Opera Buff: Apparently Tom Delay has been living a lie. "Abramoff is a huge opera buff, and—until now this has been a closely-guarded secret—so is DeLay. The only previous public hint of this mutual enthusiasm was the revelation in June by Associated Press reporter Adam Nossiter that Abramoff persuaded the Coushatta tribe to put up $185,000 in 2000 so DeLay could treat some of his biggest donors to a concert by the fabled Three Tenors (José Carreras, Luciano Pavarotti, and Plácido Domingo). Apparently, DeLay is no mere opera dilettante. He knows his spintos and his verismos and his ariosos, and I guess he must work overtime to keep that knowledge a tightly held secret lest his good-ole-boy constituents in Sugarland, Texas, conclude the Hammer is putting on airs. You probably think I'm kidding, but I'm not. The meanest man in Congress, who used to make his living killing insects, is ... the phantom of the opera."