can do little to help the unemployment situation and real estate markets here other than vote for extension of unemployment insurance limits and the stimulus bills that are so hated by the conservatives, so he’s in a tight spot. Hopefully Ms Angle will continue to run an ineffective campaign. The more radical the better!

The Tea Party’s right Angle in NV

The NV Tea Party Angle, eliminate the EPA and Social Security

The New York Times
By BRIAN STELTER
28, 2010

In Nevada, Running for Senate and From Cameras

RENO — There is a game in Nevada called “Where’s Sharron Angle?” that the press is tired of playing.

Ms. Angle, a Nevada Senate candidate and Tea Party darling, has steadfastly refused to talk to reporters here, leading to some unusually aggressive behavior by local television stations. In a segment fit for TMZ, one intrepid reporter chased her on foot outside a restaurant this month, repeatedly asking why she had once said that “if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies.” She ignored the questioner and tried to outpace him, in a video clip replayed across the state.

In her silence, Ms. Angle has exposed a fault line in political journalism. Candidates typically live and die by television exposure, with interviews supplementing the usual barrage of advertisements. But in local races across the country, there are fewer reporters asking questions on behalf of voters, and there are more media alternatives than ever, including talk radio and Facebook.

Still, Ms. Angle is quickly discovering that there is no better way to wake up a sleepy TV news crew than to refuse an interview request — or 10 requests, or 20.

“I can’t remember a time that we’ve ever had trouble with interviews,” said Mary Beth Farrell, the news director at KRNV, the local NBC affiliate. “Especially with people running for office — they usually beat our door down.”

After weeks of private rejections, KRNV last Monday publicly called on Ms. Angle to explain her positions to Nevada voters, an unprecedented step by the station, Ms. Farrell said. A day later, apparently coincidentally, she agreed to a single TV interview, to be broadcast on Tuesday.

In a state where reporters say they can knock at the Governor’s Mansion and say hello, people are wondering whether Ms. Angle’s “no comments” — except to friendly radio hosts — are indicative of something bigger. The reporters said they suspect that Ms. Angle, who has said that the Environmental Protection Agency should be eliminated and that Social Security should be “transitioned out,” is afraid of running into the same interview buzz saw as Rand Paul’s Senate campaign did in Kentucky.

Mr. Paul, another Tea Party favorite, was widely criticized for his views on civil rights after an appearance on MSNBC last month, leading him to cancel an appearance on “Meet the Press,” the gold standard of political TV interviews. (Since that, though, local stations in Kentucky have had access to Mr. Paul, said Mark Neerman, the news director at WHAS in Louisville.)

“One bad moment can derail an entire campaign,” said Mark Macias, a former producer for New York, Miami and Phoenix stations and the author of “Beat the Press,” who pointed to the bad press accumulated by Sarah Palin when she was interviewed in the 2008 presidential campaign. Now out of office, Ms. Palin may be a role model of sorts for subverting the news media; she now rarely gives interviews, except to Fox News, which pays her to be a contributor.

Ms. Angle, a local Republican legislator, was friendlier to the press back when she was deemed a long shot in the Senate race, according to reporters who have known her for years. But that changed after she was enthroned as the Tea Party’s choice to challenge Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, this fall. A week before the June 8 primary, her spokesman, Jerry Stacy, was quoted as saying, “She’s not interested in meeting up with any media or anything.”

Ms. Angle’s campaign strategy — if it is indeed a strategy; a spokesman did not respond to a request for comment — is representative of a pick-and-choose media landscape. Since the primary victory, she has showed up on Fox News and sat down with several conservative radio hosts, including Bill Manders of KOH, the dominant talk station in Reno. “She answers every question I ask her,” Mr. Manders said, although he said he had advised her to give more interviews.

At the moment, said Anjeanette Damon, a longtime political reporter for The Reno Gazette-Journal who recently moved to The Las Vegas Sun, “she is just talking to the base, people who are going to start sending her money.” Jason Pasco, the news director at KTVN, the CBS affiliate in Reno, called that tactic a “disservice to our viewers,” some of whom have been calling local stations and asking questions about Ms. Angle’s views. He speculated that Internet outlets like YouTube and Twitter, which allow for unfettered connections between candidates and voters, had emboldened her campaign.

