RadarOnline.com and Star Magazine have identified Mildred Patricia Baena as Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s mistress and the mother of his out-of-wedlock child.

Baena worked as a housekeeper in the Schwarzenegger and Shriver home for over 20 years. According to TMZ, Baena’s job included cleaning, laundry, cooking, and various other chores and paid $1,200 a week. She retired from her post in January, the same time Shriver learned of the affair and left her husband.

The affair occurred in the late 1990′s, when Baena was also married. Apparently Schwarzenegger didn’t learn of his paternity till the child was a toddler. That might have been a good time to A. Tell his wife & B. Find his mistress a job outside the family home. Instead, he decided to sweep it under the rug and break into politics.

And he would have gotten away with it all, if it weren’t for that pesky LA Times.

It’s hard to know where to begin in terms of the potential fallout from the latest Schwarzenegger bombshell. Obviously, how the revelation of a secret ten-year-old love child impacts Maria Shriver and the couple’s four kids is the most pressing concern.

Way down the list but suddenly morbidly fascinating is how this might color Arnold’s return to the big screen. Just a few days ago, a woman – Megan Ellison – won a CAA auction in Cannes for rights to a pair of Terminator sequels starring the man several headlines this morning now refer to as “the Sperminator.” Her company, Annapura Pictures, reportedly beat out Lionsgate for the package, which also has Fast Five director Justin Lin attached.

Long before the first of these two films hits the big screen, you can bet that a YouTube time travel parody (or five) involving Arnold, Maria, the housekeeper, and love child will surface. Meanwhile, with folks in Hollywood used to tolerating loose morals, it’s unlikely this latest Schwarzenegger indiscretion will get in the way of visions of big dollar signs. If one or more of the current participants in the Terminator sequels bails, another will be there to take their place.

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Another huge Schwarzenegger scoop for the Los Angeles Times: Arnold fathered a secret love child with a household employee over a decade ago. Arnold finally ‘fessed up to his wife about the kid in January, and Maria Shriver moved out of the couple’s Brentwood home.

In response to questions from the LAT, Schwarzenegger released a statement Monday night acknowledging his paternity: “There are no excuses and I take full responsibility for the hurt I have caused.”

With this confession comes a host of ethical issues, beyond mere infidelity. Schwarzenegger slept with an employee. He slept with someone who worked in his home, with his wife and children. He knew about the child for over a decade, but waited until he was out of office to tell Shriver.

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It’s a big deal in LA media circles that the LA Times was the outlet to break the news of Maria Shriver ‘s separation from husband Arnold Schwarzenegger rather than a gossipy stand-by like TMZ, Radar Online, or perhaps US Weekly.

Today, the reporter responsible for the Monday evening website dispatch, Mark Z. Barabak, teams with Robin Abcarian for a follow-up feature look at what might have gone wrong. Underscoring the Rolodex power of Schwarzenegger and Shriver, neither one of the sources tapped by these reporters for the “two distinctly different narratives emerging” about the 25-year marriage was willing to be named:

“Everyone who’s shocked by this is reacting to the fairy-tale picture that was promoted,” said a friend who has been a frequent visitor to the couple’s Brentwood mansion and did not want to be identified as breaching the couple’s confidence. The death in August 2009 of Shriver’s mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, said this friend, marked a turning point. Her father, Sargent Shriver, the Peace Corps founder, died in January.

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Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife, journalist Maria Shriver, announced Monday that they were separating. And how can anyone be surprised? Sure, Shriver stood by her man during the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election, when an LA Times expose revealed that Schwarzenegger had a habit of harassing and groping women. But that might have just been to usher him into office.

Shriver clearly relished her role as first lady of California. The LA Times described her as “perhaps the most prominent and powerful first lady in California history.” But her husband left office in January. And let’s be honest — Would you want to be married to the Grope-inator?

The couple’s statement is after the jump.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger is returning to the spotlight in animated form. The actor and recently retired governor of California is the basis for a fictional superhero known as ‘The Governator.’ And he’s working with Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee on the endeavor. Lee gave Entertainment Weekly details:

The Governator is going to be a great superhero, but he’ll also be Arnold Schwarzenegger. We’re using all the personal elements of Arnold’s life. Only after he leaves the governor’s office, Arnold decides to become a crime fighter and builds a secret high-tech crime-fighting center under his house in Brentwood.

