S.C. Gov. Sex Scandal

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford was with his family Thursday as legal and ethical questions swirled over his secret trip to see a woman in Argentina with whom he admitted an affair.

A top state Republican called for his resignation, and South Carolina's top senator questioned whether Sanford broke the law when he disappeared for several days on a trip to South America and didn't transfer power to the lieutenant governor.

Meanwhile, Argentina media identified the woman as Maria Belen Shapur, a 43-year-old who speaks English, Portuguese and Chinese. Her apartment building is near the Buenos Aires zoo, the Terra Argentina newspaper said.

Sanford's wife, Jenny, said in a statement Wednesday that she had kicked him out two weeks ago and asked him not to speak to her while she came to terms with his infidelity, but spokesman Joel Sawyer said they were together at the family's beach house Thursday. The Sanfords have four sons.

Sanford was raising his national political profile with his outspoken fight against using federal cash for anything but paying down debt. As chairman of the Republican Governors Association, he was raising money for candidates and deflecting talk he was planning to run for president in 2012. Unlike his Democrat counterparts (like admitted cheater Gov. Patterson in New York), Sanford will likely be hounded out of office by the media and more liberal members of his own party who didn't like his conservative fiscal policies and (what now appears hypocritical) social views. See Chick's BUSTED.