This week Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y. resigned amid an ethics investigation that included Massa’s admission that he tickled a staffer until he couldn’t breathe. On Glenn Beck’s Fox TV program, Massa insisted that he “did nothing sexual.”

Reflecting on the situation, Marc Ambinder, a political reporter for The Atlantic, recalled how in 1999, then Energy Secretary Secretary Bill Richardson put him in a headlock.

Ambinder wrote of the scene before a 1999 presidential debate:

After I had identified myself, [Secretary of Education Richard] Riley reached out his right arm and proceeded to tickle me in the Pillsbury dough boy-style. Then, he answered my question. A few moments later, I walked up to the Secretary of Energy, Bill Richardson. Same scenario. I identified myself as a reporter with the Crimson. Richardson proceeded to put me in a headlock. Then he answered my question.

In 2006, the New York Times mentioned some unwelcome contact between Richardson and Lt. Gov. Diane Denish.

In New Mexico, Gov. Bill Richardson, a man said to have presidential aspirations, suffered a political setback last December when Lt. Gov. Diane D. Denish told an Albuquerque Journal reporter that she tried to avoid him at events because: “He pokes me. He pinches my neck. He touches my hip, my thigh, sort of the side of my leg.”

Maybe Denish should count herself lucky that Richardson never put her in a headlock.