Mark Sanford — the governor of South Carolina — has been charged with a whopping 37 ethics charges.  Among his less flamboyant abuses of power, this tw*t has used state money to buy plane tickets to South America (to cheat on his wife with his mistress), used state/government aircraft 9 times for personal trips (including a visit to a campaign contributor).  The more boring charges are no less serious, such as violating state campaign finance laws and abusing his position as governor.  I briefly mentioned Sanford in a piece we posted on the 17th, “Jenny Sanford Makes Most of Husband’s Affair“, and I promise this will be the LAST time I so much as utter his name.  Think Voldemort, only more snake-like.  This massive amount of criminal charges puts Sanford on an even larger pedestal of jackass-ery after repeatedly cheating on his wife and disgracing his family.  I’m not sure why he wasn’t impeached then, if I had to guess it would be cause the South Carolina Legislature is Republican controlled.  But now he’s in real trouble, especially if he gets convicted of even half these charges.  Today, the legislature has “began the preliminary steps of a process that could lead to the governor’s impeachment and removal from office“.  The most absurd and sickening thing about this story is that Sanford’s lawyers claim his secret trips to cheat with his mistress and these ethics charges (37, to boot) aren’t enough grounds for impeachment in his official statement/complaint.  Unbelievable the nerve some of these people have.

-D