Let's start the day with some upbeat news, for once. Here's a heartwarming little story about neighbors helping neighbors: It seems Nevada Sen. John Ensign's elderly parents, at their son's request, made a donation to an area family that had been burned by fallout from John Ensign's penis. Wasn't that generous of them?

Republican Sen. John Ensign said today his parents paid the family of his mistress $96,000 in April 2008, as she and her husband were ending their employment with him.

In a statement issued this afternoon, Ensign said his parents made the gifts "out of concern of the well-being of the longtime family friends during a difficult time."

Of course, in this day and age no good deed goes unpunished…

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an ethics watchdog group, called on the Department of Justice and the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate the payments. The Justice Department and Senate committee, in compliance with longstanding policy, don't comment on matters they may investigate.

And that's what we get for letting the Democrats take over Washington, a couple can't even make a simple payoff to their son's mistress and her husband and their two young children (!!) without the Nanny State getting involved.

Don't these "watchdogs" remember the old saying about charity beginning at home?

In the wake of the extreme weirdness of S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford's Appalargentinian secret getaway, First Read takes a look at how some of the other hopefuls for the GOP nomination in 2012 have been faring.

If only we could have fifteen presidents. The choosing is just too hard!

Not that he had much chance of winning anyway, things aren't looking good for Sen. John Ensign's chances of running for president next time around…

Anyone who says we don't torture here in the United States has obviously never had to sit through an entire Karl Rove appearance on The O'Reilly Factor. I'm kidding of course. Torture isn't that bad.

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Time's running out for Republicans to go on TV and wring their hands over the economic stimulus plan: it's expected to squeak through a Senate vote early this week, then proceed to final negotiations with the House before collapsing, bloody and scarred, on President Obama's desk.

Sen. Richard Shelby (R.-Ala.), would you like to open the whine this morning?

Leading Republicans warned Sunday that the Obama administration's $800 billion-plus economic stimulus effort will lead to what one called a "financial disaster."

"Everybody on the street in America understands that," said Sen. Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee. "This is not the right road to go. We'll pay dearly."

It will lead to a financial disaster, you see, because up until now the fundamentals of our economy have been — what's the word? Oh yes, strong. And that reminds me of somebody else…

"I know we're in trouble. I know America needs a stimulus. We need tax cuts. We need to spend money on infrastructure and on other programs that will immediately put people to work. But this is not it," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said on CBS's "Face the Nation."

"You need to get it right. You don't want to spend these precious taxpayer dollars in the wrong way," Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Heavens, no! Because every time a precious, precious taxpayer dollar is squandered on ballooning initiatives that don't directly improve the lives of hard-working Americans, a Republican sheds a tear.

Which, by the way, is how John McCain filled his swimming pools. Three trillion Republican tears.

As the final votes are counted, it now looks like America's favorite 84-year-old felon, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, is likely to lose his reelection bid…

Mr. Begich led Mr. Stevens by just 814 votes after about 57,000 additional ballots were counted on Wednesday. So far, about 279,000 votes have been counted in the Senate race, and about 35,000 more remain to be counted. It could be next week before the count is complete.

His fellow Republican Senators are a taking a two-pronged approach to this turn of events: Vow to expel him from the Senate, but secretly hope that he loses the election so they won't actually have to do it.

“First of all, I hope Senator Stevens is successful in being re-elected. And assuming that he is, I intend to support any motion to remove him,” [Sen. Saxby] Chambliss said during a press conference with John Ensign of Nevada, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina has served notice that he’ll seek to expel Stevens from the Senate Republican Conference at a meeting next Tuesday.

While Ensign said that he, too, would vote to expel Stevens from the GOP circle — a move that would foreshadow expulsion by the entire Senate — the Nevada senator counseled waiting to see whether Stevens wins his race.

“If he actually wins the election, then you have to expel him twice. And so it’s probably better to let Alaska — it’s probably going to take a while to count all the votes up there — let that take place, then after the first of the year deal with it,” Ensign said.

Stevens' losing the election would be a blessing for his colleagues — if he were to win, not only would they need to wade through the mire of expelling him, they'd need to serve with whoever Alaska Governor Sarah Palin appointed to replace him. Which would most likely be Sarah Palin.

Of course, what would really be fortuitous for Senate Republicans is if Stevens were to quietly die of old age. But no one's going to come out and say that.