So, Rep. Alan Mollohan was defeated in a Democratic primary yesterday. He was the second incumbent to lose in the past week (Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah having been defeated last Tuesday) and to many pundits is a canary in the 2010 election coal mine. This is probably true, but let's not forget that Mollohan has been embroiled in an earmark-related corruption scandal going back as far as 2006. We can take the Sunlight DeLorean back four years to read what my colleagues and I were writing back then. Or check out this excellent write-up on Mollohan's Open Congress Wiki page.

Now, you may be asking, well, why this year if his scandal problems began back in 2006? That gave two election cycles for Mollohan to be defeated and that was before the FBI wrapped up their investigation with no indictments or further activity. Despite having voted for a wide margin for both John McCain and George W. Bush in the last two elections Mollohan's (soon-to-be-former) district is a conservative Democratic district at the congressional level. Mollohan previously faced not-so-credible Republican opposition in 2006 and 2008, both Democratic sweep years. This was the first time the scandal-plagued lawmaker faced real opposition within his party. With a long-running scandal and anti-incumbent fever Mollohan was bound to lose. The American people are, as my colleague Bill Allison likes to say, the only ethics committee we need.

Sen. John Ensign appears headed for a shorter than expected Senate career. Some senators are calling for public ethics hearings into his alleged pay-offs and job interventions to aid the cuckolded husband of the senator's former mistress. The last time public hearings of this nature were held was during the 1991 Keating Five scandal. Sen. Bob Packwood, who resigned under a somewhat similar cloud, faced calls for public ethics hearings as well. From Politico:

Sen. John Ensign is facing an increasingly uncertain future in the Senate, with a senior Democrat saying that the Nevada Republican should resign if allegations against him are true and other senators mulling the possibility of public hearings into his extramarital affair with a former staffer.

“If it is true that indeed he did make these payoffs and all that kind of stuff, then I would think the honorable thing would be to resign,” Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said in an interview.

...

The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee is not ruling out holding public hearings in the case, a move that some believe could help drive Ensign from office. A number of senators signaled to POLITICO they’d be supportive of seeing Ensign sit before a public forum to address the allegations, something that has not been done since the Keating Five scandal in 1991.

There's already a pretty serious FBI investigation into Ensign's activities and that may preclude public hearings from ever happening. The threat of these hearings combined with the flagging support from his Republican compatriots could lead a senator who can't raise more than $50 for reelection to reconsider their position in the Senate.

After speculating about whether Sen. John Ensign's affair included payouts to his mistress and her family, about every news outlet is reporting that Ensign's parents, who are casino moguls, paid off Cynthia Hampton's family to the tune of $96,000. Some reports state that these payments could be just the tip of the iceberg. And no one has yet dug deeper into the payments coming from Ensign's congressional office -- that would be taxpayer money -- and his campaigns.

The biggest concern with Ensign's parents paying off the Hamptons is that, in doing so, they relieved their son of having to make the payments himself and file them in his taxes. This revelation, had Ensign run for president, would have been severely damaging. Of course, as we've seen, the details of the affair and subsequent payments have come out already. (Although not in the self-reflective manner of Gov. Mark Sanford.)

Like most of the current bizarre news spectacles pouring out over the last few weeks -- Sanford and Gov. Palin's awkward resignation press conference -- there will be more information coming out soon. Was there more money? And where did it come from? Hopefully, the Senate Ethics Committee starts to look at this right away. (Or maybe the IRS.)

Are you a lawmaker in Washington wondering whether you are involved in a scandal or under investigation? Well, we've made a very simple game for you to play to help answer that question. Just follow the flow chart below to find out which lawmakers are embroiled in scandal and for what offense.

In total, the chart shows twenty-three lawmakers (21 congressmen and 2 senators) currently involved in a scandal. Most of these lawmakers are currently under investigation by either a congressional ethics body or the Department of Justice. In the case of Rep. Sanford Bishop, the state of Georgia is investigating an earmark he obtained for an organization employing his step-daughter and her husband.

