Coming from Democrats and Republicans alike, calls are mounting for Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) to resign, but it seems that an increasing number of conservatives are trying to use his reprehensible behavior for partisan attacks. On his show yesterday, right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh called Weiner “the face of Democrat family values — he is the epitome of the Democrat culture of corruption, the Democrat culture of erection.”

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the ethics watchdog House Government Oversight Committee, took a different tack, telling conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt yesterday that Democrats will let Weiner off the hook because there’s “a different standard between Republicans and Democrats” when it comes to ethics scandals:

HEWITT: Yeah, so I’m going to come back to that in a segment where we can set it up. But I do have to ask you, Eric Cantor, the leader of the Republicans today, called on Anthony Weiner to quit, said I don’t condone his activity, and I think he should resign. What’s your opinion, Darrell Issa?

ISSA: Well, first of all, I agree with Eric, who’s my leader, and who’s a classmate of mine and a friend. But I think Eric’s missing one point. Anthony Weiner’s not a Republican. He won’t resign. There’s a different standard between Republicans and Democrats. Yes, if he were Chris Lee, well, actually, Chris Lee did less and resigned immediately. There is a different standard that Speaker Boehner and Leader Cantor hold us to. And we should hold ourselves to it, but if we don’t, in the case of Chris Lee, who didn’t, you’re gone. They’re not doing that on the other side. [...]

Out of 435 members and six delegates and commissioners, we are going to have human failures. The question is, will we hold ourselves to the standards Republicans are being held to, or the no standards the Democrats hold themselves to?

While Issa is correct is saying there seems to be a “different standard” between the parties when it comes to scandals, he need only look across the Capitol to the Senate to see that he has it backwards. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) admitted in 2007 to patronizing the DC Madam prostitution ring — a crime “a degree or two more egregious” than Weiner’s, as former RNC Chairman Michael Steele said — yet Vitter remains in the Senate to this day. How did Republicans respond to Vitter’s transgression? With “a concerted push” to defend the embattled senator. “[T]he state GOP organized the release of a flurry of supportive statements,” the New Orleans Times Picayune reported at the time.

Issa could also look at the case of former Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), who remained in the Senate a full two years after admitting to having an extramarital affair with the wife of a staffer, whom he bribed with $96,000 in hush money and illegally helped acquire a lobbying job. Ensign only resigned last month because of the pending release of a damning Senate Ethics Committee investigation and the possibly that he could be kicked out of the chamber.

In neither case did GOP leaders call for the senators to step down. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was satisfied with Ensign giving up his GOP leadership spot in 2009, saying, “He’s accepted responsibility for his actions and apologized to his family and constituents.” Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), the Senate’s number two Republican, offered support for Ensign, calling him a good friend and saying he still had a role to play in the party. “He’s a very intelligent senator,” Kyl said. “John is a person of great faith. So I know this is a very, very difficult deal for he and his family.”

In contrast, House Democratic Leaders like Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Steve Israel (D-NY) have called for an ethics investigation, while Reps. Allyson Schwartz (D-PA), Joe Donnelly (D-IN), Mike Michaud (D-ME), and many more privately, have called for Weiner’s resignation.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus refused to discuss the Vitter scandal earlier this week, despite being the most vocal leader calling for Weiner’s resignation. But even his predecessor Steele sees some “inconsistency” in the GOP grandstanding.

After a 22-month investigation, the Senate Ethics Committee released a report on the conduct of Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), who resigned early this month. The report contains voluminous evidence suggesting Ensign may have violated several laws in an effort to cover up an affair with a member of his staff. The committee has referred the matter to the Department of Justice.

Contained in the 67-page report, however, is troubling evidence of the central role that current Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) played in trying to keep Ensign’s mistress and her husband quiet — evidence that contradicts Coburn’s previous public statements on the matter.

In July 2009, Coburn said he was consulting with Ensign “as a physician and as an ordained deacon” and he considered it a “privileged communication that I will never reveal to anybody.” Asked about the claim from Doug Hampton, the husband of Ensign’s mistress, that he “urged Ensign to pay the Hamptons millions of dollars,” Coburn said, “I categorically deny everything he said.”

Coburn was similarly blunt in a November 22, 2009 interview with George Stephanopoulos:

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., told me flatly that he did not offer to broker a million-dollar deal between his Senate colleague, John Ensign, R-Nev., and the family of Ensign’s mistress.

