It’s all over the Las Vegas Sun this morning. Sen. Ensign’s decision to fess up  had to do with “blackmail” in the sense that he had gotten word that his inamorata’s husband, an old Promisekeepers pal, had sent a letter to Fox News’ Megyn Kelly asking that she report on Ensign’s nefarious pursuit of his wife. So the senator was just getting ahead of the story.

Ironically, there was no story to get ahead of. Doug Hampton’s letter is a sad thing, motivated by the desire to expose the cad for all the country to see. But God forbid that some disreputable news outfit like MSNBC do the exposure:

I am bringing this to you and Fox News to address this professionally
and correctly. I could have sought the most liberal, Republican hating
media to expose this story, but there are people’s lives at stake and
justice is about proper process as well as outcome.

Assuming that the letter reached Kelly, what evidently happened was that Fox contacted Ensign, told him about the letter, let him make his confession, and never made a peep. You kind of wonder what Fox would have done had the senator had been a Democrat.

They didn’t report, so we didn’t (until now) get to decide.