Confidential to former Rep. Randy "Duke" C.: Sorry, babe, but we're afraid that no, this doesn't mean that you can have your House seat back

Even Tricky Dick Nixon understood that being a publicly certified crook doesn't combine well with holding elective office in these United States--enough so that he left us the indelibly humiliating image of him asserting, not very credibly, "I am not a crook." And even His Trickiness understood that in the life of every crook there comes a time when, in technical terms, THE JIG IS UP! It's time for you to slink off to . . . well, wherever people link that slink off to.

And yet there sits Bob "Don't Make Fun of the Rug, It's Luscious to Walk On Without Slippers" Ney (pictured above at left, with, uh . . . some other guy) refusing to be moved out of his House seat.

Now, our sources tell us that a certain former congressman from the San Diego area of California, who has been granted anonymity on the ground that this is just really, unbelievably embarrassing for him, but whose initials are Randy "Duke" C., has been sounding out Washington sources for legal opinions as to whether he might now be in a position to reclaim the House seat he abandoned under similar circumstances, under the new precedent being established by our Bob.

Sorry, babe. This is just a no-go. Besides, life on Capitol Hill is probably no picnic these days for our Bob either. Why, we hear that in the cafeteria, those mean other boys have taken to throwing stockpiled "freedom" fries at him while chanting, "FRENCH fries, FRENCH fries, FRENCH fries."