Follow the chutes and ladders of ScandaLand below:

Am I Involved In A Scandal?
Personal Finances?		Shady Land Deal?		Gary Miller (R-CA) Ken Calvert (R-CA)
		Housing?		Chris Dodd (D-CT) Kent Conrad (D-ND) Charles Rangel (D-NY)
Earmarks?		Jerry Lewis (R-CA) Alan Mollohan (D-WV) John Murtha (D-PA) Pete Visclosky (D-IN) Sanford Bishop (D-GA) Don Young (R-AK) Charles Rangel (D-NY)
Breaking House Ethics Rules?		Caribbean Vacation?		Charles Rangel (D-NY) Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-MI) S. Jackson Lee (D-TX) Donald Payne (D-NJ) Bennie Thompson (D-MS) Donna Christensen (D-VI) Yvette Clarke (D-NY)
		Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) Linda Sanchez (D-CA) Tim Murphy (R-PA) Charles Rangel (D-NY)
Blagojevich?		Roland Burris (D-IL) Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)
Paying off mistress & cuckolded husband?		John Ensign (R-NV)
Congrats! You Are Not Embroiled In A Scandal

Inspired by the interactive guide to recent republican sex scandals

We've had our share of political scandals in this country, but there's something so--British--about the expense scandal swirling around members of parliament lately. A floating duck island? A little life coaching for a girlfriend? Poppy wreaths? And lots and lots of second home allowances.

While the story was broken by the Telegraph (and the word is that the paper probably paid big bucks for the information), the UK Guardian newspaper's "Data Store" is the spot to go to get google spreadsheets detailing all the details on which members of parliament spent how much on what. And much more, it turns out, from tax databases to swine flu to school performance records. The paper's Data Blog (slogan: facts are sacred), points out interesting trends and uses of the data.

That would include Tony Hirsch, of the Open University, who took the expense data and loaded it into the "Many Eyes" visualization tool. He came up with a number of intriguing charts and graphs, including this "scatter plot" that allows you to compare members' expenses on two axes. (See screen shot below.)

This is great stuff, and it looks as if the British government may be poised to take the concept further. Today  TechPresident reported that the British government is considering its own version of Data.gov. While a good amount of data is already made available by the British government, it comes in a variety of awkward formats (sound familiar)? Making these data available in easily downloadable form in one place would be a huge step forward. And it all will have that disctinctly British tone. My favorite data description listed? A health care database that gives you  "conditions by body-part."

In some ways it is unbelievable to think that a candidate for the United States Senate, fresh off of seven felony convictions, could win reelection. Never underestimate the power of resentment and incumbency. At the moment it appears that felonious Sen. Ted Stevens will be reelected to an eighth term. Sen. Stevens joins a few other scandal plagued lawmakers winning reelection.

Stevens' congressional partner, Rep. Don Young, under investigation by the Justice Department for various earmark schemes, appears headed back to Congress. Also, Rep. William Jefferson, facing a 16 count indictment on corruption charges, won handily in his New Orleans district. (Update: Jefferson's election was actually delayed due to new rules in Louisiana related to elections and hurricanes.)

Two Florida lawmakers embroiled in scandals did fail to win reelection. Rep. Tom Feeney, one of the last of the Abramoffian congressmen, lost badly. Feeney had to cut a commercial during the campaign in which he apologized for going on a golfing trip to Scotland that was secretly paid for by Jack Abramoff. Freshman Florida Rep. Tim Mahoney, caught in a TMZ style adultery scandal, was crushed in his attempted reelection.

Despite his likely victory, Sen. Stevens will be expelled, or forced to retire, from the U.S. Senate. As Yoda might say, "Convictions on felony counts do not a Senator make." Speeding up the process may be the desire for Republicans to finally purge their ranks of the members tainted by corruption. Republican Sen. John Ensign has already expressed the likely position of the Republican caucus, stating that expulsion would not wait until after Sen. Stevens' appeal process is complete.

