Rielle Hunter has broken her years-long silence on the details of her campaign affair with former would-be presidential candidate John Edwards, telling GQ in a candid interview–complete with a bizarre photo shoot featuring Hunter, wearing only pearls and a man’s white oxford shirt, atop a bed strewn with her love child’s stuffed animals–that she will love Edwards “till death do us part.”

Dashing all hopes of a political resurrection after two failed presidential bids, the affair embroiled Edwards, resulting in the dissolution of his marriage with cancer-stricken Elizabeth, with whom he campaigned all the while during the tryst, and made many a GOP political hands wish they gave then-Senator Hillary Clinton an easier ride in 2008. Through it all–from Edwards’ denial of the affair, to his public apology for it, to his denial of fathering a child with her, to his later admission of paternity–Hunter has maintained her silence, though she said she’s now free to tell her story with a clean conscious, without “emasculat[ing]” her former lover.

“I feel comfortable talking now,” she told the magazine, “because Johnny went public and made a statement admitting paternity. I didn’t feel like I could ever speak until he did that. Because had I spoke, I would have emasculated him. And I could not emasculate him.”

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New York Democratic Rep. Eric Massa may not be ready to leave Washington, hinting in an interview he may rescind his resignation, scheduled for 5 P.M. Monday.

On his weekly radio show, Massa, one of thirty-nine Democrats who voted against last year’s health care bill, said House leadership was orchestrating a public relations campaign against him for the sake of accelerating his resignation and lowering the number of votes Democratic whips must secure for health care’s passage.

“Mine is now the deciding vote on the health care bill, and this administration and this House leadership have said, quote unquote, they will stop at nothing to pass this health care bill,” Massa said. “And now they’ve gotten rid of me and it will pass. You connect the dots.”

Reports surfaced Wednesday indication Massa was retiring, citing recurrence of cancer, while others still said the freshman Democrat was under review by a House ethics panel for sexually harassing a junior male aide.

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While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may be reticent to drain the swamp and admonish Representative Charley Rangel for recent ethics violations, President Barack Obama has, in typical Obama fashion, thrown the scandal-plagued New York Democrat under the bus, reports the New York Daily News. In recent days, a growing choir of Democrats have begun echoing GOP demands that Rangel surrender his chairmanship of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.

Members of Congress “ought to be accountable,” Obama said, according White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, “and that applies to everyone.”

“Rules are put in place for a reason and those rules can and must apply to each and every person,” Obama stressed, said Gibbs.

Rangel, a 40-year veteran of Capitol Hill and founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, was formally admonished Friday by a House ethics panel for taking two corporately-funded trips to the Caribbean.

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An unusual fundraising email Wednesday greeted the inboxes of supporters of the National Republican Congressional Campaign. In an email “from” Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, “naive” Republicans were instructed to stop fretting over rising unemployment figures because “Democrats are in control now.”

“We are creating a dependence on the government and we are succeeding,” the email, dripping with an rare degree of sarcasm for beltway correspondence, read. “[J]ust look at how great things are one year after Democrats passed the ultra-successful stimulus bill.”

The email, which was also posted to the Committee’s web site, has not yet elicited responses from Speaker Pelosi’s office or their Democratic campaign counterpart, according to an NRCC official.

“Democrats continue to save this country through tax hikes and government bailouts. It worked during the Carter Administration and it is working better than ever now,” the email read, signaling the opening salvo of a narrative–that President Barack Obama is on the precipice of becoming Jimmy Carter–that will likely haunt Democrats in the midterm elections later this year.

While the open rate will no doubt be buoyed by flummoxed Republicans wondering why Pelosi is plaguing their inbox, the snarky fundraising plea is bound to be a hit with conservative activists, thanks in large part to successive shots at Democratic-engineered government largess.

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Former Governor of Virginia Doug Wilder Tuesday urged President Barack Obama to remove Tim Kaine–a fellow member of the Virginia Governors club who once earned Wilder’s endorsement–from his post atop the Democratic National Committee.

“[A] spate of recent losses in races that Democrats should have won underscores what has been obvious to me for a long time,” Wilder wrote in a column for Politico. “The Chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee is the wrong job for him.”

