Ensign to run for re-election

Yep, neither affair, nor affair payoff, nor hypocrisy to Pentecostal beliefs shall keep Sen. Ensign from his appointed Senate re-election run; five bucks says that, since he’s not up until 2012, the Religious Right and everybody else out there votes for him, and doesn’t even give him a primary challenge.

Tom Coburn in GOP Pants Watch, accessory division

Turns out GOP Sen. Tom Coburn knew about colleague John Ensign’s affair with a staffer, John Hampton, the staffer’s husband, says in a video interview, confronted him at a now-famous C Street politico-religious retreat, and suggested the payoff idea that Ensign actually did. (Column based on transcript is here.)

Politico has more, including a statement from Coburn’s office shitting on Ensign. Coburn’s shitting on Hampton now, too.

You know, it’s almost more fun when an accessory like Coburn gets exposed than when an Ensign himself is.

Hmm, will he get a GOP primary challenger in Oklahoma?

Xn Right No. 1 on porn, preggers, divorces

Don’t wanna believe me? It’s all true, per the Census Bureau, the Guttmacher Institute and research studies. In the wake of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford joining Nevada Sen. John Ensign in the GOP Pants Watch brigade, the New York Times’ Charles Blow puts those findings in one convenient op-ed package. He uses the analogy of the original Clean Air Act of way back in 1963, with further development after that.

In order of headline subjects:

A study titled “Red Light States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment?” that was conducted by Benjamin Edelman, an assistant professor of business at Harvard Business School and published earlier this year in the Journal of Economic Perspectives found that subscriptions to online pornography sites were “more prevalent in states where surveys indicate conservative positions on religion, gender roles, and sexuality” and in states where “more people agree that ‘I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage.’ ” …

According to 2006 data from the Guttmacher Institute, red states accounted for eight of the 10 states with the highest teenage birthrates. …

According to the Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstract, states that went Republican in November accounted for eight of the 10 states with the highest divorce rates in 2006.

So, could the next Republican offender to join the GOP Pants Watch at least have the courtesy of giving us the trifecta, by knocking up a 19-year-old not his wife while watching porn with her?

And, would that the urban legend about celebrity deaths, that “these things happen in threes,” were true and applied to self-inflicted political flameouts. (Monica Conyers is too small to count, and I’m focused on the Republican sex hypocrisy shtick right now anyway.)

Hmm, Sarah Palin wears the pants in her family anyway, right? Maybe she could have another affair.

It’s time to stone to death Ensign and Sanford

Joe Conason carefully reminds us about the biblical penalty, coming from the Mosaic law that conservative Christians, and their conservative Republican political exploiters and abetters like Nevada Sen. John Ensign and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, for the sin of adultery.

So, let’s get some stones picked up. If you don’t feel you have a strong arm, I believe a “petard” doubles as a sling.