Doolittle has stepped down -- temporarily, he says -- from his powerful position on the House Appropriations Committee, and while he continues to insist that he's done nothing illegal and is mystified about the direction of the federal investigation, there's little doubt that his political career is irreparably damaged, even if he escapes prosecution. The fact that Doolittle's wife, Julie, received contracts for unspecified work from Abramoff while Doolittle was helping Abramoff's clients is a political smoking gun, if not a legal one.

Doolittle still has hard-core backers in his district, but his escalating legal and political problems are music to Democrats' ears and perhaps even more so to those of anti-Doolittle Republicans, who have bridled for years over his heavy-handed, machinelike involvement in local city, county, school district and internal GOP politics.

Although Doolittle sycophants often branded critical Republicans as closet Democrats, their struggles were less ideological than personal -- many local GOP activists simply resenting the Doolittle faction's insistence on having its way no matter how small the office or position involved. Indeed, the Doolittle coterie acted more like a big-city Democratic machine, dispensing patronage to its friends and punishment to its rivals, than a more typically collegial suburban political organization.