Wilder, who became the nation’s first black governor in 1990, also had tough words for the President, writing that Obama’s seemingly permanent campaign may be hindering legislative successes.

“Getting elected and getting things done for the people are two different things,” he said. Excelling at the latter, he said, requires overhauling Obama’s team by “replacing the admittedly brilliant advisers who helped elect him with others more capable of helping him govern.”

But if the President hopes to salvage his agenda, and the 2010 midterm elections, he’ll need to do more than fire his hand-picked party chairman: He’ll need to disavow the nepotism that plagues his administration.

“The changes must go deeper. Obama’s West Wing is filled with people who are in their jobs because of their Chicago connections or because they signed on with Obama early during his presidential campaign,” Wilder wrote.

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President Barack Obama Friday tapped Democratic National Committee member Tim Purdon as North Dakota’s next United States Attorney, landing the president in the same political minefield once occupied by Democratic Senator Max Baucus after he nominated his girlfriend for a similar federal post.

A veteran Democratic bundler, Purdon found a unique affinity with trial lawyer John Edwards, on whose campaign he was a state chairman. According to his firm, Purdon specializes in criminal defense and personal injury lawsuits and possesses no prosecutorial experience, for which the White House is making no bones.

It is, after all, within the purview of the President to appoint persons to fill the 93 U.S. Attorney posts, even persons politically aligned with the administration, but most have at least some prosecutorial experience.

While the White House’s website did not include Purdon’s name among other pending nominations and appointments as of Friday morning, the entire North Dakota Congressional delegation–all Democrats–issued congratulatory statements.

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Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels today promised to remain neutral in his state’s upcoming Republican Senate primary, but admitted to being “startled” by Coats’ surprise candidacy.

Former Senator Dan Coats is “just alarmed about the country, I can tell you that from talking to him,” Daniels said of Coats, who contacted the governor Monday about his potential challenge to Democratic Senator Evan Bayh.

Many Republicans criticized Coats’ candidacy as a recruiting failure for the NRSC, seemingly buttressed by Daniels’ admission today that, despite leading Bayh by 10 percentage-points in internal polling by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he was not approached about running.

Daniels, who many are hoping will consider a 2012 presidential bid, said he was also unsure who courted Coats.

“I was startled. And I don’t know, I don’t think any of us can tell how it works,” he said.

But Coats’ bid to unseat Bayh, who won the seat in 1998 after Coats retired, “wasn’t his idea,” according to Daniels, saying also, “he has no need to do this.”

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Court documents relating to the 2005 divorce of embattled Illinois Democratic Lieutenant Governor nominee Scott Lee Cohen surfaced Thursday, alleging the Chicago business man was prone to regular fits of rage–likely side-effects of his abuse of anabolic steroids–and forced himself sexually on his ex-wife.

While still married, which the woman characterized as “pretty unbearable,” Cohen took “injectable anabolic steroids, including but not limited to Winstrol, Cretine, and Steen. And as a result, he has an erratic, explosive temper,” his ex-wife testified.

Cohen, who was ordered by Cook County Circuit to undergo steroid testing, is no stranger to episodes of violence against family members, including his son, ex-wife and girlfriend.

After coming homing at 2 A.M. and unable to find his keys, Cohen woke his family by kicking in the garage door, at which point he “began swearing and cussing and an altercation began to ensue between Scott and our son,” the woman alleged. “During this altercation the other kids were upstairs hysterically crying.”

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Governor Patrick Quinn (D-IL) Wednesday expressed concern over his running-mate’s history of domestic violence, telling reporters that the Democrats’ nominee for lieutenant governor “should step aside,” barring a compelling explanation for his actions.

Scott Lee Cohen, who allegedly threatened his prostitute girlfriend by brandishing a knife and throwing her against a wall, Tuesday won the Democratic Party’s nomination for lieutenant governor, edging out five other contenders in an upset victory.

