senator ensign

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You heard the one about Senator Ensign's affair involving hush money, right? And you're surprised he's still got a job, right? Well, this Senator Ensign story may finally mean the end for him.

The NY Times has a long piece about it.

Early last year, Senator John Ensign contacted a small circle of political and corporate supporters back home in Nevada — a casino designer, an airline executive, the head of a utility and several political consultants — seeking work for a close friend and top Washington aide, Douglas Hampton.

He’s a competent guy, and he’s looking to come back to Nevada. Do you know of anything?” one patron recalled Mr. Ensign asking.

The job pitch left out one salient fact: the senator was having an affair with Mr. Hampton’s wife, Cynthia, a campaign aide. The tumult that the liaison was causing both families prompted Mr. Ensign, a two-term Republican, to try to contain the damage and find a landing spot for Mr. Hampton.In the coming months, the senator arranged for Mr. Hampton to join a political consulting firm and lined up several donors as his lobbying clients, according to interviews, e-mail messages and other records. Mr. Ensign and his staff then repeatedly intervened on the companies’ behalf with federal agencies, often after urging from Mr. Hampton.

While the affair made national news in June, the role that Mr. Ensign played in assisting Mr. Hampton and helping his clients has not been previously disclosed. Several experts say those activities may have violated an ethics law that bars senior aides from lobbying the Senate for a year after leaving their posts...read on



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Chris Matthews To Sen. Ensign "Don't Call Me Inflammatory!"

April 22, 2009 MSNBC HARDBALL

Heather: John Ensign gets snitty with Chris Matthews and accuses him of being inflammatory for bringing up what's in the Senate Armed Services Committee's report on the Bush administration's torture of detainees. Instead of addressing what's in the report he attacks Matthews and claims that it is a "Democrat report".

As Think Progress noted that "Democrat report" had the full support of the committee:

Ensign is right that there are often committee reports produced and released by only the minority or the majority. This report, however, was not one of them. The first page of the detainee report makes it clear that it is a document from the "Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate." ThinkProgress spoke with a committee spokesman who confirmed that the full, unanimous committee released the report. When talking with Levin today, MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell noted that Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham also endorsed the report.