If you ever wanted to know what things are likely to happen when Congress doesn't really police its ethical misdeeds, today's Washington Post provides three sobering examples.

First, they report that the scandal involving sexually suggestive e-mails and instant messages between former Rep. Mark Foley, R-FL, and House pages appears to be expanding again (registration required), with the new focus on an incident five years ago that involved a 16-year-old page and Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-AZ. Kolbe, the only openly gay Republican in Congress, is retiring this year. The ethics committee's review comes after the Justice Department "had opened a preliminary inquiry into a camping trip" Kolbe took with male former pages 10 years ago.

Then, the Post points out that the investigation into Rep. Curt Weldon, R-PA, by the FBI (reported on this blog yesterday) is focusing on ties among Rep. Weldon, his daughter Karen, and their connections to a Serbian businessman with reputed ties to former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. Appears Rep. Weldon was trying to get the businessman, Bogoljub Karic, removed from a list of people barred from visiting or trading with the United States -- while Karen Weldon was doing business with Karic's family.

And if that wasn't enough, there's news of a report from a House committee's investigation that shows former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-CA, channeled more than $70 million worth of Pentagon and intelligence agency contracts to two companies that bribed him, which required the "cooperation or at least the non-interference of many people" in government to succeed.

The full report is still classified, but you can see an executive summary of it here.

Here we go again with another potential ethics flap involving a member of the U.S. House.

After two and a half years of percolating beneath the surface, today's morning papers are abuzz with news of FBI raids on the homes and offices of Karen Weldon, the daughter of Rep. Curt Weldon, R-PA. The feds also raided the home of Charles P. Sexton Jr., a Weldon ally, and the Florida offices of the Itera Group, a Russian natural-gas supplier.

And if that wasn't enough, Rep. Dale Kildee, D-MI, a member of the House Page Board, said yesterday that the investigation into Rep. Mark Foley's explicit communications with House pages may expand to other members.