Mark And His Mistress: A Story For Our Time

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford leaned heavily on religion throughout his political career, wearing that religion on his Polo sleeve and castigating others for falling short of Biblical moral standards.

Everyone now understands even that time-honored crutch hasn't been strong enough to prop up Gov. Sanford, whose nature has been revealed to be immoral, hypocritical, inept and, most recently, arguably insane.

Gov. Sanford continues to hear and be comforted by the voice of God, who has used the story of David and Bathsheba to assure Gov Sanford that he need not resign.

(Why God needed to dig through his back catalog his even further back catalog to provide the desired solace is difficult to understand; the more recent spiritual journeys of David and His Whore or John and His Close Friend's Wife seem equally apt to Gov. Sanford's fleshly predicament.)

I'm no scientific theory expert, but I sense the evidence is approaching the point at which "family values Republican" can reliably be taken to signal "closeted gay hypocrite" and/or "egregiously adulterous hypocrite." Even without confirmation of that theory, it is plain that every finger-wagging, vote-courting press conference featuring a Bible-belting politician's condemnation of another's conduct should begin with two questions:

(1) "Do you pledge, without qualification and with God as your witness, to resign immediately if you are found to have strayed from the moral standard you are invoking today?"

(2) "For scheduling convenience, would you then forecast when our assignment desk should expect the initial revelation concerning your Argentinian concubine/insatiable taste for prostitutes/men's room arrest/conquest of your close friend's spouse?"