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Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) acknowledged Tuesday that he had “violated the vows” of marriage by having an affair with a campaign staffer. The admission — made in a televised appearance in Las Vegas — shocked Ensign’s Senate colleagues and delivered a serious blow to any hopes he might have had of seeking the GOP presidential nomination in 2012. Political insiders in the Senate and in Nevada told POLITICO that Ensign began the affair with the staffer several months after he separated from his wife, Darlene. When Ensign reconciled with his wife, the sources said, he gave the aide a severance...

Nevada Republican Sen. John Ensign has told colleagues that he plans to admit an extramarital affair, a senior Republican official tells POLITICO. Political insiders in the Senate and in Nevada told POLITICO that Ensign began an affair with a staffer several months after he separated from his wife. When Ensign reconciled with his wife, the sources said, he gave the aide a severance package and parted ways. Sometime later, a Nevada source said, Ensign met with the husband of the woman involved and had what this source described as a positive encounter. Sources said that the man subsequently asked Ensign...

<p>Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) has acknowledged an extramarital affair with a campaign staffer in a statement released by his office. "I deeply regret and am very sorry for my actions," said Ensign. He is expected to announce the affair at a press conference at 6:30 pm tonight. The affair, which was with a woman who worked for both Ensign's re-election campaign and his Battle Born leadership political action committee, began in December 2007 and ended in August 2008. Ensign's wife, Darlene, said that the couple's "marriage has become stronger" and added: "I love my husband."</p>

UPDATE, 5:55 p.m.: Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) has acknowledged an extramarital affair with a campaign staffer in a statement released by his office. "I deeply regret and am very sorry for my actions," said Ensign....

SIOUX CITY - U.S. Sen. John Ensign, a conservative Republican from Nevada, said Monday in Sioux City his party can appeal to women and minorities on educational choice. "This is an issue we can actually take back," Ensign said. Stirring speculation about a potential presidential run in 2012 the telegenic, silver-haired veterinarian spoke to more than 100 people in attendance for an American Future Fund lecture at the main library in downtown Sioux City. Earlier in the day Ensign toured the Blue Bunny ice cream plant in Le Mars and Trans Ova Genetics in Sioux Center. Before he entered politics,...

Nevada Sen. John Ensign predicted Monday that President Barack Obama will be vulnerable in the next election, but only if "fresh voices and fresh faces" emerge to make the case for core Republican values. In a one-day visit to Iowa, where precinct caucuses launch the presidential nominating process, Ensign made the case that Republicans have gone astray and that's led to two consecutive electoral disasters. "Our party got away from its basic principles," Ensign said in an interview with The Associated Press. The trip marked his first visit to Iowa, and at times it looked like the presidential campaign swings...

Click here to watch the videoTalk on Nevada host Andy Matthews interviews Geoffrey Lawrence, NPRI's fiscal policy analyst, on Nevada's budget situation. Geoffrey is the author of Nevada's Freedom Budget: 2009-2011, which would fund priorities, eliminate waste and save Nevada over $1.7 billion compared to the legislature's budget. Andy and Geoffrey also talk about legislature's proposed job-killing, record-setting, billion dollar tax increase,

Nevada Senator's June Trip Is Raising Talk Of 2012 Sen. John Ensign's June 1 trip to Iowa is looking more and more like a day straight out of a White House hopeful's itinerary, a sign that the 2012 campaign is already under way in the Hawkeye State, which hosts the first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses. The Nevada Republican is flying into Sioux Falls on the last day of the Memorial Day recess before a four-week work period in Congress. He has three stops scheduled before he heads back to the nation's capital: an address on behalf of the American Future Fund's conservative...

The laws of war, as subscribed to by most civilized nations -- even if adherence can be spotty -- draw an important distinction between uniformed prisoners of war and irregulars who wear no recognizable uniform, the better to meld into the general populace of non-combatants in order to act as spies or saboteurs, blowing up military installations behind the lines. Once uniformed prisoners are taken, the rules call for them to be treated in a humane manner. Not so plainclothes spies, partisans and irregulars. In part because their activities blur the line between the military and the civilian populace, leading...

Referring to the Chavez handshake.

WASHINGTON, April 3 (UPI) -- A spokesman for Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said Transportation Security Administration employees slipped an encouraging note into an Ensign staffer's luggage. Ensign spokesman Tory Mazzola said a staffer flying into Washington discovered a note in his suitcase that was signed by six TSA employees and thanked the senator for his efforts to lift the gun ban in the nation's capital, Politico reported Friday. "To Senator Ensign: Please continue to defend our conservative values with all your vigor, particularly our Second Amendment! Thank you," the note read. Mazzola said it was the first time someone had...

