Thanks, Tom.

When your humble scandal monger is running short of time, there's always a sure fire way to come up with a Scandal Scorecard entry. Just scan the wires for any mention of Tom DeLay and presto! Yet another one for the...

WASHINGTON (AP) - House Majority Leader Tom DeLay treated his political donors to a bird's-eye view of a Three Tenors concert from an arena skybox leased by a lobbyist now under criminal investigation.

DeLay's political action committee did not reimburse lobbyist Jack Abramoff for the May 2000 use of the skybox, instead treating it as a type of donation that didn't have to be disclosed to election regulators at the time.

The skybox donation, valued at thousands of dollars, came three weeks before DeLay also accepted a trip to Europe - including golf with Abramoff at the world-famous St. Andrews course - for himself, his wife and aides that was underwritten by some of the lobbyist's clients.

Accepting a gift like the skybox didn't become technically illegal until shortly after Tom's skybox event, so his defenders are dismissive of the charge...

"Portraying a lack of reimbursement as news is like saying a driver of a car did not hit his brakes while driving through a green light - there is nothing newsworthy about it, let alone improper," said Don McGahn, one of DeLay's lawyers.

...but wishing won't make it so. The AP thoughtfully reminds us that "House ethics rules require lawmakers to avoid the appearance of any conflict of interest."

Maybe that's why

...House Speaker Dennis Hastert came to a different conclusion in recent days, reimbursing Abramoff for a political event two years after the fact. One of Hastert's political committees had used a restaurant partly owned by the lobbyist, and the Hastert committee decided recently to reimburse for the use.

Illegal? Unethical? Both?

I dunno.

But it's a scandal.