Quinn met with state Democratic Chair Mike Madigan to discuss the news of Cohen’s 2005 arrest, but refused to say publicly if he or Madigan had resolved on a contingency plan in the event Cohen voluntarily steps aside, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

Democrats are said to have launched a campaign within the state party apparatus to compel Cohen not to seek office, if only to ensure the governorship remains in Democratic hands.

Asked if he would run as a third-party candidate in the event Cohen ignores the counsel of Illinois Democratic operatives, Quinn said only that “the situation will resolve itself,” hinting that Cohen will forgo the campaign.

The office Cohen aims to fill has remained vacant since January 2009, when then-Lieutenant Governor Quinn succeeded disgraced and now-impeached Rod Blagojevich.

UPDATE: While Governor Quinn and influential state Democrats are nudging–forcefully pushing, on some counts–Cohen to drop out of the race, the newly-minted Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor said no dice in a strongly-worded statement issued today.

“I have no intention of stepping down or stepping aside,” Quinn said. “When the facts come to light, after my ex-wife and ex-girlfriend speak, the people of Illinois can decide, and I will listen to them directly.”

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What Chicago election is complete without elements of domestic violence, prostitution and tax evasion?

A Chicago pawnbroker who financed his campaign with nearly $2 million of his own wealth, Scott Lee Cohen Tuesday won the Democratic Party’s nomination for Lieutenant Governor. But with new details of Cohen’s sordid past emerging today, Democratic primary voters will soon be wishing they had given his five rivals a second look.

Cohen allegedly held a knife to his then-girlfriend’s neck in October 2005. Charges were later dropped after the woman, once convicted of prostitution, failed to appear in court to testify against Cohen.

A police report of obtained by the Chicago Sun Times said the woman had scaring and defensive wounds on her hands “from trying to defend herself against the arrestee swinging the knife at her.” Additionally, Cohen “pushed [the] complainant’s head against [a] wall, causing a bump on the back of her head.”

The arrest came only months after Cohen’s former wife filed for divorce and was awarded by the courts a temporary protection order. Cohen’s deep bench of troubles don’t stop at reports of domestic violence, as records also indicate also he had federal tax problems.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has squandered over $101,000 tax dollars on “in-flight services” on congressional delegations since 2008, according to new documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the government watchdog group Judicial Watch.

Expenditures on Pelosi-led CODELs, the group’s report shows, include thousands for liquor, beer and wine. Receipts show purchase of Johnny Walker, Grey Goose, Beefeater, Maker’s Mark, Courvoisier, Dewars, Bombay Sapphire and more, all courtesy of the American tax payer.

During the same two-year period, the entirety of Speaker Pelosi’s travel expenditures, including the use of Air Force aircraft for herself and relatives, cost the Department of Defense $2,100,749.59.

Judicial Watch’s report Wednesday captured the attention of the social conservative American Family Association, who called Pelosi’s expenses an “abuse of taxpayer dollars” in an urgent action alert to supporters.

“While many families struggle to make ends meet financially, the leader of the people’s House is snatching money out of their wallets to treat her guests to the finest and most expensive booze money can buy so they can party down while in the air,” the email read.

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Aides to President Barack Obama acknowledged Tuesday White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel apologized to leaders of the special needs community after a recent screed involving the mentally disabled. At a White House meeting, Emanuel reportedly scolded a group of liberal strategists for attacking wayward Democrats over health care, dismissing the suggestion the White House alienate moderate Blue Dogs as “f–ing retarded.”

Sarah Palin, the mother of young child with Down Syndrome, sharply criticized Emanual’s remarks, writing on her platform of choice, Facebook: “Rahm’s slur on all God’s children with cognitive and developmental disabilities — and the people who love them — is unacceptable, and it’s heartbreaking.”

As a matter of “decency,” Palin said, President Obama must immediately fire Emanuel.

“Yes, Rahm is known for his caustic, crude reference about those with whom he disagrees, but his recent tirade against participants in a strategy session was such a strong slap in many American faces that our president is doing a disservice by seeming to condone Rahm’s recent sick and offensive tactic,” she wrote.

Obama did not–and, by all accounts has no intention to–fire Emanuel, but the second-most powerful man in Washington was forced to apologize.

