Bedtime for Bongo

While the Plame scandal has been a fun one to follow, with its cloak-and-dagger intrigue and the prospect of Karl Rove becoming a "prison bride," there's another developing scandal out there that promises to be even more spectacular -- the activities of sleazeball lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The Abramoff scandal is important because it reaches not just into the White House, but into virtually every corner of the Republican Party. Tom DeLay is already up to his helmet hair in this scandal, and as the lower level threads are untangled, I think we'll see tons of other Republican congressfolk involved as well. If that's not exciting enough for you, it looks like the White House is involved too:

"The lobbyist Jack Abramoff asked for $9 million in 2003 from the president of a West African nation to arrange a meeting with President Bush and directed his fees to a Maryland company now under federal scrutiny, according to newly disclosed documents."

This is going to get ugly. Especially once the Republican spin machine starts pushing back. For starters, I'm sure we'll hear that $9 million for a meeting between Bush and a West African leader named, in all seriousness, "Bongo" is really no big deal, because Bill Clinton let Barbara Streisand spend the night in the Lincoln Bedroom.

From there, the GOP hacks will turn into a whirling dervish, coming at your sense and sanity like a tornado of teeth and elbows. I suspect this hunch is right, and we'll soon see the tried-and-true argument that anyone who is outraged by the Abramoff scandal is simply an anti-Semite. Or possibly a communist. Because who but a communist could be angry about all this money changing hands? Think about it.