Between the sheets in Nevada

The advertising slogan about Las Vegas, “What happens here stays here,” doesn’t seem to apply to Nevada politicians anymore.

Nevada’s Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons is involved in an exceedingly nasty divorce proceeding with his wife, Dawn, whose attorneys filed court documents detailing her charge that Gibbons is having an affair with the wife of a Reno podiatrist.

“Despite his disingenuous, shallow and transparent protestations that his relationship with another man’s wife is a mere friendship, his infatuation and involvement with the other woman is the real, concealed and undisclosed reason for his voluntary departure from the marriage and from the mansion where he occasionally resides,” the document stated.

Gibbons is also remembered for an incident from his 2006 campaign for governor when he was accused by a Las Vegas cocktail waitress of assaulting her in a parking garage. Gibbons said he was merely assisting her after she tripped. He won the election for governor despite the media coverage of the incident.

The latest scandalous disclosure is that Republican Sen. John Ensign, seen as a potential candidate for president in 2012, has admitted having an affair with a campaign staffer last year. Ensign, as The Hill reported, “has been one of the most outspoken senators in the country when it comes to infidelity. A member of the Promise Keepers ministry for born-again Christians, Ensign has often been out front in condemning others who have engaged in extramarital affairs.”

Included among the “Seven Promises of a Promise Keeper” are these:

A Promise Keeper is committed to building strong marriages and families through love, protection and biblical values.

But wait, it gets even better.

Like Ensign, the media is staying on top of things by digging up quotes he has made in the past about other sex scandals.

In 1998, Ensign was a House member running against Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, a time when the country was awash in media coverage of Bill Clinton’s dalliance with intern Monica Lewinsky. During a debate with Reid, according to the account in the Las Vegas Sun, “Ensign repeated his call for President Clinton’s resignation in light of his admitted affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.”

Ensign also told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “He (Clinton) has no credibility left.”

After Idaho Sen. Larry Craig pleaded guilty in 2007 to soliciting an undercover police officer in a Minneapolis airport men’s room, Ensign said Craig should resign. “There’s too many people that paint with a broad brush that we’re all corrupt, we’re all amoral,” Ensign said. “And having these kinds of things happen, whether it’s a Republican or Democratic senator — we certainly have had plenty of Democratic scandals in the past — we need people who are in office who will hold themselves to a little higher standard.”

Obviously, we know a lot more now about Ensign’s standards.