As Jennifer noted this morning, Representative Jeff Flake’s motion to have the House Ethics Committee investigate Rep. John Murtha was defeated on Tuesday, after Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s enforcers threatened Democrats with problems (in an e-mail headed “Don’t Be a Flake”) if they voted for it.

But 29 Democrats did so anyway. And this morning, the New York Times ran an editorial backing the investigation of the ever-growing pile of evidence that John Murtha has been at the center of a vast pay-to-play scheme involving defense appropriations. The Times editors wrote, “It is time to follow the money — all of it.”

To be sure, the Times’s editorial page these days has limited power, because its often highly tendentious editorials preach almost exclusively to the liberal choir. But it still has real clout  — with that choir at least.  When the Times wrote that former Senator Tom Daschle should withdraw his nomination to be Health and Human Services secretary because of his failure to pay taxes on large amounts of in-kind income, Daschle’s support crumbled and he withdrew the same day.

With the Speaker enmeshed ever more tightly in a net of her own conflicting statements about what she knew and when she knew it regarding interrogation techniques, her power to protect her close associate Murtha (who she wanted to be Majority Leader — a post the Democratic Caucus gave to Steny Hoyer) is increasingly limited.

I’d suggest that John Murtha do some serious lawyering up if he hasn’t already.