Right-wing rats abandon the sinking ship S.S. Jack Abramoff—afraid that his deadly case of "getting-caught-itis" may infect them?

Sometimes you want to devour every detail of a story, and sometimes all you need is the gist.

In the "INSIDE" box on the front page of this morning's paper there's a tease for a story billed as A Shrinking Inner Circle. "Jack Abramoff, the former super-lobbyist who pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges last week," the tease says, " is beginning to learn just how unpleasant disgrace can be."

My goodness, you think at first, that seems almost poetically perfect and complete. There seems hardly any need to turn to page A14.

But it's still worth making the turn, or in this case the click, to: "From Big-Time Lobbyist to an Object of Derision."

Oh sure, it's funny, all that well-earned disgrace and humiliation. ("His most diehard defenders have fled, and people he once counted as friends privately insist that they were never close." Ah, the loyalty those right-wingers are so famous for! You know, like when Chimpy the Rat famously couldn't quite place Kenny Boy "Who Dat?" Lay—you know, Ann Richards' old buddy.) But it's also kind of sad in a gruesome nature-eating-its-own kind of way.

There's also this bit:

" . . . [I]n conversation with people he considers sympathetic, he has insisted that his practices were Washington business as usual.

"Some associates, including lawmakers whom Mr. Abramoff once welcomed as friends with free meals at Signatures, the restaurant he operated until recently, had said the same in recent months. But they are no longer sticking to that story."

In case you had somehow lost track of what the scandal is all about.