Former Sanford aide cracks Argentina joke after papal election

The former chief of staff to South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who was censured by his state legislature in 2009 after admitting an affair with an Argentine woman, joked on Twitter that "nobody complains when the College of Cardinals goes to Argentina.”

See, nobody complains when the College of Cardinals goes to Argentina. #marksanford

— Scott English (@scott_english) March 13, 2013

The tweet was a reference to Wednesday's election of Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the next pope. Bergoglio will assume the name Pope Francis I.

Sanford drew fire in 2009 when he disappeared for nearly a week in June with his whereabouts unknown by his wife and his security detail. He told his staff he would be hiking on the Appalachian Trail. He was later spotted by a reporter at the Atlanta airport returning from Argentina; Sanford subsequently admitted having conducted an affair. Sanford is in the midst of a congressional campaign for South Carolina's 1st District, vying for the seat vacated by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) upon his appointment to the Senate.

In an interview earlier this year with The Hill, Sanford said that he "lived in a soap opera world," but hoped voters would forgive him.

“The reality of humanity is if you live long enough you’ll fail at something. And I failed, period. There’s no getting around it,” he said. “What I learned in the wake of that is that there’s this amazing reservoir of grace. A lot of people have told me they’re not going to judge me on my worst day any more than on my best day. I hope they’d look at the whole of what I’ve been doing in this community for 52 years and public office for 20 years.”

--Cameron Joseph contributed.

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FDA Cracks Down On Deadly Outbreaks With Food Safety Proposals

The Food and Drug Administration proposed new rules on Friday aiming to prevent outbreaks like those experienced in recent years, such as salmonella from peanuts and listeria from cantaloupe.

The rules are among the first flexing the FDA’s new powers outlined in the Food Safety Modernization Act. By tightening oversight, the sweeping rules will prevent future incidents of the dangerous conditions found at the peanut butter and cantaloupe farms:

In a 2011 outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe that claimed 33 lives, for example, FDA inspectors found pools of dirty water on the floor and old, dirty processing equipment at the Colorado farm where the cantaloupes were grown. In a peanut butter outbreak this year linked to 42 salmonella illnesses, inspectors found samples of salmonella throughout a New Mexico peanut processing plant and multiple obvious safety problems, such as birds flying over uncovered trailers of peanuts and employees not washing their hands.

The 2011 legislation is the first major food safety overhaul in over 70 years, even though food contamination sickens one in six Americans and treatment alone costs an estimated $152 billion every year.

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