Budgeting political risk helped Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and financial services companies avoid the kind of scrutiny they needed from Congress for the past several years. Millions of dollars in private travel, campaign contributions, and lobbyists-galore created a border wall that no regulation or reform could climb over. Florida Rep. Tim Mahoney's hole gets deeper as a 2nd affair is revealed, the FBI opens and investigation, and the Democrats ditch him. There's more in this round-up of today's news:

Dave Jamieson at The New Republic looks into the lavish treatment members and staffers of the House Financial Services Committee received from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and financial services companies in the years preceeding the collapse of the industry. Former chairman Mike Oxley, who now works for NASDAQ and as a lobbyist, approved a half-million dollars worth of privately paid travel, much of it offered by financial services companies. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had approximately one lobbyist for each member of the 70 person committee. Campaign contributions were spread around like butter on cornbread. Of course, all of this largesse eventually lured numerous staffers and committee members into the private sector and Jamieson names names:

Former Oxley adviser Carter McDowell moved on to the American Bankers Association; Karen Lynch Calton, one-time counsel to the committee, has lobbied for the Consumer Bankers Association; Greg Zerzan, an aide to Oxley, eventually went to the International Swaps and Derivatives Association; Linda Dallas Rich, a committee adviser, headed to the New York Stock Exchange; longtime Oxley aide Clinton Jones hopped to Fannie for a spell, before returning to Congress to serve Bachus on the finance committee; and even though Baker had been a perennial foe to the GSEs, the congressman's own former chief of staff, Duane Duncan, became a star on Fannie's lobbying team.

Rep. Tim Mahoney is in a load more trouble after the Associated Press revealed another affair and ABC News, the team that broke this story, reported that the FBI is investigating the allegations of hush money paid to the first reported mistress. It is alleged that Mahoney hired Patricia Allen, the first reported mistress, to both his campaign and congressional staffs. After things went sour (she discovered he was having another affair) Mahoney fired her and allegedly paid her $121,000 to keep her from filing a wrongful termination lawsuit. Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for an ethics committee investigation (although those haven't really led to anything since, I don't know, the 1990s) and House Democrats effectively abandoned the freshman Florida congressman to fend for himself in a difficult district.

The defense team in Sen. Ted Stevens' trial for filing false statements on his personal financial disclosure forms is attempting to show that the home renovations at the center of the charges were done for VECO's Bill Allen and not for Stevens. Stevens' daughter, Susan Stevens Covich, testified that when she appeared at her father's Girdwood, Alaska home to spend time while visiting Allen was present in numerous other people, often taking up all five available bedrooms leaving her to sleep on the couch. Covich said she stopped staying there after Allen's constant presence became "creepy". Previously, defense attorneys have shown that Stevens spends most of his time living in Washington, DC and not at the home in Girdwood. The judge presiding over the case stated that the case will likely be handed to the jury next week.

Sometimes congressional seats come fixed with a superstitious quality; a curse, perhaps. North Carolina's Class 3 Senate seat is famous for only electing one-term senators. No senator has served for more than one-term since Sam Ervin retired in 1974. Now, a spooky air covers Florida's 16th congressional district as a sex scandal, unearthed by ABC News, has hit freshman Rep. Tim Mahoney. This marks two elections in a row where the incumbent in Florida's 16th is hit with a sex scandal reported by ABC News just weeks before an election.

During the 2006 elections, ABC News reported that incumbent Rep. Mark Foley was engaged in improper relationships, both on- and off-line, with teenage male congressional pages. Foley resigned his seat immediately. Mahoney's scandal is a bit different from Foley's attempts to sleep with teenagers. Mahoney is accused of paying hush money, to the tune of $121,000, to a former mistress and ex-employee who is suing him for wrongful termination after she was fired soon after their affair went sour. Mahoney is also accused of arranging a $50,000 a year job for the woman with a public affairs firm that his reelection committee pays to do advertisements.

For the guy challenging Mahoney this cycle, watch out, ABC News has their eye on you.

What could be more annoying than tens of billions of taxpayer dollars used to bail out a huge, irresponisble corporation, essentially nationalizing the company? That corporation spending that money to lobby the very government that owns a majority stake in it. And that, children, is the story of AIG as told by AIG spokesman Joseph Norton, "We are not a GSE [government-sponsored entity] and are therefore not restricted. We remain a share-holder owned entity and continue advocacy activities." That is correct, the only problem being that the majority share-holder is the United States government.

Members of Congress are still looking to party for campaign contributions and Party Time is still tracking the fund raising events in Washington. This week we have a Janet Jackson concert, a Browns-Skins game, and a pheasant hunt. I hope that there are no wardrobe malfunctions, Redskins losses, or friends shot in the face at any of these events.

And our friends at Open Congress were profiled on local New York show Brian Lehrer Live. Watch the interview with OC's David Moore: OpenCongress.org with David Moore from Brian Lehrer Live on Vimeo.