Admission clouds Nevada Sen. John Ensign's future

Douglas Hampton was paid about $101,000 in 2008 and $144,000 in 2007 as Ensign's administrative assistant. But a financial disclosure form he filed in 2007 and 2008 — required for senior congressional staffers - showed only checking and savings account worth a maximum $30,000 combined. A review of public records shows that the Hamptons in 2006 took out a $1.2 million mortgage on their Las Vegas home, at an interest rate of 8 percent. Political insiders in Nevada and in the Senate said that Ensign decided to acknowledge the affair publicly after the husband of the woman he had been seeing asked him for a substantial sum of money....