The Washington Post has an interesting report about a house in Washington, D.C., that was apparently the scene of dramatic meetings leading up to the admissions by U.S. Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) and Gov. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) that they were having affairs. Michigan’s Bart Stupak, a Democrat from Menominee, is one of several legislators that lives at the house on C Street SE on Capitol Hill, which is owned by a mysterious and secretive religious group known variously as The Fellowship and The Family.

The house pulsed with backstage intrigue, in the days and months before the Sanford and Ensign scandals — dubbed “two lightning strikes” by a high-ranking congressional source. First, at least one resident learned of both the Sanford and Ensign affairs and tried to talk each politician into ending his philandering, a source close to the congressman said. Then the house drama escalated. It was then that Doug Hampton, the husband of Ensign’s mistress, endured an emotional meeting with Sen. Tom Coburn, who lives there, according to the source. The topic was forgiveness.

“He was trying to be a peacemaker,” the source said of Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma.

Although Sanford visited the house, there is no indication that he was ever a resident; when he was in Congress from 1995 to 2000, the parsimonious lawmaker was famous for forgoing his housing allowance and bunking in his Capitol Hill office. But it is not uncommon for residents to invite fellow congressmen to the home for spiritual bonding. There, Sanford enjoyed a kind of alumnus status. Richard Carver, president of the Fellowship Foundation, said, “I don’t think it’s intended to have someone from South Carolina get counseling there.” But he posited that Sanford turned to C Street “because he built a relationship with people who live in the house.”

According to a Wikipedia entry on the group, most of the members and associates of the group are Republicans, but there are also some Democrats, like Stupak and Hillary Clinton, who are involved with them in various ways. The Post says that members of the group “mostly adhere to a code of silence about the place.”