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Senator Arlen Specter and his brash temperament are back in the news.

The incorrigible Republican-turned-Democrat attended a Pennsylvania Progressive forum Saturday, opposite his primary opponent Representative Joe Sestak, where he stormed the stage prematurely during Sestak’s closing remarks.

Explaining why he is best suited both professional and politically for the post, Sestak was unexpectedly greeted by Specter, prompting a moderator to bluntly ask the senator to “get off the stage.”

The forum’s rules were rather strict, holding that each speaker would answer a series of questions while the other was sequestered, according to the blog Pennsylvania Progressive. While the event’s protocol was established at Specter’s request, for whatever reason, he “shredded his own rules,” the blogger wrote.

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The latest senior aide to bolt from the Republican National Committee headquarters, national press secretary Gail Gitcho is leaving to oversee Senator-elect Scott Brown’s communications operation, it was reported Sunday by CNN.

Gitcho, who held communications posts in the campaigns of John McCain and Mitt Romney, is the third senior communications aide to depart in two months, fueling speculation of mid-cycle internal strife.

Gitcho is following in the footsteps of former communications director Trevor Francis, who abruptly resigned in November after RNC Chairman Michael Steele became frustrated he was not receiving proper credit for the party’s electoral successes in Virginia and New Jersey. Todd Irons, Francis’s deputy, resigned just one week later.

To compensate for Francis’s departure, the RNC tapped Republican media strategist Alex Castellanos as a senior communications advisor. A frequent on-air political analyst for CNN, Castellanos minimized his role, insisting he was not “replacing anyone,” only “helping out.”

But in the months following the reorganization, the RNC’s press operation has been decidedly less aggressive. And in comparison to the days of compulsive emailer Danny “$” Diaz, the press shop is a shadow of its former hawkish, oftentimes combative self — which inundated reporters with negative press clippings and research memos.

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A kinder, gentler year for Republicans, 2009 witnessed the flipping of two governorships–one in the newly-designated purple commonwealth of Virginia–and the Senate seat long-held by the late Ted Kennedy. The prospective 2012 Republican contenders, too, have capitalized on the base’s renewed vigor, with early front-runners pulling in–and dolling out–millions for their political action committees.

Mitt Romney’s Free and Strong political action committee raised just shy of $3 million and contributed $120,000 to Republican state and federal candidates in 2009, according to a year-end finance report released Friday by the group.

Handicapped by late entry, Tim Pawlenty’s group, Freedom First PAC, raised only $1.28 million last year. Pawlenty aides note, however, the committee was organized in October and fundraising totals account only for the fourth quarter, whereas Romney’s committee has been operating all year.

In the fourth quarter, Pawlenty transferred $395,000* to Republican candidates — a figure more than double what Romney’s PAC contributed over the entire year.

Fox News Channel personality Mike Huckabee’s Huck PAC performed far worse than expected, reporting Saturday the group raised a meager $800,000. The year-end finance release failed to mention how much, or little, the committee had contributed to GOP candidates and causes, but according to OpenSecrets.org, the group had contributed only $10,000 by January 10, 2010.

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Pentagon officials acknowledged Friday their aerial refueling tanker program has stalled yet again, leaving uncertain the fate of the Air Force’s outdated fleet of more than 500 tankers.

Vying for the $35 billion contract for 179 tanker planes are the Washington-based Boeing and the Toulouse, France-based European Aeronautic Defense Space Company (EADS), though the former has threatened to withdraw from consideration if the Pentagon did not significantly alter their request for proposals (RFP) to fit the capabilities of their plane.

Among EADS’ complaints was the Pentagon’s fixed-price contract provisions, which they maintain heightens financial risk for bidders. Boeing, who is rumored will propose a tanker based on their 767 platform, however has voiced little public concern with the fixed-price approach.

Pentagon acquisitions chief Ashton Carter defended the fixed-price terms last November, when the initial RFP was released, noting that the tankers would be developed with existing technology and would not warrant substantial research and development.

