From the New Albany Tribune & Jeffersonville Evening News comes this item of news about another Mark-Foley-esque scandal:

The chairman of the Clark County Republican Party, who last month was elected president of the Young Republican National Federation, has resigned both posts, apparently in the wake of a criminal investigation.

On Tuesday, Glenn Murphy Jr. e-mailed media a letter announcing his resignation from both positions, citing an unexpected business opportunity that would prohibit him from holding a partisan political office.

However, on Friday the Clark County Sheriff’s Department began investigating Murphy for alleged criminal deviate conduct — potentially a class B felony — after speaking with a 22-year-old man who claims that on July 31, Murphy performed an unwanted sex act on him while the man slept in a relative’s Jeffersonville home.

Murphy, a 33-year-old Utica resident, has not been arrested nor has he been charged with a crime. Such police reports are generally confidential, but a copy of it has been posted on a politically focused Internet site and another was provided to a reporter with The Evening News and The Tribune on Tuesday evening.

Larry Wilder, Murphy’s attorney, said Murphy is cooperating with police and Prosecutor Steve Stewart. Wilder said Murphy contends the sex act was consensual.

The “politically-focused Internet site” was Indiana Democratic Party mouthpiece blog Taking Down Words, where lefty Hoosier politicos go to get their daily smears and jeers.

The entire police report is available here (PDF warning; graphic material warning, not for the children), including mention of an earlier incident of sexual battery in 1998.

Wilder, Murphy’s lawyer, even posted at TDW to try and address some of the comment feeding frenzy that spawned there last night.

To be quite clear on Wilder’s point and TDW’s counter-contention, it might not be illegal to release a police record, but it is certainly improper to disclose it without charges having been filed.

That’s the concern of whoever leaked the report to TDW and the News & Tribune, though.

Advance Indiana had some slightly more measured comments (the sort of stuff you would expect from a gay rights advocate on an issue like this).

I doubt the Republican Murphy has many friends in the Democrat-controlled halls of justice in Clark County.

At present, no one can speak to Glenn Murphy’s guilt or innocence; he hasn’t even been charged with anything.

Obviously, though, his resignations are a heck of a coincidence.

If he’s guilty, he has already thrown himself overboard by resigning everything.

That sort of saves the Republicans the trouble of doing it to him.

I have noticed that Republicans have a tendency to resign and flee from public life when these sorts of revelations come out about them; Democrats, not so much.

This post is also available at Hoosierpundit.

Updates after the fold.

UPDATE, 7:00 AM: The Louisville Courier-Journal now has a piece about this with nothing new to add, and they appear to have eschewed mention of any of the more salacious details.

TDW’s Jen Wagner was mentioned though, and she continues to tell ‘em big:

[Wilder] said he was disappointed that something of such a sensitive nature had been leaked in “a vindictive political process.”

Jennifer Wagner, communications director for the Indiana Democratic Party, said that she operates the blog during her free time and that its content is independent of the party.

Wagner declined to say how she obtained the report but said that as a well-known Democratic blogger, “I get all kinds of documents.”

Wagner said she did not post it for political purposes.

The story has not as of right now appeared in the Indianapolis Star or any of the major national papers.

UPDATE2: Red State has a post about this up now.