The sky is falling on Sen. John Ensign now that the details of the cover-up of his affair with a staffer and the subsequent paying off of her and her husband come to light. My how far we've come from the standing ovation he got received after news of the affair broke and he begged for forgiveness from his colleagues in the Senate Republican caucus. But now, not one, not one, single, Republican will go on record to defend Ensign. Not Sen. Tom holier-than-thou Coburn, who threw him under the bus and who admitted to being a willingly participant in the cover up of the affair by becoming the middleman for paying off the mistress & her husband (via the NY Times): And Mr. Ensign allowed Senator Tom Coburn, a friend and fellow conservative Christian, to serve as an intermediary with the Hamptons in May in discussing a large financial settlement, to help them rebuild their lives. “John got trapped doing something really stupid and then made a lot of other mistakes afterward,” Mr. Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, said in an interview. “Judgment gets impaired by arrogance, and that’s what’s going on here.”[...] ...On Valentine’s Day, they confronted Mr. Ensign during lunch at the house. Mr. Hampton, yelling at times, was there, too. Mr. Coburn, an ordained deacon, took the lead in questioning Mr. Ensign, who acknowledged that Mr. Hampton’s accusation was true. “I said, ‘No. 1, you’re having an affair, and you need to stop,’ ” Mr. Coburn recounted. The senator said he also advised Mr. Ensign to make the affair public and to work to reconcile the two families. Mr. Coburn warned Mr. Ensign that if the affair did not end, he would “go to Mitch” — referring to Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, Mr. Hampton said. That began a series of intense, though ultimately futile conversations intended to reach a financial settlement. Mr. Hampton went back to Mr. Coburn, who offered to talk to Mr. Ensign about restitution for the Hamptons to help them relocate from Nevada. Mr. Coburn