“I did an awful, awful lot that was wrong, and there is no one else responsible for my sins.”

— John Edwards, quoted by CNN, after a judge declared a mistrial in his federal trial on campaign finance charges.

The jury in the John Edwards trial could not reach a verdict on five of six counts of campaign finance violations against him, the AP reports. The judge sent them back for further deliberations.

However, the jury found Edwards not guilty on whether he received an illegal campaign contribution from Bunny Mellon.

Update: The Raleigh News & Observer reports the judge declared a mistrial.

As the jury in the John Edwards trial continues deliberations this week, the New York Post reports the former presidential candidate “flexed his trial-lawyer charm on pretty Andrea Love, 25, at the dive Bowbarr just outside of Chapel Hill, NC, last spring.”

Said Love: “I met him by the bar. I was kind of amused by the situation. He seemed like a charming guy.”

“Love said Edwards tried to schmooze her by telling her he was looking forward to practicing law again — and wanted to represent the poor.”

Gawker: “Leering, accusatory articles such as these are just media voyeurism dressed up as concern trolling. Being very concerned about John Edwards hitting on a 25-year-old is much more perverted than John Edwards hitting on a 25-year-old.”

The Senate Ethics Committee publicly admonished Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) “for an aspect of his role in the scandal that led to the resignation last year of Sen. John Ensign (R-NV),” the Oklahoman reports.

Coburn did not violate the law or Senate rules but the committee said a meeting with Ensign’s former top aide was “improper conduct” that did not meet the “higher standards expected of a U.S. senator.”

Former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) resigned a year ago after admitting to having sent lewd photos to female followers on Twitter.

But BuzzFeed notes “for one corner of the Internet, Weinergate is very much not over. A group of liberal bloggers believe that Anthony Weiner was blackmailed by Andrew Breitbart into a false confession, and are carrying out a lonely Twitter crusade to spread their theory — in spite of the fact that Weiner himself has never claimed this to be the case.”

Washington Post: “Something exceedingly strange is happening at the John Edwards trial: all four alternate jurors dressed in red shirts Friday. They each wore bright yellow the day before. Coincidence? Few here think so.”

“The demeanor of the alternate jurors and their behavior has become the talk of the courthouse. The alternates enter the courtroom each day giggling among themselves. One of the alternates, an attractive young woman, has been spotted smiling at Edwards and flipping her hair in what seems to some to be a flirtatious manner. On Friday, she wore a revealing red top with a single strap and an exposed right shoulder.”

ABC News: “The juror clearly instigated the exchanges. She smiles at him. He smiles politely back at her. She giggles. He blushes.”

The jurors are in their 6th day of deliberations and will resume next week.

Politico talked with four former politicians “to hear about their lives, jobs and families — and what lessons they’ve learned from their public downfalls. (Needless to say, none are planning to seek office again.)”

“Their stories reveal that even after a devastating scandal, it is possible to pick up the broken pieces and construct what some say is an even better life, often with the help of forgiveness from the public, family and God. But if there’s one thing from their old lives that some of these ex-politicians say they still miss, it’s the chauffeurs that used to drive them around — one of the many perks of being in office.”

Cheri Young, the wife of an ex-aide to John Edwards, testified that the former presidential candidate “asked the couple to hide an affair he was having and justified using wealthy donors’ money to do it,” the AP reports.

On a phone call, Edwards “emphasized the need to preserve his campaign and keep the affair from his wife, Elizabeth” and made the plan sound “as if it was for the good of the country.”

Cheri Young, the wife of former political aide Andrew Young, will resume testifying in John Edwards’ trial “and might add new wrinkles to a story that veers between tragedy and farce with each disclosure,’ the Raleigh News and Observer reports.

The questions: “Why did she agree to help her husband hide Edwards’ affair by depositing huge checks under her maiden name? How could she agree to let her husband falsely claim paternity for the child Edwards fathered with Hunter? What was she thinking by taking her three children along as she, her husband and Hunter hop-scotched across the country trying to escape National Enquirer reporters?”

“The only politics we understand is scandal, and the only scandal we understand is sex.”

— Bill Maher, quoted by Gawker, on his HBO show last night.

