John, We Hardly Knew Ye

Sen. John Ensign (R, Nev.) responds to an alleged blackmail threat by admitting to an extra-marital affair, which may hurt his 2012 Presidential prospects.  Michelle Malkin has heard enough from him.

Comments

[Parking Lot]

alinsky

RULE 4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity's very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)

[clarice]

Here's the question: Is it better to stand for decent values even though as human beings we may all fall short at times of them or to stand for nothing and when caught just argue that it's just about sex?
Me.I am for standards and a certain degree of civic minded hypocrisy..but I'm a bad person I guess, not perfect like Michelle.

[MayBee]

Here's the question: Is it better to stand for decent values even though as human beings we may all fall short at times of them or to stand for nothing and when caught just argue that it's just about sex?

That is the question.
If you can only stand for decent values if you are indeed perfect, the list of people standing for decent values becomes pretty small.
Which then means values overall become lessened, and standards lower.

[Parking Lot]

(Here's the question: Is it better to stand for decent values even though as human beings we may all fall short at times of them or to stand for nothing and when caught just argue that it's just about sex?
Me.I am for standards and a certain degree of civic minded hypocrisy..but I'm a bad person I guess, not perfect like Michelle.))

what we should do is stand for decent values and when we are caught failing argue that we still stand for decent values and that the failure was just about sex

win win

[Fresh Air]

I'm going to worry about this as soon as that broad in the Cayman Islands comes clean on her relationship with Zero.

[jimmyk]

I'm in favor of every congressman or senator who has had an affair being forced to resign. That will be like term limits, I suspect.

[Ignatz]

--not perfect like Michelle--

clarice,
She said he was a dog for cheating on his wife. Hard to argue with that. Isn't part of having standards that there are consequences to violating them, one of which is the opprobrium of people who also hold those standards?

--which may hurt his 2012 Presidential prospects--

Yeah. They've plummeted from 99:1 to 100:1.

[clarice]

Maybe he was. I am not privy to all the circumstances. And , yes, violating those standards does have consequences, but you know something..I ain't throwing those stones and making way for opponents who to my eyes have no standards at all.

What dog took over when Foley was bounced for a made up scandal? I believe a guy who himself had been having an affair--one that wasn't made up.

[narciso]

Mahoney, was the fellow who replaced Foley, Mahoney! sorry a Police Academy reference seems apt, at the time.He had two different
affairs with staffers, while denouncing Foley. Hypocrisy seems to be the coin of the realm, with Gingrich, Hyde and
Livingston, acting as signifiers for the same pattern. I guess we can add Dole and McCain, on the lesser end of such behavior. One tries to excuse such behavior, but that attitude among other things that led the Tories to their collapse.

Ensign was on of the newest members of this socalled 'listening tour',who joined shortly
after Sarah decided to cooperate with them, Which is ironic considering he was one of the last to disparage her qualifications right before election day, along with Eagleburger and South Dakota native Larry Pressler

[Parking Lot]

I turned off Michelle during Katrina and have never felt the same about her.

[Thomas Collins]

Senators sleeping with staff? Booorrrring. For something REALLY sexy, see LUN. :-))

[cathyf]

So has anyone else noticed that this thread is missing from the "Recent Posts" list? Even though it is on the front page, and also correctly tucked in between "Homme Bites Chien" and "Iran Watch".

Somebody oughta tell the SixApart people that the reason why everybody wants to be "apart" from them is that their code stinks.

[Parking Lot]

Thomas, lol

[matt]

my understanding from reading one of the articles was that he was separated from his wife when he had the affair. Not sure how that squares with morality, but I was separated for a year at one time and my now ex wife went out with someone else for a short time. I didn't hold it against her.

[Parking Lot]

I was laughing at your joke but the content of the proposal does not look funny at all

[Thomas Collins]

I agree, Parking Lot, that the financial reform proposals don't look good. I figured that the only thing they were good for was a little chuckle on this thread. But if you think some of the language in the proposals is intentionally obtuse, try this LUN on for size!

[clarice]

As usual, Taranto has the best take on this.

[glasater]

How does it happen that Ensign and Reid are up for election in the same cycle?

I didn't think that was the case in the Senate.

[Cecil Turner]

Heh. Taranto:

John Edwards cheated on his wife while promoting a campaign narrative in which he portrayed himself (with Mrs. Edwards's cynical collaboration) as the devoted husband of his cancer-stricken wife. Now that's hypocrisy. From the available evidence, John Ensign is nowhere near as bad a hypocrite as John Edwards. How's that for faint praise?

That's all pretty funny, but it seems to me this story has very little in it other than a personal failing, and really wasn't very newsworthy.

Caught Anderson Cooper on CNN International, and he was practically hyperventilating about the hypocrisy of it all. But if we're really looking for hypocrisy, how 'bout the newsies who imposed a virtual blackout on the Edwards affair, whilst pretending the GOP has a lock on corruption? If the MSM wants me to take this sort of thing seriously, they really need to find at least one Dem they find morally repugnant at a politically inconvenient time. Otherwise, I'm going to assume the reason behind their selective outrage has little to do with anything but their own bias . . . and their hopes of changing the political landscape (through skillful repetition of Dem propaganda).