“Maybe they think they can hit the people they want to hit directly,” he said. “I don’t think that hits the undecided voters though.”

Republican officials have said that reporters will hear from Ms. Angle in due time, once she builds up her campaign staff. Mr. Macias said, “If she’s not answering all the questions, it’s probably because she doesn’t have the answers yet.”

In the meantime, Mr. Reid’s campaign has made Ms. Angle’s silence a campaign issue, and the state Democratic committee has designed a Web site showing her in an underground bunker, hiding from a camera crew.

Mr. Manders, who displays a bumper sticker on his radio studio switchboard that says, “Elect anyone but Harry Reid,” said Mr. Reid was actually the one who “runs and hides,” having granted only three interviews to him in seven years. But local news executives scoff at the comparison, saying Mr. Reid and his staff had worked to demonstrate that he was not ignoring his home state.

“He may still dodge questions, but at least you can see him do it,” Mr. Pasco said.

As for the reporter in the restaurant parking lot, Nathan Baca of KLAS in Las Vegas, he says he was called “an idiot” by an Angle campaign aide after trying to interview her. Her campaign later denied that, saying, “the official in-state spokesman was not at the event.”

Jon Ralston, the political columnist who will interview Ms. Angle this week on his television show, “Face to Face,” had talked on the air about the problems getting hold of her. On one broadcast he mentioned that her spokesman’s voice mailbox was full.

When the spokesman called back, he told Mr. Ralston that they wanted the “toughest in the business” to interview her.

“Flattering, perhaps,” Mr. Ralston said last week, “but it’s also possible they were advised to get it over with on June 29 to mitigate any fallout. The election is still four-plus months away.”

Personal Comment: Sharron Angle is a Sarah Palin wannabe complete with interview gaffs and far right views who if elected would isolate Nevada from the rest of the country. While campaigning at least she won’t be able to give that she can see Russia from her home as a reason to be elected to high public office.

Joe Barton: Apology #2

Rep Joe Barton apology #2

Associated Press
Associated Press Writer Laurie Kellman
June 17, 2010 5:40 PM EDT

GOP lawmaker apologizes for apologizing to BP exec

WASHINGTON – Who's sorry now? Rep. Joe Barton, that's who.

The Texas Republican, the House's top recipient of oil industry campaign contributions since 1990, apologized Thursday for apologizing to the chief of the British company that befouled the Gulf of Mexico with a massive oil spill.

His double mea culpa plus a retraction, executed under pressure from fuming GOP leaders, succeeded in shifting attention from the tragedy, BP's many missteps and the stoic British oil chief at the witness table, to his own party's close connection to the oil industry.

The subject of Barton's ire was the $20 billion relief fund for victims of the spill sought by the White House and agreed to by BP.

"I apologize," Barton said to BP CEO Tony Hayward, who was sitting at a witness table for another of Congress' ritual floggings of wayward corporate heads.

"I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong is subject to some sort of political pressure that is — again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown," Barton said. "So I apologize."

Cue the outrage — from Republicans, who came close to stripping Barton of his post as chairman-in-waiting of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. GOP leaders summoned Barton to the Capitol and demanded he apologize in specific terms. The leaders threatened to launch a process to strip Barton of his seniority on the powerful panel, a particularly painful threat to any long-term lawmaker, according to two knowledgeable Republican officials who demanded anonymity so they could speak freely about private meetings.

But it was the notion of an American lawmaker apologizing to a foreign head of a corporation that had caused great hardships for millions of Gulf Coast residents that incited rare Republican-on-Republican rage. Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., became the first in his party to demand that Barton be stripped of his seniority. During a House vote later in the day, other Republicans pressed their leaders for Barton's punishment — and at least two in the leadership were still considering that option, the officials said.

As Barton returned to the committee, the leaders issued their own statement:

"Congressman Barton's statements this morning were wrong."

Vice President Joe Biden weighed in — lightheartedly at first, red-faced by the end.
"I find it incredibly insensitive, incredibly out of touch," Biden told reporters. "There's no shakedown. It's insisting on responsible conduct and a responsible response to something they caused."

