CNN

And the republican infidelity beat goes on with Senator John Ensign (R-NV) back in the news to replace Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC).

Expressions of remorse in February 2008 – and the affair was pursued by Sen. Ensign until August 2008 – and the Hamptons received pay raises and their 19 year-old son became a paid consultant to the republican party and finally a severance package of $25,000. All this reads like Sen. Ensign paid for sex with a subordinate and that Sen. Coburn suggested to Sen. Ensign he bribe the Hamptons to go away.

(Is it any wonder that the republicans last 8 Senatorial seats in the 2008 election with Senator John "I'm too busy having an affair with a member of my staff to focus on the election" Ensign leading the way.)

Excuse me Sen. John Ensign, but you demanded that President Bill Clinton resign over the affair (not the lying under oath) and that Senator Larry Craig resign over the wide stance in a bathroom airport issue.

Shouldn't you have already drafted your resignation letter about now?

If Sen. Ensign makes selfish,terrible decisions that ruin two families, he certainly doesn't have the character and judgement to making national decisions as a senator. He must resign!

Let me get this straight. Newt GetRich Gingrich or somebody in the GOP led the way to have President Clinton impeached for not being able to keep it in his pants. Now, Republican after Republican is getting busted for fooling around with hotties and naughties. So where are the Republicans now, who were throwing stones at Clinton? Hello - anybody there???? I can't hear you. There is no mass outcry of protest from the Army of the Right. Frickin' two-faced losers.

So Coburn's part of the coverup too? Is there no shame at all in Washington? This guy Coburn presents as a Christian....jeez!

INHOFF/PALIN 2012! Two conservatives who will stand up for the majority! Rock The Vote!

HMM ,if they knew why didn't they tell his wife,I guess his seat in the house was more important to them.

Hey, he can have an affair with my wife, too, if he agrees to pay out "Millions of" dollars. The 25k he ended up doling out, in hush money, if way too much low-balling it. Any Senator who's so stingy so as to pay out only 25k, on the kind of money they make, DESERVES to be blackmailed.

But, in all honesty, who really needs to demand hush money...what, with the stock market going up like the Energizer Bunny, like it has all year, You bet your bottom dollar it will be up on the end of the day Thursday and Friday. If you don't believe it, look at the swelling of Volume (demand) at the close today...there was a huge, I mean enormous, amount of Volume (demand) as the S&P 500 was going upward in the last hour of two of trading today. That can only mean ONE thing...that the next two days will be very strong Up days. You can count on it. With volume that strong, I've never in my 20 years of investing seen the markets close down the next two days!

Sen. Ensign should resign as this is a sword dangling over his head for while he is in office. It is a disgrace to have a sitting senator espousing family values while guilty of violating his own!!

Sen Ensign should resign. It's that simple.

Bush sank us with 2 wars;

OBAMA WILL SINK US WITH HIS STIMULUS BILL.

They are a perfect pair. I h..e both of them.

Call me crazy, but to "suggest" that the mistress and her husband need financial assistance in the amount of millions of dollars sounds an aweful lot like extortion (read blackmail) to me. Sounds like they are asking him to "pay" for her services.

This is about as sleazy and perverse as it gets.

And this shake-down was paid for by taxpayer money?

The Repugs fooled just about every well meaning Christian out there with their "family values" bull crap. Hod took the veil off and revealed their deception. They are evil.

This man is a disgrace. Granted an affair is a two way street and maybe the movies , television and Hollywood seems to condone this behavior it is morally incorrect weather your a religious person or not. What I don't understand is why the GOP has remained silent and haven't called for him to step down. It can't be their all guilty of doing the same thing! If he were my elected official I would be screaming for his resignation!

Do we really think that if this had happened:

"Hamptons needed to be given financial assistance – in the millions of dollars – to pay off their $1 million-plus mortgage and move them to a new life away from Ensign"

this would have followed:

"this episode would have ended, and been made public, long ago..."

I am shocked that politicians think paying off mortgages is fair play (do they use fundraised $ to do this) for their affairs. But I am not naive enough to believe they would make these secret deals public willingly.

Next up: Coburn admits to extramarital affair. Or at least in the last few years it was ALWAYS the most holier-than-thou people who turned out to be guilty of the same faults they found in others.

Ensign apparantly couldn't afford the asking price and so had to "confess"...