The drama of John Edwards’s trial “took a few more twists” as former staffer Andrew Young “admitted submitting misleading financial statements to a wealthy benefactor who thought he was helping the senator hide a mistress,” thew New York Times reports.

Young admitted asking Fred Baron, a wealthy Texas trial lawyer who was a fervent supporter of Edwards, to pay $28,261 for a BMW that had been bought for Rielle Hunter. However, the car had actually already been paid for with money from the heiress Rachel Mellon.

“The second day of testimony at the John Edwards campaign-financing trial was like sitting down to reread the juiciest and most salacious parts of Andrew Young’s book, The Politician. In other words, it was filled with exactly the kinds of allegations that the two-time presidential candidate never wanted aired in public again,” Diane Diamond reports.

Melinda Henneberger: “As star witnesses go, Young was none too shiny; he repeatedly got flustered, annoyed the judge by mumbling, and raced through those answers that were at variance with his tell-all book… Still, two crucial things Young said under oath Tuesday did ring true: His detailed description of how Edwards persuaded him to claim paternity for the child the candidate himself had fathered with Rielle Hunter was credible. And when Young said his motivation for agreeing to do such a thing was completely opportunistic — ‘I wanted my friend to become president because a lot of benefits go along with that’ — he was at his most convincing.”

Nadia Lockyer, wife of California Treasurer Bill Lockyer (D), resigned from the Alameda County Board of Supervisors and spoke to the San Jose Mercury News about her drug addiction and “tortured extramarital affair with a methamphetamine addict.”

However, her account “raises serious questions” about her husband’s actions. “While she tried to defend him last week, saying that she holds responsibility for taking drugs, she did not deny her earlier claim that Bill Lockyer bought and supplied her with some of those drugs years ago.”

Lockyer “also revealed for the first time that she had sought dependency treatment in June 2010 — after winning a spot for the November runoff, not after the election was over, as previously reported. Bill Lockyer financed most of her campaign from his own political coffers, and of the $1.5 million he kicked in, more than two-thirds came after the June election. If he in effect bought her the office knowing she was addicted to drugs or alcohol, his own judgment — and his respect for the public he’s supposed to serve — are in serious question.”

Barely an hour into the first day of testimony in the John Edwards criminal trial, “sex and conniving had already surfaced” when defense lawyers had asked permission to mention in their opening statement a one-night stand that former aide Andrew Young, a married father of three, had with a co-worker in 2007, the Raleigh News and Observer reports.

Young wrote a tell all book about the Edwards scandal and is a key witness for the prosecution.

However, in a packed courtroom, the judge “muzzled any unprompted mentioning of Young’s alleged sexual liaison.”

With John Edwards finally facing a criminal trial over alleged campaign finance violations, Walter Shapiro raises the strong possibility that philanthropist and Edwards donor Bunny Mellon didn’t even know about mistress Rielle Hunter.

“Up to now, the pre-trial coverage has assumed that Mellon, like Baron, was intent on helping Edwards cover up his philandering. But the trial will raise the strong possibility — and you will have to trust me on the sourcing for this — that the then-97-year-old socialite was as ignorant of the existence of Rielle Hunter (or any other Other Woman) as any Democratic voter besotted with John Edwards. When she was asked for the money, delivered in seven installments beginning in June 2007, she apparently thought that she was donating in some round-robin fashion to the Edwards campaign, not covering up an affair.”

“If Bunny Mellon did not know about the affair, how could her contributions be personal rather than political?”

Rick Hasen: “But I don’t think that’s the right question.  Let’s suppose Mellon did not know.  Even if Mellon intended the money to help Edwards’ campaign, it is Edwards intent that matters here.”

As John Edwards’ campaign finance trial begins today, a new CBS News/New York Times poll finds that just 3% of registered voters hold a favorable view of him.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is questioning the U.S. Secret Service about possible involvement of White House staff in the Colombian prostitution scandal, the Washington Times reports.

At issue: “Did the Secret Service reserve rooms at the Hotel Caribe or other hotels in Cartagena, Colombia for representatives of the WHCA or the White House Advance Team? If so, have records for overnight guests for those entities been pulled as part of the investigation? If not, why not?”

John Edwards goes on trial Monday “on charges he used illegal campaign contributions to cover up an affair with a mistress who became pregnant during his failed bid for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination,” Reuters reports.