THE FACT THAT JACK ABRAMOFF is a crook only takes you so far, thanks to the way federal law reads. To understand why, it is useful to go back to the case of Clinton's agriculture secretary Michael Espy.

In his investigation of the Ag Department scandal, independent prosecutor Dan Smaltz brought 15 criminal or civil prosecutions against 14 persons, seven companies and one law firm. He obtained 15 convictions and collected over $11 million in fines and civil penalties. The largest corporate offender, Tyson Foods, paid the government $6 million in settlement of its case.

Because of the acquittal of former Ag Secretary Michael Espy, however, one would never guess that Smaltz had done anything right. In fact, the Washington elite, led by the major media, leaped on the acquittal as evidence of the gross failure of the independent prosecutor statute.

But the primary reason Espy was let off was not because he hadn't received illegal gratuities -- others were convicted of giving them to him -- but because a US Court of Appeals ruled that the applicable law required that Espy "knowingly and willfully" acted to break the law. As the Washington Times put it, "Intent by the companies who gave him the gifts did not matter in the decision." Further Espy claimed that he fell under another exception -- that all the gratuities had come from friends. Thus it was okay for federal officials to accept bribes as long as no one could prove they did anything specific in return and further that if the bribers and bribee were buddies, the latter was off the hook.

Such protection, however, did not extend to the briber. For example, an official of Tyson Foods was convicted of "giving in excess of $8,500 of illegal gifts" Espy under the Meat Inspection Act of 1906, back when they still knew what a bribe was. Smaltz described the law this way: "The Meat Inspection Act forbids individuals dealing with USDA employees involved in meat inspection from giving any thing of value to them with the intent to influence official actions." Nothing about having to provide a quid pro quo.

Now the laws that made the Democrats so happy in the Espy case may come back to haunt them. Carl Hulse of the NY Times explained it last November:

||| The prosecutors say that among the criminal activities of Michael Scanlon, a former House leadership aide who pleaded guilty on Monday to bribery conspiracy, were efforts to influence a lawmaker identified in court papers only as Representative No. 1 with gifts that included $4,000 to his campaign account and $10,000 to a Republican Party fund on his behalf.

Lawyers and others who follow such issues say the case against Mr. Scanlon amounted to a shift by the Justice Department, which, they say, has generally steered clear of trying to build corruption cases around political donations because the charges can be hard to prove. . .

Court documents filed by prosecutors lay out an extensive conspiracy in which Mr. Scanlon and Mr. Abramoff, identified in the documents only as Lobbyist A, sought to defraud clients -- mainly Indian tribes with gambling interests -- and win legislative help from lawmakers in exchange for campaign donations, trips, dinners, greens fees and jobs. . . .

Federal law requires that to prove bribery, the government must establish that a ''thing of value'' was provided in a direct effort to obtain a specific official act -- the essential quid pro quo. A more vague expectation that something like a contribution might influence a public official has been deemed insufficient. . . |||

Thus, one of the big obstacle to a full and fair denouement of the Abramoff matter lies not in current politics but in old, bad law that virtually requires a copy of the receipt before a bribe is worth prosecuting.

This is just one of the extraordinary anomalies of our election laws. Take for example Hillary Clinton's 2000 Hollywood fundraising scandal, as badly underreported in the press as its proceeds were in her FEC reports. Here is the latest development:

||| AP - A campaign fundraising group for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has agreed to a $35,000 fine for underreporting hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on a Hollywood fundraiser in 2000. The organization, New York Senate 2000, agreed to a federal finding that it failed to report $721,895 spent on the fundraiser to boost the former first lady's campaign for the Senate, according to paperwork provided by Peter F. Paul, who helped finance the star-studded gala that drew Cher, Diana Ross, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. |||

Abramoff is accused, among other things, of is using campaign contributions in various ways as a form of bribery. What Clinton's campaign did was not report contributions at all, a lesser, but still pretty dramatic offense.

For example, in the late 1990s, a federal judge fined Miami businessman, Democratic fundraiser, and Clinton buddy Howard Glicken $80,000 for illegally soliciting $20,000 in foreign contributions. The judge also gave Glicken 18 months probation and 500 hours of community service. In other words, Glicken had to pay not only in community service but four times the amount illegally raised. In Hillary Clinton's case, the settlement amounted to less than 5% of the funny money.

And so the game goes on. . .

And, as in Las Vegas, don't expect to beat the house."