Clinton scandals are never small and rarely boring, wafting across the land with the frequency of mist upon the South China Sea*.  Facts are elusive and further confounded by the dizzying spin of the Clinton war room.  So it has been and is with the contributions of Norman Hsu:

It's all okay now.  We who pretend to know everything knew nothing.  Just like the last time.  And all the times before that when bad people just kept giving us boatloads of money through no fault of our own. 

We're the victims here.  Just like the last time.   In an abundance of caution, we're going to return the entire $850,000 that Norman Hsu raised for our glorious presidential campaign.  We'll try to get some of it back when the heat dies down, but we're going to return it all for now.  In an abundance of caution.  No, we're not going to release the names of all those people or how much they gave.  They may be victims, too. 

You know what else?  We're now going to conduct criminal background checks on big fundraisers, because this is a campaign for the presidency of the United States.  We think felons should be allowed to vote but not make contributions.  Yet.

No, we're not worried about our primary opponents throwing stones.  Obama and Edwards have their own problems with tainted contributions and the rest of those croakers want jobs in the administration.  The media just prints what we say, and everyone knows that the giant right wing conspiracy is out to get us.

We'll survive and thrive.  Just like the last time.

The latest counterattack by Clinton apologists is to insinuate that critics are racist because Mr. Hsu is of Asian descent, as were some previous contributors to Mr. Clinton's campaigns who ran afoul of the law.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the Clinton campaign was warned about Mr. Hsu.  The Clinton campaign ignored the warning.

According to the Wall Street Journal, which initially broke the Norman Hsu story, he was apparently working off a ponzi schemer's dream jackpot of $40 million from an investment fund, which now wants it all back, presumably including the $2 million bail that Mr. Hsu jumped when he grabbed the Orient Express* out of California to avoid jail.

Also according to the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Hsu sent some suicide notes before making his run, including, ironically, one to the Innocence Project, to which he has made donations.

The story will continue to dribble out.  It's too good not to.

The one straight-on Clinton defense, which might even have a ring of truth, is that Mrs. Clinton was simply taken - along with some from which he took and others to which he gave - by an experienced con man. 

We don't expect to hear it.  First, it would also be a tacit acknowledgement that someone so susceptible might not be the strongest choice as leader of the free world where the stakes are somewhat higher than hinky campaign contributions.  Second, as a U.S. Senator from New York remarked earlier this week in another context, that excuse might require "a willing suspension of disbelief" by American voters who, like John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, may actually be able to count the 22 guilty pleas that derived from the 1996 Clinton fund-raising scandal.

*We're not racists.  We just like to poke those for whom accusations of racism are the response to all criticism.