Not the governor's office, but his marriage. How else can you explain his bizarre interview with the AP today in which he acknowledges that he's had relationships, though not fully carnal, with other women, that Maria Belen Chapur, the Argentine siren who drew him to abandon office and sanity two weeks ago, is his soul mate, and that he's trying now to fall back in love with his wife. This surely is not the right way to woo Jenny Sanford back.

Afterall, Jenny Sanford is already on record as having thrown him out to preserve her "dignity." Where's the dignity in taking back someone who thinks you're second fiddle? You can just hear her reaction. You have to fall back in love with me?! Forget it.

Of course, then Sanford could claim he tried, but Jenny rejected him. So he keeps the governor's office — plenty of people want him to stay, as this editorial from McClatchy's The State newspaper makes clear — and maybe has a chance with soulmate Maria, who's really said nothing, one way or the other.

One thing is clear: for the sake of the boys, Mark and Jenny really need to call it quits. Imagine growing up in the "reconciled" Sanford household, shuttling back and forth between his bedroom and hers, carrying messages, trying to keep your head down and avoiding any possibility of glancing at Dad's e-mail. The Sanfords clearly like to use others to carry their messages to one another. If AP were a child, you'd have to pity it, whipsawed first by Jenny's confessional last Friday and then Mark's today. That's no way to live, and the Sanfords' "spiritual advisers" ought to remember that sometimes surrender is the better part of valor.

Besides, living on Sullivan's Island and visiting Dad at Christmas in Punta del Este doesn't sound all that bad. If Jenny'll let them come.

The Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously declared Democrat Al Franken the winner of the drawn-out U.S. Senate race, defeating Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and potentially giving the Democrats a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate. Here's the latest from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

No reaction yet from Coleman. The court ruled that Coleman's dispute of the election had no merit and said Franken should be issued a certificate of election. On Sunday, Gov. Tim Pawlenty said he'd abide by whatever the court ruled.

UPDATE: Coleman conceded. So that's it.

Todd Purdam's Vanity Fair article about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is out in the August issue
of the magazine.

The article begins with a description of Palin's triumphant return to campaign-style politics, with her April appearance at the Vanderburgh County Right to Life dinner, but there also are some new campaign trail tidbits from 2008, like this from McCain-Palin aides:

"In recent rounds of long conversations, most made it clear that they suffer a kind of survivor’s guilt: they can’t quite believe that for two frantic months last fall, caught in a Bermuda Triangle of a campaign, they worked their tails off to try to elect as vice president of the United States someone who, by mid-October, they believed for certain was nowhere near ready for the job, and might never be. They quietly ponder the nightmare they lived through. Do they ever ask, What were we thinking? "Oh, yeah, oh, yeah," one longtime McCain friend told me with a rueful chuckle. "You nailed it."

And this:

"At one point, trying out a debating point that she believed showed she could empathize with uninsured Americans, Palin told McCain aides that she and Todd in the early years of their marriage had been unable to afford health insurance of any kind, and had gone without it until he got his union card and went to work for British Petroleum on the North Slope of Alaska. Checking with Todd Palin himself revealed that, no, they had had catastrophic coverage all along. She insisted that catastrophic insurance didn’t really count and need not be revealed. This sort of slipperiness -- about both what the truth was and whether the truth even mattered -- persisted on questions great and small."

For all the criticism that gay rights activists have directed at President Barack Obama recently, on Monday he became the first chief executive to mark Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month at the White House.

To applause and cheers, Obama repeated his yet unfulfilled campaign promises to end the military's ban on openly gay service members, expand hate-crimes protections, enact a law to prohibit employment discrimination and repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which earlier this month had been defended by his own Justice Department.

"I know many in this room don't believe that progress has come fast enough. And I understand that," Obama said. "I expect and hope to be judged not by words, not by promises I've made, but by promises that my administration keeps."

Obama moved to quell some of the concern two weeks ago by granting limited benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees, including relocation expenses and long-term care insurance. However, it didn't include health insurance or survivor benefits, which most married couples take for granted.

Sunday was the 40th anniversary of the birth of the modern gay-rights movement. On June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn in New York's Greenwich Village. Such raids were once commonplace, and patrons usually dispersed for fear that their sexual orientation would become public. This time they fought back in a riot that lasted for three days.