Doug Hampton, the husband of a staffer with whom Ensign had an affair, makes the explosive allegation in an interview with “Nightline’s” Cynthia McFadden that will air on Monday.

…When I asked Coburn on This Week if Hampton is telling the truth, he said, “There was no negotiation,” but acknowledged that he had worked to “bring two families to a closure of a very painful episode.”

Watch it:

Coburn eventually agreed to cooperate with the Ethics Committee; their findings on the level of his involvement are startling. According to the committees report, Coburn actively assisted in the discussions of a hush money package, negotiating a proposed package from $8 million down to $2.8 million. The ethics committee report, on pages 37 to 38, describes the negotiation between Mr. Albregts, an attorney for the husband of Ensign’s mistress, and Sen. Coburn:

Mr. Albregts tried to get a ballpark estimate from Senator Coburn as to the amount he would be comfortable with. Mr. Albregts proposed $8 million based on a document Doug Hampton prepared. According to Mr. Albregts, Senator Coburn said that the figure was absolutely ridiculous. Senator Coburn then stated that the Ensigns should buy the Hamptons home because it is so close to the Ensigns, and the Hamptons should receive an amount of money above and beyond that to start over, buy a new home, have some living money while they were looking for new employment, and possibly some seed money to send the children off to college. Senator Coburn stated that that’s what I’ve thought from day one would be fair, but said that $8 million was nowhere close to a reasonable figure. Senator Coburn told Mr. Albregts to figure out what those amounts would be, and call him back.

Mr. Albregts then spoke with Mr. Hampton, and asked him how much it would cost to get the house paid for, and how much he needed above that figure to get started somewhere new. Mr. Hampton then came back with some figures, and estimated $1.2 million for the home, and another $1.6 million to get started somewhere new. Mr. Albregts called Senator Coburn back for the final time with this revised figure on the same day in a five-minute call. Per Mr. Albregts, Senator Coburn responded by stating that okay, that’s what I had in mind and I think is fair and said he would take the figure to the Ensigns.

The Ensigns rejected the new offer. Previous reports referenced Coburn’s role as a go-between but did not reveal the extent of his inovlement in the negotations. The report notes that “Mr. Albregts testified that Senator Coburn took an active role in the negotiations between Mr. Hampton and Senator Ensign, and this role included proposing specific resolutions.” Coburn told the committee that he was “simply going to pass information” to Ensign.

One thing is certain: Tom Coburn has a lot of explaining to do.

One week ago today, Nevada Senator John Ensign (R) resigned from office following a well-publicized sex scandal and subsequent ethics investigation. He gave his final speech on the Senate floor to a mostly empty chamber. Today his successor, Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV), took the oath of office.

Heller was appointed by Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) in a seemingly political move designed to give Heller the advantage of incumbency in upcoming primary and general elections for the Senate seat. Sandoval thwarted Democratic efforts to make the process of replacing Ensign more transparent and has thrown the state into chaos as Nevada prepares to hold its first ever special election to fill Heller’s seat in the 2nd congressional district.

In most respects, Heller is a cookie-cutter conservative. A side-by-side comparison of Heller and Ensign’s records reveals that both men scored as more conservative than three-fourths of the House and Senate, respectively. However, in some ways Heller may be even more extreme than his predecessor, especially since he has tried to appease members of the Tea Party in the past year. A review of some of Heller’s eyebrow-raising moments:

- Heller recently said he was “proud to be the only member of Congress who will get to vote” against Medicaid twice – once in the House and again in the Senate.

– Heller was among the 130 Republicans who wanted to end birthright citizenship. 

– He once claimed unemployment benefits are creating “hobos.”

– In 2004, he said “John Kerry changes his position more often than a Nevada prostitute.”

– In 2007, Heller voted against the SCHIP bill, denying health care coverage to 4 million children.

– In contrast to Ensign, Heller voted to uphold “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to continue barring gays from serving in the military.

– Heller voted against the Troubled Asset Relief Program of 2008, while Ensign voted for it.

It’s an exaggeration to say, as one publication did, that Heller makes “Ensign look like Dennis Kucinich,” but it’s clear that the ultraconservative certainly won’t be a moderating influence on the Senate.

