No one would ever look for OUR governor on the Appalachian Trail!

If there was ever a time that the world needed a news story that was somewhat serious yet also highly comical, it was this week. And that being the case, God bless South Carolina Gov. and now 2009 "Father of the Year" nominee" Mark Sanford, who disappeared from his job with the reported claim that he needed space away from his kids to write, on Father's Day, leaving in the dark not just his wife but his staff, who reported that Sanford was "hiking the Appalachian Trail" (giving birth to an awesome new euphemism!) even though evidence later surfaced that the governor-on-the-lam had been spotted at Atlanta's airport.

All I can say is...this would never happen with our governor, Ed Rendell. That guy has never seen the Appalachian Trail -- which snakes through eastern Pennsylvania -- in his life, unless it was whizzing past at 110 mph as state troopers whisked him from a Penn basketball game to the Dunkin Donuts outside of Harrisburg. And if he did go missing for a long weekend, the APB from state troopers would probably call for a search of every Golden Corral buffet table in the state, not some trail in the woods.

As for Sanford, his brief tenure as a GOP 2012 White House hopeful seems to have gone the way of John "What Happens in Vegas Didn't Stay in Vegas" Ensign and Bobby "Kenneth the Page" Jindal. But I think we'll always have Sarah... and Newt.