As if to illustrate the challenges gay people still face, Fort Worth, Texas, police raided a gay nightclub over the weekend, sparking a protest on Sunday. Last week in an e-mail, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis denounced the vandalism of posters for gay pride month at the agency's headquarters in Washington.

The lack of openly gay people in prominient positions in the administration, including the Cabinet, has caused some to wonder whether Obama is really in tune with their concerns. Nancy Sutley, the chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and John Berry, the director of the Office of Personnel Management, are the highest ranking openly gay members of the Obama team.

In this video of last week's Congressional Luau on the South Lawn released by the White House, President Obama sends Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel into the drink.

Also taking a dunk: Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

The video was shot by the White House, which also decided which segments to release.

A story that will appear in Saturday's Washington Post says that President Barack Obama is drafting an executive order that would renew the authority claimed by his predecessor to hold suspected terrorists in indefinite detention.

Here's an excerpt from the story, by Dafna Lizner of ProPublica and Peter Finn of the Washington Post:

"Such an order would embrace claims by former President George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that bypassing Congress could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.

After months of internal debate over how to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, White House officials are growing increasingly worried that reaching quick agreement with Congress on a new detention system may prove impossible. Several officials said there is concern in the White House that the administration may not be able to close the facility by the president's January 2010 deadline." 

ProPublica is a nonprofit independent news organization that was created in 2007 to pursue investigative journalism as major newspapers cut back on such efforts amid falling readership and revenue. It's led by Paul Steiger, a former managing editor at the Wall Street Journal.

The red-meat talk show hosts gather guffaws with jabs that President Barack Obama is a socialist -- aided in no small measure by then-candidate Obama's desire to be a redistributor of wealth. A few blocks from the White House, a captain of industry, a big cheese of capitalism, was asked Friday about what the far right keeps suggesting: Is Obama a socialist, and is this a good way for the right to campaign against him?

"No, and no," said Thomas Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the most muscular of business lobbies.

Speaking to reporters at a lunch put on by the Christian Science Monitor, Donohue said running a negative campaign won't sway voters to support our free enterprise system, suggesting the talk show crowd is making his job more difficult.

As to the socialist question, Donohue was not bashful: "I don’t believe that president Obama is a socialist. I believe he is a populist. I believe he is learning. He is drinking out of a fire hydrant on international affairs, which are getting very complicated. He figured out on the trade deal some of the things he was going to advance that that would to be a problem. He's been somewhat moderate on the big debates on the union issues. I believe he wants to be a successful president, we want him to be a successful president. This country and this time needs a successful president."

Donohue, who has seen administrations come and go, said he differs with Obama on the specifics of health care and environmental legislation. But he warned against trivializing politics.

"I think we should be very, very careful about putting labels on people. I would hope from year to year, you learn something, you get smarter, you adjust your views And I believe this is a real smart guy."

In other words, if Obama is a secret socialist, the chamber is confident he can be brought around.

Don't wait for any eloquent speeches on this one. Though Obama loves American pop music, and as the first black U.S. president is certainly aware of Michael Jackson's breaking of racial barriers in the entertainment industry,Obama has not commented publicly, nor did he issue a written statement as is common with the passing of prominent figures.

It certainly seems possible the president or his aides were concerned about Jackson's personal troubles over the past two decades, including child molestation charges on which Jackson was acquitted in 2005. Asked Friday for the president's reaction to Jackson's sudden death yesterday at age 50, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters at his daily briefing that he'd spoken with Obama about Jackson's death.

"Look, he said to me that, obviously, Michael Jackson was a spectacular performer, a music icon. I think everybody remembers hearing his songs, watching him moonwalk on television during Motown's 25th anniversary," Gibbs said.

"But the president also said, you know . . . aspects of his life were sad and tragic." Gibbs' said Obama extends his condolences to the Jackson family and to Jackson's fans.

Why no formal statement then? Said Gibbs: "Because I just said it."

President Obama, who grew up in Hawaii, and his wife are hosting a luau tonight for congressional lawmakers and their families on the South Lawn of the White House. One of the draws: a dunk tank. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, White House congressional liaison Phil Schiliro and Gibbs himself would be dunk-able. At an event earlier in the day to promote community service, First Lady Michelle Obama previewed the luau, saying there would be "a great picnic" and "some great hula dancers," then demonstrated the dance, according to the pool report by Salon's Mike Madden. "Try that again," said the president, laughing.