Foxfyre wrote:The Superior Court judge said the public's right to know overrides privacy rights for Jack and Mrs. Ryan's child and ordered the sealed divorce papers unsealed and made public. This was over the objections of the divorced couple. The GOP felt Ryan was too badly damaged to continue and asked him to drop out. Well and good said the Democrats.
Frankly, I doubt the Democrats said anything of the sort. Given how Ryan had been damaged already by the rumors, any substitute candidate would likely have a
better chance than Ryan did.
Foxfyre wrote:Now it seems the media is in a dilemma on whether to go after Kerry's sealed divorce papers from 1988. They have to play fair, right? The campaign is asserting those sealed papers are nobody's business.
There are a number of reasons why court papers are sealed, and I have no idea why Kerry's case might have been (indeed, up to now, I hadn't even known that the papers
were sealed). But the fact is that we have open courts in this country, and court papers are public documents. There must be compelling reasons for sealing court papers, and the judge in California determined that Ryan's case did not meet those standards.
As it turns out, Ryan's own attorney, in requesting that the documents be sealed, didn't mention anything about protecting the couple's son: instead, he noted that Ryan was planning on pursuing a political career and that such revelations might be damaging. Which, in the end, proved to be an accurate prediction.