For their bid which fell outside the fixed-priced terms, many suspect EADS will lose the contract to the more reasonably-priced Boeing. But EADS, to put it mildly, has been on out outs with American government officials for some time.

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A joint radio appearance with Representative Michele Bachman and Senator Arlen Specter turned ugly yesterday when the Pennsylvania Republican-turned-Democrat became irate and demanded of Bachmann that she “act like a lady.”

The pair were invited by Philadelphia-based conservative talker Dom Giordano for a special program marking the one-year anniversary of President Obama’s inauguration.

Asked by Senator Specter to reflect on the fiscal policies she supported over the course of the previous year, Bachmann said the recipe for economic prosperity would involve cutting the income tax rate to 22 percent and eliminating capital gains taxes and the estate tax. But before she could go any further, Specter interjected and began criticizing the substance of Bachmann’s answer.

“Now wait a minute,” Specter said to Bachmann. “I’ll stop and you can talk. I’ll treat you like a lady. So act like one.”

“I am a lady,” an unphased Bachmann replied.

“My question to you was what did you vote for,” Specter pressed, to which the Minnesota Republican promptly shot back: “I voted for prosperity.”

“She said, ‘I voted for prosperity.’ Well prosperity wasn’t a bill,” crowed Specter.

The Minnesotan’s next question, however, sent Specter reeling. “Well why don’t we make it a bill?” she asked, evidently before the senator had a chance to finish speaking.

“Now wait a minute, don’t interrupt me,” he said. “I didn’t interrupt you. Act like a lady.”

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Marking President Barack Obama’s first year in office, the Republican National Committee Thursday released a new web video which makes no bones about the GOP’s attempts to tap into the anti-tax and anti-big government sentiments among Tea Partiers.

“His rhetoric promised ‘Change we can believe in,’” the voice-over said, “but his record delivered disappointment, change we didn’t expect.”

The ad enumerates those offenses observed as most egregious–the stimulus bill, cap and trade, and health care reform–by the Tea Party groups, but makes an assertion many in the conservative grassroots have not yet warmed to: That Republicans would have performed better than Democrats and delivered the change Obama only promised.

“This November the American people will tell the President that Republicans are ones that can enact the change we need.”

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Senator Barbara Boxer Monday hit the campaign trail to tout jobs “created by the stimulus” in California by the Democrats’ $800 billion economic recovery package, attracting ridicule from Republican Carly Fiorina’s campaign who accused the junior Democratic senator of an “effort to deceive voters into thinking she’s actually done something for California.”

With the expansion of California’s State Route 905 as her backdrop, Senator Boxer insisted “that these stimulus dollars are putting people to work.”

But an Associated Press analysis released the same day by independent economists at five universities revealed that stimulus spending has failed in lowering unemployment rates.

While highway constructions projects exist as effective photo opportunities for vulnerable incumbents, the AP’s analysis laid bare a truth the White House and Congressional Democrats are keen on ignoring: infrastructure projects like road construction have “not markedly improved the country’s broad employment picture.”

Despite an unprecedented surge in transportation spending and Beltway intervention, California’s unemployment rate remains above 12 percent. Researchers found that local unemployment was largely unaffected, with rates rising and falling “regardless of how much stimulus money Washington poured out for transportation.”

Even proponents of President Barack Obama’s stimulus package have admitted its failure in stemming the tide of unemployment.

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In what constitutes a staggering blow to President Obama’s goal of shuttering the Guantanamo Bay military detention facility, a new report by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) says one in five former detainees have returned to militant activity following their release.

But as with each successive challenge to the Obama White House, when all else invariably fails, the President and his aides blame the former administration with graduating intensity. Defense-related issues–on which the President and his party are, largely, observed as out of their depth–are of course no exception to Obama’s petty politics of blame.

A senior White House official Thursday told The Washington Post’s Greg Sergeant that those terrorist recidivists cited in the Pentagon’s study were conveniently, and necessarily by virtue of Obama’s perfection, released during the Bush administration.

“Because the Obama administration has a better screening process in place to determine which detainees pose a threat,” Sergeant writes, the Obama aide was confident no detainees released under President Obama’s watch have resumed extremist activity.

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