SOMEWHERE in the deep dark recesses of Burbank, Jay Leno’s writers rejoice. Having received the gift that keeps giving–Bill Clinton’s tell-all, spin-all biography–they now have another present in the form of the Illinois U.S. Senate race, where Republican contender Jack Ryan is embroiled in a controversy over unsealed divorce records.

It began a week ago, when a Los Angeles Superior Court judge agreed to make public complete copies or parts of 26 of 44 documents he’d earlier sealed after settling a 2000-2001 custody dispute between Ryan, a multimillionaire investment banker-turned school teacher, and his ex-wife, actress Jeri Ryan, best known from Boston Public and Star Trek Voyager (plus a mercifully minor role in the mercilessly awful movie Down With Love).