Washington, D.C., has a news media strongly in favor of endless government growth and voters who lean strongly Democratic. So, with Democrats now in control of both Congress and the White House, it wasn't hard to foresee the resurfacing of the old cry for "a vote in Congress for the District of Columbia." Voters in the district have been stripped of the "right" to have a voting representative in Congress, according to sponsors of the so-called Voting Rights Act of 2009, which would give the District a voting representative for the first time. The problem is that the Constitution makes...

U.S. Senate Votes to Uphold Second Amendment in Washington, D.C. Thursday, February 26, 2009 Fairfax, Va. - The United States Senate has voted, with overwhelming bipartisan support, to adopt an amendment offered by Senator John Ensign (R-NV) that seeks to protect the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens in the District of Columbia. The amendment, attached to S.160, the D.C. Voting Rights Act, will repeal restrictive gun control laws passed by the District of Columbia's (D.C.) city council after the landmark D.C. v. Heller Supreme Court decision. The vote margin was 62-36. "Today's vote brings us one step closer to...

Washington — It sounds too good to be true, and it just might be: 4 percent, 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage loans to buy or refinance houses, guaranteed by Uncle Sam. What homeowner in Nevada wouldn’t sign up? Thirty-year fixed-rate loans are going for just over 5 percent, an excellent rate by modern standards. The 4 percent loans are among several housing-related provisions Sen. John Ensign and Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate are developing as alternatives to President Barack Obama’s nearly $900 billion economic recovery plan now before them. Republican senators are hoping to put a more lasting imprint on the...

Sen. John Ensign (Nev.) on Wednesday indicated that Republicans would look to work with President Obama more than their Democratic counterparts in Congress. “It’s really not a time to be obstructionist,” Ensign, chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, said on Fox News. “It’s a time where we as a party need to try to work with especially President Obama and try to solve some of the country’s problems.” The senator said Republicans would still voice their disagreements but would seek out issues on which they can cooperate with the new president. “As a matter of fact, I think he...

Seven Republican senators signed a letter sent to President Bush on Tuesday, urging him not to use Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds in a bailout of U.S. automakers. The senators wrote that absent restructuring, they "do not believe any amount of money will succeed in saving these companies." The letter was sent by Senators Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina), Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama), John Ensign (R-Nevada), Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia).

Ensign: Dems Would Pay "Heavy Political Price" If Franken Disputes Election in Senate By Philip Klein on 12.2.08 @ 4:37PM Sen. John Ensign, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a conference call that Senate Democrats were unlikely to take the political risk of contesting the Minnesota election results in the U.S. Senate. "I think that the Democratic majority will not want to see this come to the Senate," Ensign said this afternoon. He added that, "there will be a heavy political price to pay" if they try to overturn the choice of Minnesota voters. Ensign said he...

National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Ensign (Nev.), who has spent a major part of the election cycle hectoring fellow GOP Senators to contribute to the outgunned committee, told his colleagues at their weekly luncheon Tuesday that he was contributing $300,000 from his re-election fund to the NRSC. Last month, Ensign bleakly informed his colleagues that he would have to scale back on the NRSC's independent expenditures because they had not ponied up enough money to compete with the Democrats. Through July 31, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had almost $43 million in the bank; the NRSC had $25.4 million...

Mr. Ensign dismissed reports that contributions to the Republicans by disgruntled small donors are down this year. He maintained the party's contributor base is intact. The Republican Party long has boasted that it is the party of small donors while the Democratic Party has had to rely far more on wealthy contributors to finance election campaigns. He said the Republican Party never suffered a loss in small donors, only a shrinkage in the net amount of money raised - a decline that he said was not the result of small donors being disgusted with excessive Republican spending in Congress but...

The U.S. Senate finally appears to understand that American citizens do not want illegal immigrants rewarded for breaking the law, and Nevada Sen. John Ensign is a big reason why. The economic stimulus bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee last week included a measure that requires tax rebate recipients and dependent children to have valid Social Security numbers. That measure was introduced by Sen. Ensign after he pointed out that the rebate legislation, if not amended, would allow illegal immigrants working under fraudulent taxpayer identification numbers to receive checks. "I am not sure the American taxpayer would like people...