Mike Soraghan at the Denver Post sure does know how to deadpan:

Interior Secretary Gale Norton said Wednesday that disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff didn't influence her department, though Indian casino tribes paid him millions of dollars to do just that.

"I can't think of any particular influence that his actions had on our decisions," Norton told reporters.

That's a little hard to believe, of course, because

Wide-ranging Senate and Justice Department investigations into Abramoff's lobbying practices have indicated a significant amount of political pressure being applied to casino decisions.

Abramoff reportedly directed nearly $500,000 in contributions from casino tribes to an organization run by Norton's former political aide, Italia Federici. He referred to Norton's former top deputy, J. Steven Griles, as "our guy" at Interior on Indian casino issues.

Norton's former top aide on Indian casino issues, Michael Rossetti, testified last month that Griles had an "inexplicable desire" to get involved in Norton's decisions about Abramoff's Indian casino clients. But Norton said Wednesday that wasn't the case.

Yup. Norton helped found Federici's front group, appears as the star at Abramoff-arranged dinners with Indian tribal leaders, decisions magically go Abramoff's clients' way...

Oh, forget it. They're all sold, nobody cares, and this isn't even the most sexy Abramoff story in today's news:

Newly disclosed e-mail messages from the lobbyist Jack Abramoff show that he told an Indian tribe client that he was being pressured by Representative Tom DeLay for a contribution for a $25,000-a-table Republican fund-raiser and that Mr. DeLay had personally phoned the lobbyist's office in search of the money.

Cough. But is there enough scandal to go around? Maybe we should be directing that question to Byron Dorgan. At some point, we as citizens have an obligation to demand that the sun shine in, even if some of our own get burned. We must, as an electorate, show the same zero tolerance we've shown for bigotry and discrimination to corruption at the highest levels of government...