The Week

■ Vice President Gore says he “didn’t know” he was in a Buddhist temple when he picked up a check for $140,000. Contributions from tax-exempt organizations are illegal, so it helps not to notice the incense, saffron robes, shaved heads, and gongs when collecting from priests who have taken a vow of poverty.

■ It’s a story that, for the Clinton Administration, sounds quite familiar: Little Rock connections, Webster Hubbell, casual contempt for the law, Ron Brown wheelings-and-dealings. But it has a host of bizarre twists: a fundraiser held at a Buddhist temple, a multi-billion-dollar Indonesian conglomerate called the Lippo Group, a guy named Gandhi giving more than $300,000 to the Democratic National Committee. None of this tangle, already known as Indogate, will be sorted out before the election, a fact that White House spokesman Michael McCurry openly laughs about. What we do know is that almost certainly money from Indonesian sources has been laundered through Democratic coffers, and that one of the rainmakers, fundraiser John Huang, was rewarded with an influential spot in the Commerce Department; it may well be that the free-flowing Asian cash has influenced the Administration’s trade and human-rights policies. However, the scandal probably is of little benefit to Bob Dole in the short term, and in the long term it will only create more pressure for misguided Perot-style campaign-finance reform. So, attention, goo-goo reformers: it doesn’t matter what the law is as long as the Administration has no interest in obeying it.

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Presidential Election

■ Vice President Gore says he “didn’t know” he was in a Buddhist temple when he picked up a check for $140,000. Contributions from tax-exempt organizations are illegal, so it helps not to notice the incense, saffron robes, shaved heads, and gongs when collecting from priests who have taken a vow of poverty.

■ It’s a story that, for the Clinton Administration, sounds quite familiar: Little Rock connections, Webster Hubbell, casual contempt for the law, Ron Brown wheelings-and-dealings. But it has a host of bizarre twists: a fundraiser held at a Buddhist temple, a multi-billion-dollar Indonesian conglomerate called the Lippo Group, a guy named Gandhi giving more than $300,000 to the Democratic National Committee. None of this tangle, already known as Indogate, will be sorted out before the election, a fact that White House spokesman Michael McCurry openly laughs about. What we do know is that almost certainly money from Indonesian sources has been laundered through Democratic coffers, and that one of the rainmakers, fundraiser John Huang, was rewarded with an influential spot in the Commerce Department; it may well be that the free-flowing Asian cash has influenced the Administration’s trade and human-rights policies. However, the scandal probably is of little benefit to Bob Dole in the short term, and in the long term it will only create more pressure for misguided Perot-style campaign-finance reform. So, attention, goo-goo reformers: it doesn’t matter what the law is as long as the Administration has no interest in obeying it.