As ThinkProgress noted yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell requested and received millions of dollars in earmarks for this year’s omnibus spending bill, but has now denounced the measure and plans to vote against it. Overall, Republican Senators have gotten nearly $2 billion in earmarks into the omnibus, and yet because of concerns over “wasteful spending,” they are threatening to block the entire bill — which contains not only funding for their own projects, but the money the federal government needs to operate past this weekend.

Yesterday, Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and John Thune (R-SD) denounced earmarks and the omnibus bill during a press conference, despite requesting hundreds of millions of dollars of earmarks between them. “I support those projects, but I don’t support this bill,” reasoned Thune. Cornyn defended himself in a “heated exchange” with ABC News’ Jonathan Karl:

Today, the Washington Post reports that two of the most prolific earmarkers in Congress — “unabashed spending barons” Republican Sens. Roger Wicker and Thad Cochran of Mississippi — are also planning to vote against the omnibus, despite being responsible for 405 earmarks costing over $865 million.

Sens. McConnell, Wicker, Cochran, Cornyn and Thune are far from the only earmark hypocrites, however. A large number of Republicans requested substantial earmarks for the 2011 omnibus, despite a history of demagoguing the earmark process, and also plan to vote against a bill that included many of their requests. An examination of Taxpayers for Common Sense’s database of earmark requests for this year’s omnibus and their database of who was awarded earmarks last year, along with Sen. Tom Coburn’s working database of the earmarks that actually made it into this year’s omnibus, reveal quite a bit of Republican hypocrisy:

– Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) said on Fox News’ “Happening Now” this morning that he would vote against the omnibus bill. He requested 291 earmarks totaling over $770.5 million, and succeeded in getting 86 earmarks into the omnibus.

– Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is opposing the omnibus because it’s “full of unnecessary spending which grows the federal government.” He requested 116 earmarks costing $326.8 million, and the omnibus contains one of these for $379,000.

– Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s (R-TX) office said she will vote against the omnibus, which she tried to insert 119 earmarks into, at a cost of $770.9 million. She has $140 million earmarked in the bill.

– Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) will also oppose the omnibus, because it “simply spends too much.” Chambliss requested 122 earmarks totaling $492 million. He achieved $56 million in earmarks in the omnibus.

– Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) blasted the “massive, 2,000 page spending bill” in a statement. Burr tried for 82 earmarks, totaling $287.1 million, and received most of them.

– Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) “has been railing against the spending in that massive bill that could come to a vote before the lame duck session.” He requested 32 earmarks this year, totaling $115.8 million, and got nearly all of them — almost $100 million — into the omnibus.

– Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT) tweeted today that “Defending the #earmark establishment is not leadership. Defending business-as-usual in Washington isn’t either. Leaders lead by example.” Rehberg is a proud member of the “earmark establishment” — last year he was the fifth-largest earmarker in the House, with 89 earmarks in the 2010 omnibus totaling $103.5 million.

– Rep. Chris Lee (R-NY) said on Fox Business Channel this morning that “It’s a week before Christmas, and unfortunately my Democratic colleagues like to play Santa Claus to the tune of $8 billion in new earmarks.” Lee was in a much more festive mood last year, with 36 earmarks totaling over $33.3 million in the 2010 omnibus.

– Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) tweeted today that “A HUGE spending bill is making its way through Congress. $1.1 trillion and 6,000 earmarks. We must stop it. I encourage the President to veto.” Last year, however, Wilson got 15 earmarks costing over $23.3 million in the 2010 omnibus.

It is the height of hypocrisy for these Republicans — all of whom have a long history of earmarking, and in most cases requested and received earmarks in this very bill — to suddenly oppose it because of a newly found opposition to “wasteful” spending.

As the new class of GOP lawmakers prepare to assume office, congressional Republicans are increasingly divided over earmarks. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and others are fighting to preserve the practice. On the other hand, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is leading a group of Republicans deeply opposed to earmarks of any kind. Over the weekend DeMint released an updated list of senators standing behind him and his cause. Sen.-elect Mike Lee (R-UT), one of DeMint’s most stalwart lieutenants in his earmark battle, clarified the GOP’s opposition to earmarks, defining them to include any specific grant money authorized by larger legislative items. Referring to the earmarking process, Lee told libertarian radio host Eric Dondero that he is fed up with lawmakers playing “Santa Claus” by doling out money from grant programs in laws like President Obama’s health care reform and economic stimulus package.

However, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), one of DeMint’s supporters, appears to have been playing “Santa Claus” by Lee’s definition, demanding money from the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s health care reform law enacted early this year. Over the summer, Ensign sent a letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius requesting grant money authorized by the law for the University of Nevada School of Medicine for “Primary Care Residency Expansion.” This grant program is one of many included in the health law to increase the number of doctors in America. In the letter, Ensign explained that “Nevada continues to have an extremely low number of physicians per capita,” and that the grant would help alleviate the “growing challenges Nevada continues to face with providing access to much-needed health care.”

ThinkProgress obtained a copy of the letter using a Freedom of Information Act request. Below is a screen shot of Ensign’s health reform request letter, and a copy may be downloaded here:

According to HHS, Ensign was successful with his request. The HHS website notes that the agency has awarded $960,000 in health reform money to the University of Nevada for a Primary Care Residency Expansion program.

This is not the first time prominent Republicans have played “Santa Claus” with laws they have opposed. In 2009, Republicans like Ensign smeared Obama’s stimulus as a waste and a failure. However, Ensign (and even DeMint) privately requested stimulus money for their states.

Ensign’s letter to HHS serves as a stark reminder that while Republicans have ludicrously smeared the health reform law with lies and demagoguery, in private they realize its benefits to their constituents. Like every other GOP lawmaker, Ensign voted against the Affordable Care Act and like nearly every other GOP lawmaker, has pledged to repeal the entire law — including the grant program from which he requested money for his own state. Similarly, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has taken credit for Medicare improvements made possible by the Affordable Care Act, even though he too opposed the law. As the Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky has reported, Republican governors posturing as staunch opponents of health reform have quietly worked to quickly implement the law.

The GOP seems committed to playing politics with the nation’s health care crisis. The earmark debate, and the attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, are nothing more than political theater designed to distract from the reality that Republicans have proposed no substantial solutions to the nation’s most critical problems. There are tens of thousands of Americans dying because of lack of proper health insurance, and as Ensign’s letter shows, many states are already suffering from a broken, unregulated system of care. But rather than fix any serious problems, Ensign and his cohorts are focused solely on breaking Obama’s agenda so that he is a “a one-term president.”

In June 2009, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) announced at a press conference that in the previous year he had “violated the vows” of his marriage by carrying on an affair with one of his campaign staffers, who was married to one of his Senate staffers. It was later revealed that Ensign had his parents pay the couple $96,000 and arranged for his former legislative assistant, Doug Hampton, “to join a political consulting firm and lined up several donors as his lobbying clients.” Ensign and his staff then “repeatedly intervened on the companies’ behalf with federal agencies, often after urging from Mr. Hampton.”

In an interview with RNC Chairman Michael Steele taped this week for “Face to Face With Jon Ralston,” Ralston asked Steele if he would be “outraged” if “a Democratic senator had an affair with a staffer, had his parents pay her off, fired both her and her husband who worked for him and then tried to get the husband jobs.” First, Steele claimed he didn’t know who Ralston was talking about. But when Ralston said it was Ensign, Steele said it didn’t have an “opinion” on it because he “wasn’t chairman of the party at the time all that took place”:

STEELE: I don’t know. Who is, who is the individual you’re talking about?

RALSTON: The individual happens to be John Ensign. I was just putting the shoe on the other foot. You haven’t said anything about John Ensign because he’s one of yours. You’re Mr. Double Standard.

STEELE: Really?

RALSTON: You are.

STEELE: Is that how you take that?

RALSTON: I’m asking ya.

STEELE: I wasn’t chairman of the party at the time all that took place so I have no opinion on it.

RALSTON: What are you talking about? It took place last year.

STEELE: I wasn’t chairman of the party.

Watch it:

Unless Steele is somehow claiming that the scandal doesn’t concern him because he wasn’t chairman while the actual affair was happening, his statement is absolutely ridiculous. Steele was elected RNC chairman on Jan. 30, 2009. Ensign admitted his affair on June 16, 2009, and the New York Times reported on the potential ethical problems of his efforts to get Hampton a job on Oct. 1, 2009.

