The Washington Post has a lengthy backgrounder on Jack Abramoff on the front page of Thursday's paper. My main criticism of the piece would be that the authors do too little to place Abramoff's ascent into the context of the consolidation of Republican control over K Street and the operation of the DeLay Machine in the House of Representatives. I don't think the one can be properly understood without the other.

Still, not every article has to cover every topic or angle. And Schmidt and Grimaldi manage to bring together a great deal of information about Abramoff into a compelling narrative. Anybody interested in understanding this story should read this piece.