Rep. Tim Mahoney, D-Fla., finds himself in some seriously hot water today. ABC News’ investigative team is reporting that Mahoney paid $121,000 in a settlement with a former mistress he fired from his congressional staff. And that’s only the beginning.

Mahoney met the woman involved, Patricia Allen, during his 2006 campaign, and the affair reportedly began then. She volunteered on Mahoney’s campaign and later got a job on his congressional staff in Florida — her salary of $36,000 a year was paid for by taxpayer money. ABC reports that Allen was then moved to Mahoney’s campaign staff “after complaints about the affair circulated in Washington.”

When Allen learned that the married congressman was having other affairs, ABC says, she tried to break off their relationship, and told friends that Mahoney said the end of their relationship would also mean the end of her job.

The network has obtained a tape of a telephone call between the two in which Mahoney fired Allen. Here’s part of their conversation, as reported by ABC:

“You work at my pleasure … If you do the job that I think you should do, you get to keep your job. Whenever I don’t feel like you’re doing your job, then you lose your job,” Mahoney can be heard telling Allen.

“And guess what? The only person that matters is guess who? Me. You understand that. That is how life really is. That is how it works,” Mahoney says on the call.

“You’re fired,” Mahoney tells her. “Do you hear me? Don’t tell me whether it’s correct or not.”

Allen says, “Tell me why else I’m fired.”

“There is no why else,” Mahoney responds.

Later, Allen says, “You’re firing me for other reasons. You don’t, you’re not man enough to say it. So why don’t you say it.”

Allen reportedly hired a lawyer and threatened to sue her former employer; the two settled out of court for a total of $121,000. Allen was also promised a $50,000 a year job, for two years, at the agency that handles Mahoney’s campaign advertising, ABC reports.

There’s a special irony to this story. Mahoney’s seat in Congress was once occupied by former Rep. Mark Foley, who was himself brought down by a scandal that began in October 2006 with an ABC News report. And in Foley’s case, the fact that his party’s leadership in the House had apparently looked the other way when it came to the errant congressman hurt Republicans that year. This year, it could be the Democratic Party that gets hurt by the connection to Mahoney.

ABC reports:

Senior Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives, including Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), the chair of the Democratic Caucus, have been working with Mahoney to keep the matter from hurting his re-election campaign, Mahoney staffers said.

A spokesperson for Emanuel denies that account, but said Emanuel did confront Mahoney “upon hearing a rumor” about an affair in 2007 and “told him he was in public life and had a responsibility to act accordingly.” The spokesperson added that it was a “private conversation” that had nothing to do with Mahoney’s re-election prospects.

Emanuel’s spokesperson said Emanual had not had any further contacts with Mahoney on the subject and did not know the woman involved worked on Mahoney’s Congressional staff until informed by ABC News.

The Associated Press is reporting that an investigation into former Congressman Mark Foley’s communications with underage congressional pages will end, after almost two years, without criminal charges.

The AP’s Brian Skoloff writes that Florida authorities were hindered in their investigation of Foley “because neither Foley nor the House would let investigators examine his congressional computers.

It’s very, very unlikely to pass, but the Federal Marriage Amendment has just been reintroduced in the Senate.

If the FMA is enacted, an amendment would be added to the U.S. Constitution that would read, in part:

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.

As my friend Steve Benen noted, the reintroduction of the amendment itself isn’t that surprising. But the list of co-sponsors is. Out of the 10 senators sponsoring the bill, two names stand out — Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and David Vitter, R-La. Craig, of course, is the man who became infamous for his arrest on charges that he tried to solicit another man for sex in an airport bathroom. Afterward, other men came forward to say they’d had sexual relations with him. As for Vitter, well, his number was in the D.C. Madam’s call records, and at the time of that revelation he admitted to and apologized for what he described as a “very serious sin.”

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As we noted Sunday, the Idaho Statesman is out with a new round of men who claim that they either have had sex with Republican Sen. Larry Craig or at least were at the receiving end of “unusual attention” from him.

Craig’s office declined to comment for the Statesman’s story — the senator from Idaho has refused to respond to questions from reporters at Idaho’s largest newspaper since August — but his office subsequently issued a statement denying the new allegations.

Just when it seemed that Larry Craig might succeed in fading back into the Senate scenery, the Idaho Statesman leads its Sunday edition with news of two more men who report having had sex with the Republican senator.

The Statesman says the two men — plus several more who said they’ve been subject to propositions or “unusual attention” from Craig — have come forward because they’re offended by Craig’s denial of his intentions in the Minnesota men’s room incident and by his claims that he’s “not gay.”

NBC airs Matt Lauer’s interview with Larry Craig tonight, and we find this advance snippet just a little interesting, at least if it represents the entirety of the question that Lauer put to Craig:

Lauer: This particular bathroom in North Star Crossing is described as a hot spot for anonymous sexual encounters between gay men. And you had no idea of that?