Sin Makes You Stoopid, No. 48570234

Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina vanished for a few days, throwing his state into chaos. Today at a news conference, the truth will out: he wasn't hiking in Appalachia as rumored, he was in Argentina conducting an extra-marital affair. The WSJ live-blogs the conference:

2:31 Finally, here’s where this is going:

“I have been unfaithful to my wife, I have developed a relationship with what started as a dear, dear friend from Argentina… it began very innocently as I suspect these things do… just a casual email back and forth…” the governor says. He says this year it developed “into something more.”

“All I can say is that I apologize,” he adds, before asking for a zone of privacy “if not for me, then for her [Jenny Sanford] and the boys.”

2:32 The governor is now musing on the nature of forgiveness.

2:33 He says that he’s going to take questions, but, first, he announces that he’s going to resign as chairman of the Republican Governors Association, because it’s “the appropriate thing to do.”

2:34 Asked if he is separated from his wife, he gets confused, and says it depends on how that’s defined. He says “yes” in answer to a second question about whether Jenny Sanford knew about the affair before the trip to Argentina – and adds that she’s known for about five months. Then he pivots back to discussing his faith and his efforts to work through this, and starts to lose his composure.

2:36 Asked if he was alone in Argentina, he says twice, “Obviously not.” Now he offers “more detail than you’ll probably ever want,” describing the genesis of his relationship, and pontificates about “a certain irony” in the situation, because of experience counseling his extra-marital partner as she was wondering whether to separate from her husband.

Then he starts to discuss the nature of the “zone of protectiveness” in the distance between the United States and Argentina.

Eager reporters keep trying to interrupt, and yet, he keeps insisting: “Let me finish” the story of their relationship and his conflicted feelings about it.

2:38 He says he spent the last five days of his life crying in Argentina, so he can repeat it back in the United States. It sounds as if he’s saying that he did end the relationship, for reasons ranging from his “fiduciary duty to the people of South Carolina” to “the odyssey we’re all on in life.”

As Bugs Bunny would say, what a maroon!