“A review of travel and financial records showed that Gov. Mark Sanford did not spend public money improperly when he visited his mistress”, the chief of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, Reginald Lloyd, said this afternoon.

Thank goodness Governor Sanford’s fornicating was fiscally lawful!

But it shows you that there are hardly any limits to the perks, fringe benefits, and global sex romps that can be had on the taxpayer’s dime by our elected officials…

From the Wall Street Journal:

Spending by lawmakers on taxpayer-financed trips abroad has risen sharply in recent years, a Wall Street Journal analysis of travel records shows, involving everything from war-zone visits to trips to exotic spots such as the Galápagos Islands.

The spending on overseas travel is up almost tenfold since 1995, and has nearly tripled since 2001, according to the Journal analysis of 60,000 travel records. Hundreds of lawmakers traveled overseas in 2008 at a cost of about $13 million. That’s a 50% jump since Democrats took control of Congress two years ago.

The cost of so-called congressional delegations, known among lawmakers as “codels,” has risen nearly 70% since 2005, when an influence-peddling scandal led to a ban on travel funded by lobbyists, according to the data.

We’ve taken the liberty of inserting our own reactions to the reasons for these trips…

Lawmakers say that the trips are a good use of government funds because they allow members of Congress to learn more about the world [they can't do that on their own dime?], inspect U.S. assets abroad [what for?] and forge better working relationships with each other [haaa!]. The travel, for example, includes official visits to American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan [great footage for campaign videos...].

All we can say is that we’re glad the US empire is in decline. That’ll some day limit the free-travel options of our globe-trotting bureaucrats.