I wonder at what point the Democrats will wish they could put that genie back into the bottle.

Lobbyist Jack Abramoff paid at least a portion of the expenses for two Democratic members of Congress and two staff members to then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) during a pair of trips in the mid-1990s to the Northern Mariana Islands, according to a former Abramoff secretary and travel records published on the Internet yesterday.

Notice how DeLay's name gets dragged through the mud, even though it wasn't his trip. The two Democrats are James E. Clyburn (SC), vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, and Bennie Thompson (MS), the senior Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee. All parties involved are pleading ignorance.

House Democrat Leader Nancy Pelosi warned against changing the subject.

In an ABC interview Sunday, Mrs. Pelosi dismissed questions about travel by Democrats, telling interviewer George Stephanopoulos: "Do not fall into a Republican trap of equating technicalities on reporting, timing of reporting with not upholding an ethical standard of the House."

Whew. Thanks to Pelosi, Stephanopoulos narrowly escaped the "Republican trap".