Ethics Hearings for Ensign?

It’s not clear to my why this has taken so long, but apparently Senate Democrats are at least considering holding ethics hearings on Sen. John Ensign (R–Nev.):

“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.

….Harkin’s public declaration — the first of its kind by a sitting senator — comes as Ensign’s Senate colleagues stand to make life more difficult for him. 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.

….Other Democratic senators are supportive of such a step. West Virginia Sen. John Rockefeller, who backed public hearings on Packwood, said he “would have to be consistent” with Ensign. “Situations change, but people don’t,” he said.

A third Democratic senator, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he’d back public hearings on Ensign as well, “but I would hope he would do the right thing before then, which is to [resign].”

The craziness of the 90s gave both sides pause about the use of ethics charges as political weapons, and I get that nobody is thrilled about diving into that particular cesspool again. But come on. This isn’t just an affair or an undeclared golf trip or something like that. There’s considerable evidence to suggest that Ensign not only had an affair with an aide’s wife and covered it up, but that he deliberately paid off the aide in a way calculated to evade IRS disclosure laws and then used his influence to try and get his aide outside employment. This is crazy bad stuff. If the ethics committee can’t hold hearings on that, they might just as well disband themselves.