Steele hasn’t always acted as though the Ensign scandal preceded him. In July 2009, he dismissed Ensign’s scandal as “old news, old-school.” Additionally, this isn’t the first time that Steele has tried to downplay controversy by re-writing the time line of his chairmanship. Last week, he claimed that he wrote his new book before he was chairman, despite making multiple references in the book to events that happened during his chairmanship.

Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and John Ensign (R-NV) announced yesterday that they would invoke an unusual Senate procedure — a “constitutional point of order” — to allow the Senate to rule by majority vote on whether the “Democrat health care takeover bill” is unconstitutional.

Significantly, neither DeMint nor Ensign cite a single judge, justice or reputable constitutional scholar who believes that health reform is unconstitutional.  Instead, they rely entirely on a study by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, a radical “tenther” organization which has endorsed the view that Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the federal minimum wage, and the federal ban on workplace discrimination and whites-only lunch counters are all unconstitutional.  Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), rebuts DeMint and Ensign’s constitutional claim by citing numerous constitutional scholars — including right-wing law professor Jonathan Adler — who all agree that health reform is constitutional. Moreover, as ThinkProgress has previously explained, even ultra-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia disagrees with the tenther attack on health reform.

Sadly, DeMint and Ensign’s attempt to change the meaning of the Constitution by invoking a constitutional point of order is an all too familiar tactic. As CQ reports, Republicans often invoke this procedure to claim that bills they don’t like must therefore be unconstitutional. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) recently invoked the procedure to claim that a $200,000 federal grant to an Omaha, Neb. museum somehow violated the constitution. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) used it to protest a bill to enfranchise D.C. residents.

Raising a constitutional point of order is also the first step to invoking the so-called “nuclear option,” an elaborate set of procedural maneuvers Republicans dreamed up while they were still in the majority, that effectively declare the filibuster unconstitutional.  Indeed, despite the fact that Ensign and DeMint now claim the right to filibuster anything the majority does, both senators believed the filibuster must be unconstitutional when it was being used against them.  Ensign claimed that the Senate has a “constitutional obligation” to give President Bush’s most radical judicial nominees an “up-or-down” vote, and DeMint had even harsher words for Democratic senators who opposed majority rule:

The obstructionists should go to the Senate floor, make their arguments, allow senators to draw their conclusions on her nomination and then let us vote. If their arguments are so strong, they should be able to convince a majority to agree. Otherwise, they are simply smearing the integrity of a highly respected jurist to score political points against the president, at the expense of vandalizing the Constitution. . . .

There is a reason Americans elected George W. Bush and a large Republican majority in Congress. The majority of Americans trusted our judgment on judicial nominees. There is also a reason Democrats are in the minority. Most Americans did not trust them to make these decisions.

Now that DeMint and Ensign are in the minority, however, it simply must be the case that the Constitution protects minority obstructionism–and that bills opposed by the minority are unconstitutional.

Late last week, the New York Times documented new ethics problems for Sen. John Ensign (R-NV). In an effort to cover-up an affair he was having with the wife of one of his top staffers, Ensign asked his corporate allies to give that aide — Doug Hampton — a lobbying job. Despite rules that prohibit congressional staffers from lobbying for one year after leaving their government position, Ensign nevertheless helped Hampton line up lobbying clients and then “repeatedly intervened on the companies’ behalf with federal agencies.”

Ensign “could be legally at risk” if he knew that Hampton was violating the one-year ban, or if he aided and abetted him in doing so. Law enforcement officials told the Times that the F.B.I. is “likely to open a preliminary investigation” into the new accusations to determine whether a full investigation is warranted. The FBI inquiry would take precedence over a Senate ethics inquiry.

This morning on CNN’s State of the Union, Senate ethics chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA) announced “there’s a preliminary investigation going on, and we will look at all aspects of this case.” When asked whether Ensign can continue to “serve effectively,” Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) — a member of the Senate Republican leadership — refused to lend his support to Ensign. We should simply “wait and see what happens,” Kyl said. Watch it:

Ensign is finding no support among his long-time friends and colleagues on Capitol Hill. On Friday, Republican leader Mitch McConnell dodged the issue. “I really don’t have any observations to make about the Ensign matter,’’ McConnell told reporters.