With Jack Abramoff under indictment, a number of readers have suggested that now he might flip and try to offer the feds some figures higher up the food-chain.

The President doesn't just appoint the Secretary of State, he appoints the Secretary of State, and then the Congress votes. And if the Congress approves that person, that person becomes Secretary of State.

Authoritarianism and secrecy breed incompetence; the two feed on each other. It's a vicious cycle. Governments with authoritarian tendencies point to what is in fact their own incompetence as the rationale for giving them yet more power.

Success can be built on a strong relationship between a lobbyist and a single, powerful lawmaker.

One of the failings of ideologues is their inability to see that everyone else isn't necessarily an ideologue like them.

There's this old line the wise folks in Washington have that "it's not the crime, but the cover-up." But only fools believe that. It's always about the crime. The whole point of the cover-up is that a full revelation of the underlying crime is not survivable.

The Federalist Society is this conservative legal organization. And I think, for the Bush administration, being a member of the Federalist Society meant you were - a reliable, ideological, partisan Republican. It wasn't enough just to be registered as a Republican, or to be - have a generally conservative judicial philosophy, or prosecutorial philosophy. It meant that, basically, meant that you were a real movement conservative, a Party regular. That's what being a Federalist Society member means.