Oh, and it appears they've had these e-mails since December. Sort of like Fox sitting on the Ensign story?

Well, apparently no other news organization was in possession of e-mails documenting his relationship with an Argentine woman.

Where's the outrage toward The State? They've known this since December, including the period when this clown was trying to deprive the state of billions in economic stimulus money, and they sat on the story. Do you think it might have been relevant, when we were hearing the story of the African-American girl student who wrote to the President about the physical condition at her school, to say, oh by the way, the Governor who is "on principle" blocking acceptance of the money needed to fix this problem went on a state-paid trip to South America last June, and here are some e-mails this married man sent to a woman who lives there? If a newspaper doesn't owe it to its readers to give them all the information at its disposal, then it's nothing more than a tool for its owners to exploit the public for its own purposes.

No doubt if you receive something like this from an anonymous source, a newspaper would have to verify that the emails were in fact the governor's and if all you have is a governor writing love notes to a woman--then maybe it's better to keep digging and try to find more to the story before going to print.
It's obvious though that these emails going public today was the real reason that Sanford made his confession.

It's ridiculous to think the State should have printed these e-mails without one bit of corroborating evidence.

And I doubt Sanford knew the State had these e-mails. He fessed up because the truth was bound to come out as a result of all the lies he told about his activities the past week.