It’s simply incredible that Ensign still has a job, not because of the adultery, but because of the clear corruption of his dealings. But I don’t know how much longer that will last, with investigators poking around.

Corrupt adulterer and Republican Senator John Ensign isn’t up for re-election until 2012. That’s a good thing, because his total fundraising take for the first quarter of 2010 wouldn’t pay for pens and pencils for the campaign office that he couldn’t afford rent on.

The Department of Justice has served subpoenas on six Las Vegas businessmen with ties to Nevada’s favorite GOPlayboy — the guy who put the “fun” in being a fundamentalist Christian, Senator John Ensign.

I don’t know if this will derail Marco Rubio in the Republican primary – if I had to guess it won’t – but the biggest papers in Florida just looked back at his record and found a huge slush fund for both political and personal activities, maintained through special interest donations.

Quite a few observers, including this blogger, have been stunned and frustrated at the refusal to investigate what was almost certain accounting fraud at Lehman. Despite the bankruptcy administrator’s effort to blame the gaping hole in Lehman’s balance sheet on its disorderly collapse, the idea that the firm, which was by its own accounts solvent, would suddenly spring a roughly $130+ billion hole in its $660 balance sheet, is simply implausible on its face. Indeed, it was such common knowledge in the Lehman flailing about period that Lehman’s accounts were sus that Hank Paulson’s recent book mentions repeatedly that Lehman’s valuations were phony as if it were no big deal.

Well, it is folks, as a [pdf] newly-released examiner’s report by Anton Valukas in connection with the Lehman bankruptcy makes clear. The unraveling isn’t merely implicating Fuld and his recent succession of CFOs, or its accounting firm, Ernst & Young, as might be expected. It also emerges that the NY Fed, and thus Timothy Geithner, were at a minimum massively derelict in the performance of their duties, and may well be culpable in aiding and abetting Lehman in accounting fraud and Sarbox violations.

Embattled New York Governor (I don’t know, “embattled” seems like the wrong word here, but I’ll press on. . . ) David Paterson will not run for election this fall, the New York Daily News is reporting. Paterson, long suffering from low approval ratings, an uncooperative State legislature, and a fiscal crisis, has been dogged this month by stories of questionable conduct by a close aide, David Johnson—and earlier this week, that story escalated to include the Governor, himself.

The governor has long been thought vulnerable to a primary challenge from State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, though Cuomo has not officially entered the race. Whispers around New York suspect that Cuomo or his close associates have something to do with driving the story of Paterson’s aide to the surface.

Max Baucus’ then State Director and now girlfriend, Melodee Hanes, helped arrange Baucus’ separation from his then-wife in 2007.