One minor nit, Jack Ryan was not the GOP Senate incumbent. That was Sen. Peter Fitzgerald. Ryan, of course, as the GOP nominee, had to step aside for the most jaw-dropping of reasons (and perhaps the first time in U.S. political history) for wanting to have sex with his OWN wife, the actress Jeri Ryan. Were he a Democrat, he'd be in the Senate today.

Right you are! - I'm sure Ed meant to write "Republican NOMINEE" instead of "incumbent."

Not only was Ryan ruined by the sort of thing which would be dismissed as "just about sex" if he had been a Democrat, but the information came from SEALED court files, a reprehensible tactic. The media and the left aren't circumspect in the least about applying a double standard to the parties. In their view, Republicans support "family values," so anything in their personal lives which might undermine that position is fair game.

Some might point out that they never apply that thinking to Democrats, for instance the Clintonistas' approach to women making accusations about the 42nd President as opposed to their positions on sexual harassment and rape claims in general, but that would be picking nits. The Democrats will NEVER be scrutinized by the formerly Mainstream Media, because the fMSM is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party. Only people like Lieberman who stray off the reservation are subject to the magnifying glass.

What's the big deal about Obama associating with criminals, taking dirty money and lying about it? After all he is a democrat, right. Do the crime, never do the time.

Yep, these are the sort of things that every republican can be proud of...

John Chase and Liam Ford report the sordid details in the Chicago Tribune:

Republican U.S. Senate nominee Jack Ryan's ex-wife, TV actress Jeri Ryan, accused him of taking her to sex clubs in New York and Paris, where he tried to coerce her into having sex with him in front of strangers, according to records released Monday from the couple's California divorce file.

Jack Ryan denied the allegations when they were made in 2000, when the couple was engaged in a bitter child custody battle a year after their divorce....

Among the hundreds of pages of documents released was a legal filing dated June 9, 2000, in which Jeri Ryan said she knew her marriage was over by the spring of 1998. She went on to contend that her then-husband--whom she repeatedly refers to as "respondent" in the filing--surprised her with trips to the cities but didn't tell her he planned to bring her to sex clubs while there.

"They were long weekends, supposed `romantic' getaways," Jeri Ryan said in the filing. "The clubs in New York and Paris were explicit sex clubs. Respondent had done research. Respondent took me to two clubs in New York during the day. One club I refused to go in. It had mattresses in cubicles. The other club he insisted I go to."

In releasing the files, Schnider allowed many passages to be blacked out. In the portions that were released, Jeri Ryan gave details of the trips she says she was taken on to clubs in New York and Paris. She also alleged that Jack Ryan took her to a sex club in New Orleans, but no elaboration on that trip was included in the released portion of the file.

In responding to Jeri Ryan's charges, Jack Ryan six days later described the accusations as "ridiculous" and accused her of trying to "libel" him with what he called "smut." He implied that his ex-wife had made them to ruin his reputation as he contemplated a political career....

In her 2000 filing, Jeri Ryan alleged that after she and Jack Ryan left the first sex club they entered in New York, he asked her to go to another. She said he told her that he had gone out to dinner with her that night even though he didn't want to and "the least I could do in return was go to the club he wanted me to go."

She described the second place as "a bizarre club with cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling."

The problem with those allegations is that they were just that. They were made in the heat of a divorce and custody battle, when it behooves one to "do their worst." Not mentioned was that Miss Ryan herself was no Saint, and was having an affair with the producer of the Star Trek series she was starring in at the time. They had had an ongoing problem because his business career was in Chicago and hers was in Los Angeles, and neither was willing to give it up to save their marriage. It's the kind of thing that has happened countless times.

At worst, it claimed Mr. Ryan to have ribald sexual desires or fantasies -- but still all involving his own wife (and nowhere on the level of President Clinton's deviant conduct), all of which screamed at some dysfunctional last-ditch attempt to save a moribund marriage.

Basically, none of that business should've ever come to light at all (and I would bet the farm that had Ryan been the Democrat nominee, it wouldn't have -- though even if it had, there would've been no movement whatsoever to remove him from the nomination). Still, Mr. Ryan, and not Obama, should be the junior Senator from Illinois today.