Democrats, eager to tie Republicans to the oil industry during this midterm election year, piled on.

"While people in the Gulf are suffering from the actions of BP, the Republicans in the Congress are apologizing to BP," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.

By mid-afternoon, Barton was back on the dais with a statement that was something short
of what the leaders had demanded.

"I want the record to be absolutely clear that I think BP is responsible for this accident," he said. "If anything I said this morning has been misconstrued, in opposite effect, I want to apologize for that misconstruction."

Barton then issued, and House Republican leader John Boehner's office forwarded out a somewhat different written statement.

"I apologize for using the term 'shakedown' with regard to yesterday's actions at the White House this morning, and I retract my apology to BP," it began, and finished: "I regret the impact that my statement this morning implied that BP should not pay for the consequences of their decisions and actions in this incident."

Barton has received $100,470 in campaign donations from oil and gas interests since the beginning of 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Personal Comment: Do you have to be tone deaf in Texas to be elected to congress? No one could make this stuff up!

Joe Barton is ashamed, and he should be!

The face of big oil: Rep Joe Barton (R) Tx

Yahoo News
June 17, 2010
Brett Michael Dykes

Rep. Barton apologizes to BP for Obama 'shakedown'

Well, that was fast. Barely 10 minutes into Thursday's landmark congressional testimony — where BP CEO Tony Hayward and other leading company executives are revisiting the Gulf Coast oil spill before a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee — the first controversial statement has entered the record.

And no, it didn't come from the gaffe-prone BP brass. Instead, GOP Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the ranking member on the House Energy Committee, made a decisive splash in his opening remarks (from which Republican leaders immediately began distancing themselves). A staunch conservative who has a long record of backing oil industry interests, Barton apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward for the "shakedown" the Obama White House pulled on the company. (Barton has received more than $1.5 million in campaign donations from the oil industry, according to Open Secrets, a nonpartisan watchdog group.)

"I'm not speaking for anybody in the House of Representatives but myself," Barton explained, "but I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown. In this case a $20 billion shakedown."

Wrapping up, Barton said: "I apologize. I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong, is subject to some sort of political pressure that is, again, in my words — amounts to a shakedown, so I apologize."

As Sam Stein of the Huffington Post points out, this isn't the first time that Barton has shown conspicuous deference to the interests of offshore oil drillers in deepwater. At a meeting of the House Subcommittee on Air Quality in 2004, Barton announced that "Offshore drilling and productions platforms are so technologically advanced that one platform on the surface of the water can handle production from several different wells several miles apart, house a myriad of technologically advances computer systems, enable people to face and conquer the adversities of living in the middle of the ocean, and do so for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all without losing so much as losing a gum wrapper over the side of the platform. It is truly amazing."

— Brett Michael Dykes is a national affairs writer for Yahoo! News.

Personal Comment: Joe Barton is ashamed, and he should be, for his comments in support of BP! I wonder how his comments are going over with people living on the Gulf Coast? I wouldn’t want to be anyone on his staff trying to explain his remarks.

An Immaculate Conception

Confident: newly waxed pubes and a Penetrator

Waxed pubes and Penetrator plugs: One of the rituals that St Lucy’s student’s value is their periodic visits to the Brazilian waxing salon at Body Buffers in our casino shopping arcade. Wearing a Penetrator plug keeps the girls on a regular pelvic grooming schedule because pubic stubble makes it likely that they will get ingrown hairs from the pressure of the plug if their pubes aren’t kept smooth and the plug won’t seal well causing it to leak, usually at the most embarrassing times like in a développé or split or when trying to act sophisticated for a boyfriend. A full wax is best ahead of an annual pelvic exam especially for escorts because there is a lot of manipulating of the labia and insertion and removal of various devices; plugs, vibis, gas guards, vaginal hooks, dildos etc to check for proper size and fit. Even with the fitter wearing well lubed latex gloves getting pubic hair pulled can happen and it’s no fun, so a fresh waxing a few days before an exam/fitting session or an intense sexual encounter is always a good idea.


