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Senator John Ensign’s announcement this week that he is retiring has brought little solace to his chief accuser, Doug Hampton, the husband of Mr. Ensign’s former mistress.

Mr. Hampton, breaking a long period of public silence as the various investigations of Mr. Ensign have dragged on, put out a statement Wednesday calling on Mr. Ensign, Republican of Nevada, to resign immediately from the Senate, instead of waiting for his term to expire in 2012.

“I continue to be extremely disappointed by John’s callousness and lack of remorse for destroying my family and life,” Mr. Hampton wrote in his statement. “His selfish, steadfast refusal to resign immediately prolongs the pain and anguish he caused.”

Mr. Hampton, a former senior aide to Mr. Ensign and one-time close family friend of the senator, largely forced Mr. Ensign’s public admission in June 2009 that he had an affair with Cindy Hampton, Mr. Hampton’s wife, who had served as a treasurer of one of his political fund-raising groups.

Senate ethics investigators have been examining if Mr. Ensign violated Senate rules by helping Mr. Hampton get work as a lobbyist immediately after he left the Senate in 2008, work that would have been illegal because Mr. Hampton then turned to Mr. Ensign’s office to help his clients, despite a one-year ban on such contact.

The Department of Justice also investigated the role Mr. Ensign played in helping Mr. Hampton get lobbying work, but Mr. Ensign’s lawyers announced in December that no criminal charges would be filed against the senator.

Daniel J. Albreghts, a lawyer for Mr. Hampton, said it is unclear if Mr. Hampton is still himself the subject of a criminal investigation, given his public admission and email records that show that Mr. Hampton had contacted Mr. Ensign’s office during the one year ban—a move Mr. Hampton has said he took at the senator’s urging.

As recently as January, even after the announcement by Mr. Ensign’s lawyers, Justice Department officials had told Mr. Albreghts that the investigation was ongoing. But he said he had not heard from them since.

Mr. Hampton made clear in his statement that, at a minimum, he continues to play a role in the separate Senate investigation of Mr. Ensign, including being asked to come to Washington to speak with Senate investigators. Senate officials have said that this inquiry will continue as long as Mr. Ensign remains in office, as the Senate Ethics Committee only has jurisdiction over sitting members.

Mr. Hampton, in his statement, said Mr. Ensign must know that he could effectively terminate this inquiry by resigning.

“The cost to the taxpayers of this fruitless exercise flies in the face of John’s claim of being fiscally conservative and a protector of the taxpayer’s money,” Mr. Hampton’s statement said, continuing, “much like his affair with my wife flew in the face of his claim to moral righteousness.”

Mr. Hampton lost his Nevada home and moved back to southern California, Mr. Albreghts said.

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Hey, 2010: We’ve made it this far, and that deserves a lot of thanksgiving. Politics is part of how we got here. Part of the good. Part of the bad. Part of our American dream. Part of politics we can be thankful for now is the SHUT UP factor. Listen to your lives. Do you [...]

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Senator Lisa Murkowski returned to Alaska on Wednesday night and declared her re-election by write-in “a miracle” that had come true for the people of her state.

“Doesn’t it just feel, wow,” Ms. Murkowski, a Republican, told supporters after returning home to claim victory in the race against the Tea Party-backed Republican nominee, Joe Miller. “Still a little bit mind-boggling. It is truly, truly, truly remarkable.”

She added: “We will look back on this and say: ‘What a race this has been. What a summer this was, and now, where we are today.’ ”

Ms. Murkowski’s remarks culminated a two-week delay as election officials counted the write-in ballots from the Nov. 2 vote, a slow process. The Associated Press and The New York Times declared her the victor Wednesday, although Mr. Miller has not conceded and has raised the possibility of a recount request.

If her win is declared official, Ms. Murkowski will return to Washington, where there could be more than a bit of awkwardness with some of her Republican colleagues.

The party backed her in the Republican primary, but officially abandoned her when Mr. Miller — with the backing of the state’s former governor, Sarah Palin — defeated her.

That could come back to haunt the Republicans in the Senate as they search for the votes to pass legislation sent by Republican colleagues who will control the House. Ms. Murkowski retains her seniority in the Senate but gave up her leadership position in the Republican conference when she challenged Mr. Miller.

Still, one senior Republican adviser in the Senate said most members of the party had withheld public criticism of Ms. Murkowski during the campaign. He predicted that she would feel welcomed by her former colleagues when she returned to Washington.

“It won’t be awkward at all,” the adviser said. “Remember, she was running against the Republican nominee — that’s the only reason she had to step down from leadership. And the conference didn’t strip her of her position as ranking member of the Energy Committee. And outside of one senator, nobody said an unkind word, despite the fact that she was running against the Republican nominee.”

That one senator was Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who backed Mr. Miller and other Tea Party candidates against Republican incumbents in the midterm elections.

Mr. DeMint and Ms. Murkowski have engaged in a war of words. After the election, Ms. Murkowski blamed Mr. DeMint for the party’s inability to take control of the Senate from the Democrats.

“I think some of the Republicans in the Congress feel pretty strongly that he and his actions potentially cost us the majority by encouraging candidates that ended up not being electable,” Ms. Murkowski told Politico. “I think there’re some folks that feel that DeMint’s actions didn’t necessarily help the Republican majority.”

The Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has not welcomed Ms. Murkowski back to the Senate yet. But an aide said that would most likely happen soon, now that it appeared that she had been victorious.

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The other night I was on “Hardball” with conservative bad-boy Pat Buchanan. Michael Smerconish, the guest host, asked about a column I had written noting that George W. Bush, in his new book, had disingenuously airbrushed Karl Rove out of his (superficial) accounting of the Plamegate affair. The reason was obvious: Bush wanted to avoid [...]

During Keith Olbermann’s brief suspension from MSNBC for making political donations, former ABC anchor Ted Koppel penned a Washington Post op-ed about the situation — and about “the death of real news.” Responding on the liberal Daily Kos, Olbermann sarcastically described Koppel’s take as “nostalgia for a time when TV news was objective and neutral [...]