Settlement determines that the John Edwards sex tape must be destroyed

Who knew that anything good for humanity would come out of this scandal? A court has ordered that all existing copies of the sex tape that sleazy former Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards made with his sleazy former aide Rielle Hunter must be destroyed. Furthermore, if any new copies of the tape surface in the future, those are legally required to be destroyed, too.

The tapes have been at the center of a drawn-out legal battle, based on Hunter's claims that Andrew Young, another former Edwards aide, stole the "personal and private" tape from a collection of her belongings and has since used it to promote his book about Edwards, The Politician. "Ms. Hunter is very pleased," said a spokesperson. "She won." The court also ruled that a cache of personal photos be returned to Hunter.

"We are extremely pleased to have this case resolved," said Young and his wife in a statement. "There are no 'winners' as such, in that each side had returned back to it that which it believed was its own property, although it was mutually agreed that certain materials should, per the court's order, be destroyed. Notably, notwithstanding the outlandish efforts of Ms. Hunter's legal counsel to try to paint Mr. and Mrs. Young as liars and thieves, nothing could be further from the truth — as is unequivocally evidenced by this settlement agreement."

So, does this mean we can permanently be safe from the threat of a horrible, leaked, politician-and-pregnant-woman sex tape? If so, let us never speak of this long national nightmare again.