Also last night, Congressmember Nancy Johnson, the Republican from Connecticut, chair of the House Ethics Committee, abruptly and unilaterally postponed next week’s public hearings in the case of Newt Gingrich, scuttling an agreement reached with committee Democrats just hours earlier and once again throwing the case into partisan turmoil. The plan that unraveled last night had called for as many as five days of televised hearings into Gingrich’s acknowledged ethical violations, but envisioned committee special counsel James Cole turning in his report after the House voted on the speaker’s punishment. Although both sides had signed off on the arrangement after 14 hours of negotiations, it quickly fell apart in a flurry of bitter exchanges.