My ME and gossip: I was CD28 and went in for my menstrual extraction (ME) yesterday. I usually wait for CD1 (which is today) when I start having my period, but I wanted to be able to wear my Oves cap over the weekend when Jacques and I dive the pit, my 68 ft deep pool. Returning readers will remember that a diaphragm used for contraception or as a gas guard during dive-sex is only effective down to 10 meters, about 33 feet. Beyond that point the rim will distort and the diaphragm will leak so it should not be used to prevent pregnancy or to keep air or water from being pushed into the cervix and uterus where they can cause infections or an embolism, which is why a woman needs to wear an Oves or FemCap if she expects to have penetrative sex while diving below 10 meters. By having my ME yesterday I am wearing a Milex Omniflex yesterday and today to collect the residual bleeding and will switch back to Oves on Saturday morning. While I was in the stirrups having my endometrium sucked out my Gyn was filling me in on the latest gossip.

An immaculate conception: She told me about a 17 y/o technical virgin (she has never been penetrated by a penis) who came in with her mom for counseling. The girl is very newly preggers and both she and her mom are freaking out. It seems that at her father’s insistence the daughter had taken a virginity pledge. She has done almost everything else for sexual gratification except penile penetration so she is not exactly inexperienced and since her mom is far more liberal minded about human sexuality than her dad she uses her mom’s sex-toys with her mom’s permission. Apparently what happened was that the daughter modeled one of her mom’s soiled thong bikinis for her boyfriend. Because she was in a hurry to get something to wear for her guy to finger her in the daughter pulled the bikini out of the dirty clothes hamper and tied herself into the thong and cup set. It is her fave of her mom’s skimpy suits in a bright canary yellow which is why she wore it soiled rather than borrowing a clean one. She didn’t pay attention to the fact that the thong was soaked with slippery discharge, or if she did she thought it was her mom’s natural lube. So her BF fingered her clit and then pushed the fabric of the thong into her vagina with his fingers to caress the ring of nerves just inside. You can see where this is going, right?

The daughter was fertile and discharging fertile cervical mucus (FCM) that came in contact with the slippery crotch of the thong. Of course it wasn’t all her mom’s natural fluids that soaked the thong it contained her father’s semen as well from an afternoon encounter less than an hour before the daughter tied herself into the thong. Because she had taken the virginity pledge and was careful to just give her BF oral or watch him masturbate and splatter on her belly or breasts she wasn’t using contraception of any kind. Her fallopian tubes were in the center of a bull’s-eye and one of her dad’s lucky sperm penetrated her egg. Biology respects no family relationships it just creates new life every chance it gets. Four weeks later she noticed a change in the areolae of her breasts and was feeling nauseous in the mornings. Her mom had her test and the stick turned blue, positive for hCG the pregnancy hormone.

Getting preggers that way is very, very rare, but does happen and she is almost certainly carrying her father’s baby. Like I said, she and her mom were in to talk with a Gyn-therapist about what their options are. Her father is a very intense and outspoken religious conservative so what ever choice they make if he finds out what is going on there is no telling what he might do. I think it’s almost certain they will decide on termination and if they use Mifeprex they need to decide in the next week or so. A menstrual extraction could be performed a bit later but if they decide to terminate the sooner the better. I’m guessing keeping the baby isn’t an option because of the possibility of inbreeding and how to believably explain to the father/husband that his daughter needs to be away from home for 8 or 9 months.

Don’t cry for me Argentina

God gave men both a penis and a brain, but only enough blood to use one at a time.

SC Gov. Sanford admits affair after going AWOL
By JIM DAVENPORT, Associated Press Writer Jim Davenport, Associated Press Writer

“COLUMBIA, S.C. – After going AWOL for seven days, Gov. Mark Sanford admitted Wednesday that he had secretly flown to Argentina to visit a woman with whom he was having an affair. Wiping away tears, he apologized to his wife and four sons and said he will resign as head of the Republican Governors Association.

"I've been unfaithful to my wife," he said in a bombshell news conference in which the 49-year-old governor ruminated aloud with remarkable frankness on God's law, moral absolutes and following one's heart. He said he spent the last five days "crying in Argentina."

