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.)

Since Wednesday, when the sex scandal engulfing Sen. John Ensign morphed into a public expense scandal, we've learned quite a few new details. Ensign was not blackmailed by Douglas Hampton. Cynthia Hampton's salary at Ensign's campaign doubled during the time of their affair. Ensign helped get jobs for Douglas Hampton and his son after they left Ensign's Senate office and the NRSC, respectively.

What we still don't know is whether Douglas Hampton was handsomely paid with taxpayer money when he left Ensign's Senate office and whether this could constitute as hush money. There are beginning to be calls for a Senate Ethics Committee investigation with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asking for the committee to investigate and require disclosure from Ensign. This is just such an awesome idea and here's why:

Back in 2007, around the time that Ensign was pursuing his close friend's wife, Ensign was leading a crusade to derail a bill that would require electronic filing of Senate campaign finance reports. (Yes, this bill, the one Sunlight has been advocating for since 2006.) How was Ensign trying to derail the bill? By offering an amendment that would require any group filing an ethics complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee against a senator to disclose all of their donors (pretty much any lawyer will tell you that this is unconstitutional). This would, in effect, stymie the open process by which the Senate Ethics Committee accepts complaints and would likely stop the committee from pursuing investigations. The Senate Ethics Committee is currently far more active than the House Ethics Committee, which does not accept outside complaints.

(Currently, Sen. Pat Roberts is trying to block the same electronic filing bill with Ensign's anti-investigation amendment. If you want to get rid of this Ensign protecting amendment, you can help out here.)

Now, I don't know if Sen. Ensign was trying to make the ethics process difficult to protect his own hide, but give a listen to how important he takes this issue. He even states that ethics complaints could be written on a bar napkin. I'd gander that writing on bar napkins is something that Ensign is more used to than the Senate Ethics Committee.