Reich: When will the recovery begin? Never.

There's a lot of salacious back and forth today about the Ensign scandal. But beneath the tabloid headlines there's a critical question that needs to be asked:

Which is more emasculating? Getting paid a hundred grand by the guy who screwed your wife? Or being a fifty-something United States senator and still needing mom and dad to cut the check to pay off your mistress and her husband?

Thoughts?

From TPM Reader TO ...

I had a quick thought about the new Ensign revelations that I found amusing.

So first there was John Ensign with his affair. Shortly thereafter, Mark Sanford steps up to take the spotlight with his affair (and did he ever take the spotlight, with comments about true love and tragic love stories) Now John Ensign counters with some extra added financial impropriety to spice up his indiscretion.

I can't wait to see what Sanford does next to one up Ensign.

We've known for a while that Sen. Ensign (R-NV) gave a 'severance' payment of at least $25,000 to his ex-mistress and her husband. Now it turns out it was $96,000. But it gets better. Ensign's lawyer is pointing out that he didn't pay any money -- his parents paid them off.

Sen. Coburn (R-OK) is moving quickly to walk back earlier statements from his staff that appeared to concede that Coburn had advised Sen. Ensign (R-NV) to pay off his mistress and her husband. Here's the latest.

Now that Sen. Coburn (R-OK) has said he will not answer any questions about his conversations with Sen. Ensign (R-NV) because he was acting as his physician (and spiritual counselor), TPM Reader DE reminds us that Dr. Coburn is an OB/Gyn.

A deeper scandal than we'd ever imagined?

I'm a little curious why this is not getting more attention. We've known since last month that Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) admitted to an affair with a former senate staffer and claimed that the woman's husband had tried to extort money from him to keep the affair secret. That we know about.

But now it appears that Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) may have urged Ensign to pay the woman and her husband off to literally and figuratively get out of town.

As Zack Roth explains here, this is the claim made last night by Doug Hampton, the cuckolded husband. Yesterday Coburn and his representatives would not deny the claim and actually seemed to concede that he had urged Ensign to pay the Hamptons money. To the Politico, Coburn's spokesman John Hart "categorically" denied Hampton's claim but seemed to be pegging the denial to the dollar amount not to the general issue of advising him to pay money. (See the quotes in Zack's post and judge for yourself whether it amounted to an admission.) In one extra piece of humor, Hampton refers to the money as 'restitution.'

But now -- just since I started writing this post -- Coburn has come out with a new line entirely. Now he's categorically denying urging Ensign to pay any money at all. And now -- and here's the kicker -- Coburn is saying that he won't answer questions about this from the Ethics Committee or anyone else because his conversations with Ensign are constitutionally protected since he was providing counseling as a physician and a Church deacon.

Remember last week we learned that that goofball deputy from San Diego County Sheriff's Department had flipped out at that small Democratic fundraiser hosted at a home in the suburbs, spraying pepper spray into people's eyes, throwing people to the ground and calling in a fleet of police cars, a canine unit and even a police helicopter. And we got to thinking, are these guys in the habit of flipping out like this? Sending in the helicopter at a moment's notice, like an underutilized toy?

That was a bit hard to figure out. But we did find out that the Department's website has a special section devoted to para-militaryish photos of its helicopter force, with even some beef-cakish photos of the pilots with assault rifles ... I guess ready for some local community policing. Shocking these guys would fly off the handle. Take a look.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) says the US under Obama is like Germany under the Nazis.

Is Bibi Netanyahu really going around railing against President Obama's chief of staff and head political advisor "self-hating Jews."

You know how honoring the role of the slaves who helped build this country is an attack on America's Christian heritage?

Me neither.

But Rep. Steve King (R-IA) does.

Sarah Palin, says David Frum, "quit to cash in. Her admirers can excuse anything, but to the much larger audience of non-admirers, Palin will look a lot like those CEOs who wrecked their banks and the national economy while accepting huge bonuses for themselves personally. John McCain's slogan in 2008 was "Country First." Palin's in 2012? "I seen my opportunities, and I took 'em."

I said when this first came down the pike that it seemed far the most likely conclusion, since the bow-out was so obviously rushed, that Palin was resigning ahead of some big scandal coming down the pike. But I confess that now I'm not so certain of my initial judgment.

Palin of course has tons of scandals. But if a game changer was on the way, one she had to drop out of sight so quickly for, I think we'd have heard something about it by now. And she's hardly dropped out of sight. Not that I'm counting out the possibility by any means. I'm just not so sure.

Maybe it really was just that she suddenly got tired of the accountability thing. Or couldn't wait the eighteen months left on her contract to start shoveling up the dollars.

As I think a number of others have said, I've always thought Palin's character was essentially that of a grifter. And when these folks blow out of town after a con has run its course, it's usually a pretty hasty exit.

So maybe it all makes sense.

We told you last week about this bizarre incident in which an anti-gay heckler screamed taunts at a Democratic fundraiser at a home in suburban San Diego and then called in a noise complaint that led to a crowd of middle aged Dems being pepper-sprayed and two carted off to jail -- with a canine unit, more than a half a dozen police cars and a helicopter called in to boot.

So why did junior law man Marshall G. Abbott flip out and start shooting pepper spray in peoples' eyes and call reinforcements like he was involved in some sort of gang shoot out?

According to the preliminary report, he felt 'threatened' by the small crowd of middle- and retirement aged Democrats at the fundraiser and whipped out the pepper spray. All I can say is, thank God this doofus didn't reach for his gun. He reported also suffering "several scratches and minor swelling on both of his arms." But presumably he could have gotten those while throwing the hosts to the floor in restraint holds to place them under arrest.

Behold, Al Franken's swearing in ... in pictures.

We were looking back at pre-election funny Al Franken today, since it seems like we're in for at least a significant period of new boring Al. And I was reminded of this moment of old Funny Al terrorizing my dog Simon. Great days, great days ...