Schwarzenegger told Entertainment Weekly that he’d rather be running for president, but since his foreign birth prevented it, the project was his “Plan B.” And by that we’re pretty sure he means revenge on America for thwarting his plans for world domination with our stupid laws.

Fabulous item today on Arcadia Patch by Larry Stewart, a veteran sports writer with over four decades of experience at the Herald-Examiner and LA Times.

He recounts how he was able to pull some strings at Staples Center to get primo tickets to Tuesday’s Los Angeles Lakers-Atlanta Hawks game for recovering 14-year-old cancer victim Samantha Naanou, her family and friends. Stewart also, via Jeanie Buss, engineered admittance at halftime to the hallowed Chairman’s Room and what turned out to be some golden photo opps:

First off, Samantha got a picture with Jack Nicholson and then, in order, Andy Garcia, Bill O’Reilly, Maria Shriver, and local broadcaster Bill Macdonald, who is also a cancer survivor.

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California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s party might have been clobbered by President-elect Barack Obama’s Democrats, but the Terminator tells CNN’s John King he’s happy about one thing — his life is better in the bedroom.

Just days after Schwarzenegger announced his support of Republican Presidential nominee John McCain, his wife Maria Shriver, an avowed Democrat in the Kennedy lineage, proclaimed her support for Barack. This was following the line of her uncle Sen. Ted Kennedy (D.-Mass.)

Until election day, things were dicey in the Schwarzenegger household. When Obama emerged victorious, Mrs. Schwarzenegger let down her guard and the happy couple is happy again. That is, until 2012.

The Talking Heads ironic, biting ballad “Once in a Lifetime” was the song we wanted for our documentaryabout the Governor of California, “Running with Arnold,” last year.

After striking out time after time trying to get the rights to use the song, imagine our surprise last week when we saw the TV ad for Oliver Stone’s “W” with “Once in a Lifetime” pulsating throughout.

We liked it because it used piercing lyrics that were completely applicable to our subject, a man who may or may not deserve to be installed in the highest office in the state. Which for obvious reasons can easily be translated to the U.S. Presidency.

Our script used the song as follows:

“You may find yourself in a beautiful house…”
Cut to: Photo still of the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento.
“…With a beautiful wife…”
Cut to: Photo still of Maria Shriver.
“…And you may ask yourself: how did I get here?”
Cut to: Photo still of a flummoxed Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But no matter how much we tried (and we really tried) we were told over and over that it was impossible to get the rights to that song. We were simply told that the Talking Heads had split so far apart (perhaps to say they weren’t actually ever Talking anymore) that it was nigh impossible to even license one of their songs, no matter what we were willing to pay.

Five different music supervisors gave it their best shot. No good.

We even cut a cover version with tremendous local L.A. talent orchestrated and conducted by Cliff Tazner and sung by rapper Wil B. It sounded phenomenal, but we couldn’t get cover rights either.

I pulled out all the contacts I had, including an old friend and contact of mine, Gary Goetzman, who been involved in the production of “Stop Making Sense,” the Talking Heads documentary. He said he would help, but nothing came of that. I even attempted a conversation with David Byrne when I ran into him at the New York Film Festival party. He didn’t have time.

We were denied on every count. We ultimately settled on a poor substitute, a Flock of Seagulls song that was simply from the same era. Or so my executive producer told me.

I can’t blame Oliver Stone for this transgression, although he did see the film in the Zurich International Film Festival in Oct. 2007 when it won the Best Documentary Award. He even said he liked it.

Perhaps it was a lesson in the noblesse oblige that exists in Hollywood.

Our tiny documentary was made for a little more than half a million dollars. The Talking Heads lawyers were claiming that even if they could make it happen, it would cost more than $1 million just for the licensing fee.

So we had to stick to Flock of Seagulls. Maybe that made Arnold happy.

This is a video of our Senator Barbra Boxer busting on John McCain‘s theatrics.

Is the credit crisis too close to home? The Columbia Journalism Review asks if Andrea Mitchell should be covering anything about the financial crisis. Hm? That would be like Maria Shriver covering the recall. Right? Or the budget crisis? Or her husband’s politics over the Cawleefornia and so on and so forth…

The best thing that John McCain ever did for Sarah Palin, besides setting the stage for her to be immortalized in corn, was to distract the nation from her interview with Katie Couric which aired this week, this is according to LAT‘s James Rainey. Yeah, we’re heartless jerks and we kind of felt sorry for her, what with Putin rearing his head. If she wasn’t running for something important we’d stop paying attention because it now seems cruel.