Otherwise, it woulda been hushed up as usual. There were rumours about this scumbag before. Same with another "christian" family values phony, Gov. Sanford.

Both these guys (along with Palin) were looking to run for president as white "family values" republicans.

The snake Mitt Romney survives (and he's worse than these three!!!).

Umm, I have a suggestion. Why don't these silly senators try this: Mind your own personal business and spend your time working as senators, a position for which you are well compensated. Stop being the busy bodies for the entire nation, including your own goofy colleagues. Everybody should just mind their own personal business!

But it does sound like some financial shenanigans took place here. That's a whole other matter. The "Christian fellowship" home (whatever goofy, contrived organization that is) suggested that Ensign's mistress get several million dollars to walk away quietly from the affair. Are you kidding me? Is this how the Holier-than-Thou bunch of conservative Christians end affairs amongst their own? They hand out millions of dollars? What a bunch of freaks.

So this couple who worked for a Senator had a $1 million-plus mortgage? Something is really wrong here!

Sure sounds more like blackmail! If Cynthia Hampton was a willing participant to the affair, why should she get a severance in excess of $25,000? And where or who did all that money come from? Was it a legal political expense?

[...] one of the stories is:  http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/07/08/report-senator-tried-to-stop-colleagues-affair/  which is about the efforts of Senator Coburn to get Ensign to break off his affair.  It is a [...]

Anerica's family structure is slowly eroding.

If you cannot honor the bonds of marriage, resign, divorce, and get off the front page. Y'all are using these women as a front for your same-sex fancies. Keep It Out of my face!

The only reason the SC govenor is still sitting is because McMaster's is politicing for the hot seat, himself. Else, Sanford would be a goner,

Personal agendas is a breach of service to the country and constituencies!

America is on a slippery slope thanks to your blatant sinning.

Hollow words from a man that was pointing the finger at Clinton but seems to think his dirty deeds are justified.

So, a "Christian" group suggests bribery as a means of stopping the affair? Nice.

This is really more information than I need to know about this tawdry business. But I suppose Pandora's box has been opened (ever since Ken Starr's report on Clinton), and we're going to be subjected to every sleazy detail of every politician's affair, of whichever party. Yuck.

Too bad John Edwards didn't have any political friends to help him from having an affair while his wife was fighting cancer.

Let's get the grammar right! When we refer to people, use who. When referring to animals, objects, or groups such as a tribe, use that. ". . .was part of a group of intermediaries that confronted". . . .
Should be: who confronted.

So the "Christian Fellowship" suggested a payoff? I love it.

Ensign was a "promise Keeper" you know the guys who want their wives barefoot and pregnant. I guess he couldn't keep his "promise" !Another "family values" GOP hyprocrite!

I'm confused. Was Coburn part of the group that pushed for $1 million for the Hamptons? Did Dough Hampton reference Coburn? The two episodes should not be part of the same story. They should be published because both are newsworthy, but separated.

That's right Pubiclans – pay 'em off... everyone has their price

That these freaks refer to themselves as Christians makes me sick. Christians don't have affairs to begin with. Hypocritical cretins do.

do they live on Mars

how can they live this life that just is so sick, so alien from what I see and live and my neighbors see and live

politicians cannot be allowed to continue to live like this, cut them off, vote them out, do not support behavior that is against what you believe in

it is not for the 'greater good', it is not 'human behavior', EXPECT MORE, DEMAND MORE, demand role models

That's a far different story than the one floated by Senator Ensign's staff that somebody was trying to blackmail Ensigbn about his affair. Apparently, the idea about paying off the mortgage of Ensign's mistress and her husband originated from fellow Christian conservative senators. Hmmm...and the plot thickens...

If they all knew, then why did it take so long to come out???

If you are a man, and this geek came to you and told you to end an affair with your sexy mistress........

Hey! Wouldn't we all like to have millions of dollars to pay off our mortgage! If that works, although I'm unmarried, I'll go out and have an affair just to have somebody give me money to break it off.

That's just another form of bail-out!
EL

This whole thing makes me want to puke all over the GOP. Enjoy the watching from the sidelines "Christians" you earned it!

'Financial assistance of millions of dollars"....hmmmm, those good Christian boys wouldn't have been thinking about buying someone's silence, would they?

