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.