John Edwards and Elizabeth Edwards in their own words.

From John Edwards:
In 2006, I made a serious error in judgment and conducted myself in a way that was disloyal to my family and to my core beliefs. I recognized my mistake and I told my wife that I had a liaison with another woman, and I asked for her forgiveness. Although I was honest in every painful detail with my family, I did not tell the public. When a supermarket tabloid told a version of the story, I used the fact that the story contained many falsities to deny it. But being 99% honest is no longer enough.

I was and am ashamed of my conduct and choices, and I had hoped that it would never become public. With my family, I took responsibility for my actions in 2006 and today I take full responsibility publicly. But that misconduct took place for a short period in 2006. It ended then. I am and have been willing to take any test necessary to establish the fact that I am not the father of any baby, and I am truly hopeful that a test will be done so this fact can be definitively established. I only know that the apparent father has said publicly that he is the father of the baby. I also have not been engaged in any activity of any description that requested, agreed to or supported payments of any kind to the woman or to the apparent father of the baby.

It is inadequate to say to the people who believed in me that I am sorry, as it is inadequate to say to the people who love me that I am sorry. In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic. If you want to beat me up – feel free. You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself. I have been stripped bare and will now work with everything I have to help my family and others who need my help.

I have given a complete interview on this matter and having done so, will have nothing more to say.

From Elizabeth Edwards:
Our family has been through a lot. Some caused by nature, some caused by human weakness, and some most recently caused by the desire for sensationalism and profit without any regard for the human consequences. None of these has been easy. But we have stood with one another through them all. Although John believes he should stand alone and take the consequences of his action now, when the door closes behind him, he has his family waiting for him.

John made a terrible mistake in 2006. The fact that it is a mistake that many others have made before him did not make it any easier for me to hear when he told me what he had done. But he did tell me. And we began a long and painful process in 2006, a process oddly made somewhat easier with my diagnosis in March of 2007. This was our private matter, and I frankly wanted it to be private because as painful as it was I did not want to have to play it out on a public stage as well. Because of a recent string of hurtful and absurd lies in a tabloid publication, because of a picture falsely suggesting that John was spending time with a child it wrongly alleged he had fathered outside our marriage, our private matter could no longer be wholly private. The pain of the long journey since 2006 was about to be renewed.

John has spoken in a long on-camera interview. Admitting one's mistakes is a hard thing for anyone to do. I am proud of the courage John showed by his honesty in the face of shame. The toll on our family of news helicopters over our house and reporters in our driveway is yet unknown. But now the truth is out, and the repair work that began in 2006 will continue. I ask that the public, who expressed concern about the harm John's conduct has done to us, think also about the real harm that the present voyeurism does and give me and my family the privacy we need at this time.

By posting these two statements I feel I have done my duty to be honest and report the truth.

I am still very pained by this unfortunate incident and have decided that this is the last post I will make about this subject. I will not defend John Edwards behavior as I feel it is indefensible.

And again my heart goes out to Elizabeth and the Edwards family. They deserved better, as did we all.

The wonderful Elizabeth Edwards was on the Colbert Report last night.

She did an excellent job of holding her own with Stephen and you could see how disarming she is by how often he came close to breaking character.

I enjoyed these Comedy Central clips so much perhaps I should just spend today posting humor videos. It would be a nice vacation for all of us from covering politics.

Instead of laughing through our tears at how incompetent Bush is, we could laugh at people who are being funny on purpose and who cannot start another war.

Elizabeth Edwards confronts the horrible Ann Coulter on Hardball.

Wow, Elizabeth Edwards just earned a whole boatload of respect from me.

I have no idea why anybody, with the exception of the those tools on FOX, would have this shrew on their show.

But damn wouldn't you pay per view to see Ann Coulter on the "Colbert Report"? Stephen would outmaneuver Ann so bad she would not be able to string a sentence together for several days.

John Edwards campaign is seeing a flood of donations.

The emotional news conference Democrat John Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, held last week to share word that her cancer has returned brought them an outpouring of more than 24,000 e-mails in 24 hours. It also appears to have unleashed a torrent of online contributions to his presidential campaign.

In the past five days, the campaign received more than 5,000 donations totaling half a million dollars -- about 50 percent of the total it raised online in the previous three months, according to postings on ActBlue.com, the Web site that tracks Edwards's Internet fundraising.

People are missing the point. This is not sympathy money. This is money coming from people who have seen something that they thought they might never see in politics again, integrity.

The Edwards have shown what personal sacrifice and bravery look like and the masses are amazed. This is what we are looking for in our next leader.

Katie Couric fails to penetrate John and Elizabeth Edwards resolve.

Democratic presidential contender John Edwards and his cancer-stricken wife Elizabeth defended their decision to continue his White House bid Sunday, but the former senator said voters' questions about the decision to keep running are legitimate.

Elizabeth Edwards said she feels "terrific" now, "except for a cracked rib that is completely unrelated to any of the more serious issues I face."

"You know, you really have two choices here. I mean, either you push forward with the things that you were doing yesterday, or you start dying," she said. "If I had given up everything that my life was about, first of all, I'd let cancer win before it needed to. You know, maybe eventually it will win. But I'd let it win before I needed to."

Wow! You know if I ever get this sick I hope that I have half of this woman's strength and confidence. That should be more then enough to see me through.

My favorite response was this one:

But the former North Carolina senator said no one should vote for him out of sympathy.

"There's not a single person in America that should vote for me because Elizabeth has cancer. Not a one," he said. Voting out of compassion for his family "would be an enormous mistake," he added.

"The vote for the presidency is far too important for any of those things to influence it," he said.

Okay whatcha got Hil? How about you Barack? You all need to bring your "A" game cause the bar just got raised.