Via Ace, there’s nowhere left to go on the depravity scale after this except “violent felony.” I wonder if we’ll get there.

Vocational nurse Michelle Tyler and U.S. Marine Kathryn Raggazino spoke Tuesday about a meeting with Filner in which the mayor implied that he would help solve Raggazino’s issue with the VA only if Tyler agreed to attend a public event with him or have dinner with him.

Raggazino suffered a traumatic brain injury and PTSD while serving in Iraq…

“It was extremely disturbing to me that he made it very clear that his expectation was that his help for Kathryn depended on my willingness to go to dinner with him, spend personal time with him and be seen in public with him, “ Tyler said.

“I felt that his rubbing my arm and telling me help for Kathryn was contingent on my going out with him was extremely inappropriate and unacceptable,” Tyler said.

Said Raggazino, the Marine, “I don’t appreciate being used as a bargaining chip to fulfill his sexual desires.” When was the last time America saw a sex-related political scandal quite this noxious? I say “sex-related” because it’s not a “sex scandal”; there’s nothing consensual about any of it. It’s a harassment scandal that’s related to sex. But maybe that’s a misnomer too. Note that Tyler doesn’t say that Filner demanded sex outright; he wanted her to “spend personal time” with him but also to “be seen in public with him.” Seems like he was getting off on the ego stroke in wielding his power as mayor as much as, if not more than, the sexual thrill. That’s more reminiscent of Weiner converting flattery from his political admirers into sexting than it is of Spitzer buying time with call girls, but Weiner’s games are vastly more innocuous than this. How pathologically important must it be to this lunatic’s psyche that he hold a position of power considering that he refuses to resign even though 77 percent of San Diegans want him out?

As it is, there’s nothing anyone can do. The only options to oust him are a recall or a criminal conviction. Or are they?