On Sunday, Rep. Robert Ney (R-OH) temporarily stepped aside as chair of the House Administration Committee, which oversees federal elections, campaign contributions and member travel; the Committee would oversee proposed lobbying reform legislation. Ney has been implicated in the Jack Abramoff scandal; Abramoff pled guilty to fraud earlier in January, agreeing to cooperate in a Congressional corruption investigation; within days, Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) permanently stepped down as Majority Leader. Also on Sunday, Time reported on its website that evidence against Ney is mounting:

That [e-mail] exchange, a record of which was reviewed by TIME, is among the evidence that Republican Congressman Bob Ney of Ohio accepted favors from [Jack] Abramoff and [Michael] Scanlon as part of an alleged quid pro quo -- a charge to which the business partners each recently confessed in larger plea deals. While the plea agreements spell out various gifts, campaign donations and junkets that Abramoff and Scanlon say they provided to Ney in return for "official acts," the e-mails present in one place the specific elements of a swap that Abramoff has told investigators was prearranged and explicitly reciprocal, according to a source close to the Justice Department probe. To wit: a $10,000 donation to the Republicans just days before Ney inserted into the Congressional Record a statement praising an Abramoff business partner. Ney's lawyer, Mark Tuohey, calls the accusations "totally false."

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