8 Ways to Sunday

Illinois senatorial candidate and conservative Republican Jack Ryan, who made traditional values and opposition to gay marriage key points of his campaign, is embroiled in a sex scandal^* following accusations that he tried to pressure his ex-wife into public sex at kinky fetish clubs.

A California judge has allowed portions of the court record for Ryan’s 1999 divorce from actress Jeri Ryan to be released to the public. In the documents, Ms. Ryan alleges that the would-be senator took her to sex clubs during surprise trips to New York, Paris, and New Orleans in 1998 and attempted to pressure her into having sex while other people watched. One of the clubs is vividly described in the court documents as a “bizarre club with cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling.”

Mr. Ryan has claimed that the allegations are false, and Illinois Republicans are feverishly spinning them as a mere byproduct of acrimonious divorce proceedings. Ms. Ryan has defended her ex, calling him a good man and loving father. She has notably not retracted the allegations, however.

(hat tip: Gin and Tacos)

The Vatican issued a double-edged apology for the Inquisition last week, saying how very sorry they were for all the torture and murder while simultaneously downplaying the actual extent of the atrocities. Sounds kind of like our government these days, doesn’t it?

Financial strategist James Montier of German-owned investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein had some unusual advice for coworkers and clients in a recent memo. “Don’t equate money with happiness,” he said. Instead he encouraged readers to have more sex, get more sleep, exercise, meditate, and cultivate close relationships.

Seems like sound advice to me.

Fox News — known for its right-leaning bias — surprised last week by giving liberal pundit Michael Moore’s new film “Fahrenheit 9/11” a glowing review on its web site. Among other praise, reviewer Clive Davis called Moore’s movie “a tribute to patriotism, to the American sense of duty, and at the same time a [sic] indictment of stupidity and avarice.” Davis cites a video of Bush reading to a group of school children on the morning of the attacks as the “most incredible” moment of the film. Sent to Moore by the instructor of the class Bush was visiting, it shows the President lingering for almost eleven minutes to complete his photo op despite having just been told that the country was under attack:

Instead of jumping up and leaving, he instead sat in front of the class, with an unfortunate look of confusion, for nearly 11 minutes. Moore obtained the footage from a teacher at the school who videotaped the morning program. There Bush sits, with no access to his advisers, while New York is being viciously attacked. I guarantee you that no one who sees this film forgets this episode.

In another refreshing instance of the press calling a spade a spade, the New York Times — a partisan media outlet in its own right — blasted Bill Clinton’s autobiography My Life in it’s Sunday book review section, chiding the former President for having written a “sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull” memoir.

In other news, record low temperatures have been reported in Hell this week. When asked to explain the underworld’s cold snap, a National Weather Service meteorologist said that it was agency policy not to comment on weather occurrences outside the earthly plane.