Another Day, Another Hooker Scandal

The news today is that Thomas Athans, the husband of U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., paid $150 to a prostitute for sex at a Troy, Mich., hotel in February. Athans, co-founder of liberal talk radio network, Democracy Radio, has been married to Stabenow since 2003.

The Detroit Free Press obtained a copy of the police report under the Freedom of Information Act. It says Athans, 46, was not arrested or charged, but agreed to fully cooperate with police in their investigation into Internet-based prostitution at city hotels.

The Free Press reports that Athans was pulled over by police on I-75 minutes after leaving the Residence Inn on Livernois, Mich., the night of Feb. 26. He was driving a Cadillac DeVille registered jointly to him and Stabenow at their address in Lansing. He was ticketed for driving on a suspended license. During that stop, Athans admitted he had been at the hotel with a woman he met on the Internet and that he paid her $150 to do the deed. Police later went to the hotel and arrested the lady of the evening.

The Detroit News has some more details of what police found when they entered the room where the transaction took place. The police report said Athans was only in the room for about 15 minutes that night before he was seen getting into his Cadillac.

"This is very disturbing and serious. Obviously it's a deeply difficult and personal matter," Stabenow said in a statement issued Wednesday morning in response to the newspaper's story.

Insert here the lecture: "What the heck were you thinking - being an elected official or married to one?!" News flash: The dirt always gets dug up. Just ask Eliot Spitzer, Jim McGreevey, Bill Clinton ... the list goes on and on.