I do enjoy the continuous embarrassment of Conservative leaders. It is always fun to see a hypocrite tarred with his own brush. I think we all enjoy that.

Mostly though, it is good for Conservative voters to see that they have been flim-flammed by con-artists in thousand dollar suits. Conservative leaders don't give a crap about the middle class in America – except on election day. Good Conservative Americans need to realize they have been made fools by their own leadership.

Tried to end the affair? Try? You either end it or you don't, there is no "try". This is just an attempt at making excuses. How pathetic. At least Ensign needs to be man enough to take full responsibility for his actions and not "try" to make excuses.

Also, his affair with an employee constitutes sexual harassment. I strongly feel there is a case for this that the Hamptons need to pursue.

Save this kind of stuff for the tabloids. Nothing to do with American Politics.

What is going on? Repubs are turning into Dems. Their holier than thou attitude seem to bite them in their back..

I wouldn't subscribe noble motives to Sen. Coburn. Looks more like an attempt at a payoff to get the Hampton's out of the way and to buy their silence.

Another Republican't failure!!! So what else is new??

These Republicans and right wing neocons are a joke, crooked as they come, glad I never swallowed any of their family values BS. At this point in time, I really believe they are morally bankrupt. However, I did get quite a chuckle from reading this article.

Good 'ol conservative christian folks--oh, did I mention patriotic too? Just trying to get all the names they wrap themselves in. Ensign, Sanford, Larry Craig–need I go on? Sanford is the total epitome of these fools-not spend a dime of money to fix the dilapidated schools in his state (already among the nation's worst) but didn't have a problem with cheating on his wife and just snuck away (or left the U.S. I should say) to do so...where is the Christ-like behavior in these christian folk?

I guess the Dem's cheat on their taxes and the Repubs cheat on their spouses.
There is not any INTEGITY left and of course the people in politics , NEVER HAD ANY INTEGRITY.

VOTE THEM ALL OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

John Ensign and Cynthia Hampton had an affair so why was Ensign "confronted and suggested that the Hamptons needed to be given financial assistance-in the million of dollars-......." ??? Doesn't it take two to tango? Why is Ensign the only one to be blamed??

A group of powerful Republicans tells Senator Ensign he needs to give his mistress and her husband millions of dollars so they can "move...to a new life away from Ensign." If that doesn't sound like hush money, I don't know what does.

..so the Christian group got involved & tried to "SHAKE-HIM-DOWN" for a million bucks.. Americans thats how things work in DC, everthing is a shake -down, even religious groups become corrupt there...

From Las Vegas-–This is the kind of sleaze-bag stuff that we hear about around here every day. First it was our Governor Gibbons who was secretly videoed hustling his mistress through a Las Vegas parking garage. Shortly thereafter, Mrs. Gibbons filed for divorice. Now our illustrious Jr. Senator Ensign is caught red handed because Doug Hampton decided to blab. What this article doesn't say, but what our TV news stations have been talking about all day, is that both the Ensign and Hampton families were both living together under the same roof when this all began. Ensign even adminted to Hampton that "I am in love with your wife." Sounds really "Las Vegas", no? Then all of a sudden Hampton decides to spill the beans and Oklahoma Senator Tom Colburn suggests a $-Million payoff to shut Hampton up and save Ensign's career. Does sound like a B-rated movie script? Ensign should "get out of Dodge" (DC) post-haste and retire somewhere far out in the Nevada desert.

Yet again another example that modern politics and religion don't mix. It just shows how disingenuous the religious right can be, offering hush money to the mistress and her hubby to disappear. Disgusting!

Murf

Ummm..." Hey Mr. Politician, we know you're having an affair with my wife. I think you should give me millions of dollars to make this all go away."

Sounds like hush money to me.

Just like crooked politicians. Guess where the $1 million to buy them a new home would have come from?

Liars, crooks, themes, deviates and degenerates...American politicians are losers.

We need a true democracy – not a republic (people need to pay attention to what they're saying when they so-call "pledge their allegiance" to the flag).

Heavy term limits – we already know you don't have to be a career politician or even an intellect (think Palin and Bush and Quayle) to be a governor, president or vice president. Let's get rid of the losers who continue to suck at the public trough without end and without results.

Let's get people into office who care...not those who are just padding their pockets...or seeking money to buy their mistresses and their hubbies new homes!