It's all about the hat

Patt Morrison, appearing at the Huffington Post in her role as the "First Mlle. of Millinery," cuts to the chase on the Jack Abramoff affair:

What is with those hats? Will he wind up as perhaps the only federal felon to grace the pages of GQ?....

First Abramoff shows up to plead guilty in D.C., wearing a trenchcoat -- was that a bulletproof vest under there, or was he just displeased to see anyone? -- and of course that topper, the black hat.

The next day, in court in Miami, he's wearing a dark suit -- and a tan baseball cap bearing the word "Cascata." The word is Italian for "waterfall," and it's American for "really expensive Vegas golf resort with typically wasteful water features in a desert." While I admire Abramoff's insouciance, I can't imagine that such a cap helps the case of a man who baited his lobbyist hook with trips to the world's ritziest golf courses.

As for the black hat, a New York Times columnist hazarded that it was a "pseudo-Hasidic homburg," and a National Review Online writer characterized it as "the black hat of a very Orthodox Jew."

[snip]

My informed judgment is that it's ... a fedora.

Also, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher has further refined his refinement of his earlier total defense of his pal Abramoff.