Sanford, who in recent months had been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2012, ignored questions about whether he would step down as governor.

At least one state lawmaker called for his resignation. As a congressman, Sanford voted in favor of three of four articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, citing the need for "moral legitimacy."

The affair is now over, Sanford said, describing the woman who lives in Argentina as a "dear, dear friend" that he's known for about eight years and been romantically involved with for about a year. He said he's seen her three times since the affair began, and wife found out about it five months ago.

"What I did was wrong. Period," he said. His family did not attend the news conference, and his wife Jenny Sanford said she asked the governor to leave and stop speaking to her two weeks ago. The governor says he wants to reconcile, and his wife's statement said her husband has earned a chance to resurrect their marriage.

"This trial separation was agreed to with the goal of ultimately strengthening our marriage," she said.

Sanford denied instructing his staff to cover up his affair, but acknowledged that he told them he thought he would be hiking on the Appalachian Trail and never corrected that impression after leaving for South America.

"I let them down by creating a fiction with regard to where I was going," Sanford said. "I said that was the original possibility. Again, this is my fault in ... shrouding this larger trip."

Questions about Sanford's whereabouts arose early this week. For two days after reporters started asking questions, his office had said he had gone hiking on the trail.

Cornered at the Atlanta airport by a reporter from The State newspaper, Sanford revealed
Wednesday morning that he'd gone to Argentina for a seven-day trip.

When news first broke about his mysterious disappearance, Jenny Sanford told The Associated Press she did not know where her husband had gone for the Father's Day weekend.

Sanford emerged Wednesday afternoon at a news conference, where he mused openly of his love of hiking and how he used to guide trips along the Appalachian Trail, and eventually tearfully apologized to his wife, his staff and his friends — but without yet saying what he was apologizing for.

"I hurt a lot of different folks," he said, occasionally choking up throughout the news conference that lasted about 20 minutes.

With those watching still wondering what he was admitting, Sanford said: "The odyssey that we're all on in life is with regard to heart."

Several residents said they were disappointed.

"He shouldn't have lied to us. He should have been up straight," said college student Gerald Walker, 19, in downtown Columbia. "It's very embarrassing for someone in a leadership role that we are supposed to respect, especially me being a young guy."

Glenn Mitchell, of Columbia, said he felt Sanford's absence showed a lack of concern for the state.

"He left the state unattended," said Mitchell, 54, out of work recuperating from surgery. "He just hasn't been there for us."

State Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Columbia, called for Sanford's resignation.
"There is nothing left to save," Rutherford said. "There is no reason for him to remain as governor."

Sanford, a former three-term congressman, was elected governor in 2002. He has more than a year remaining in his second term and is barred by state law from running again.

The libertarian-leaning Republican was seldom a firebrand. But he was known for salting tales of family life into policy discussions.

He criticized the $787 billion federal stimulus law and efforts by legislators to claim a share of it by saying in tough times a family would sit around the table and find ways to cut spending.

His vocal battle against the Obama administration over the stimulus money won praise from conservative pundits, but ultimately, a state court order required him to take the money.

Jenny Sanford, a millionaire whose family fortune comes from the Skil Corp. power tool company, has been central to Sanford's political career. She ran his congressional campaigns and his first race for governor. She was an almost daily fixture at senior staff meetings, and often could be seen driving a minivan away from the Statehouse in the mornings.

The two met when Sanford, who has an MBA, was trying his hand on Wall Street. She was working at a brokerage house when he entered a training program.

As governor, Sanford has had seemingly endless run-ins with the GOP-dominated Legislature, once bringing pigs to the House chamber to protest pork barrel spending. He also put a "spending clock" outside his office to show how quickly a proposed budget would spend state money.

Sanford's announcement came a day after another prominent Republican, Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, apologized to his GOP Senate colleagues after revealing last week that he had an affair with a campaign staffer and was resigning from the GOP leadership.”

Piss-Poor Prior Planning: Yet another ‘conservative’ Republican having an affair! Who could have guessed? And to walk away from his family on Father’s Day? That shows just how poorly his Argentine tryst was planned! Sigh!