The DC Fun Fair

Watching the administration these days is like being at a carnival with 30 or 40 roller coasters of political disaster, with one or two having crested the top and running down the wild ride of fiasco, while the rest are still chugging up the slope.

A while I had the sneaking feeling that what was going wrong was that George W. Bush has finally started actionally running the country himself, with predictable results. This Keith Olberman interview paints an incredibly isolated man, with suprisingly few remaining daily advisors, more Nixon than Nixon: Rice, Hughes, his wife and his Mom. Ain't that sweet. Idiot.

The plea agreement of Micheal Scanlon, aide to Delay and business partner of corrupt lonbyist Jack Abramoff, has a penalty of five years in prison. More importantly, with the bargin depending on information on other possible criminal indictments, it's a real can opener, much more serious and broad in scope than the campaign finance crime in Texas.

The investigation, which initially centered on accusations that Mr. Abramoff had defrauded tribal casinos of tens of millions of dollars in lobbying fees, has created alarm on Capitol Hill, where the lobbyist and his junior partner, Mr. Scanlon, claimed friendships among the Republican leaders of Congress.