It has become increasingly clear in recent weeks that there are two ways, as a leader, to handle a scandal: To beg incompetence or to admit immorality. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has bucked the trend by picking the former — but as with the dramatic confession, this does not allow her to escape responsibility for a practice she admitted to allowing to continue in her first year as Speaker.

Quinn's Waterloo (Ashley Dupre?) came Thursday morning across the front page of The New York Post: For decades, the office of the City Council Speaker has squirreled away public money for pet projects. More recently, it has been held as earmarked for fictitious community-based organizations, which strikes us as some jaded staffer's idea of irony.

Political scandals (especially those involving a mistress and money) always seem to fall into two categories - the ones that are handled well and the ones that don't end well.

They also inevitably get a "gate" assigned to them (no, Gatemouth, not you). Perhaps we'll call this one "JudyGate."

Let's review the timeline:

Here's a real Hevesi scandal. On October 20, 2006, Diane and Arthur N. Abbey donated $50,000 to Alan Hevesi's campaign. Arthur Abbey (chairman of the board of trustees for New York Law) suddenly decides at the last minute to give $50,000 to a crook?

"I made a mistake," Alan Hevesi tells us of "Driving Mrs. Hevesi." Yes, the NYS Comptroller stealing $83,000 (the figure is certainly more) is not good. But Alan Hevesi is a career Albany politician. This is like Al Capone getting nabbed for tax evasion. There is much more to Alan Hevesi's political career than "one mistake."

Ben Smith has reported that Hevesi is now running attack ads against Chris Callaghan. He would do himself and his party well by going away quietly. Hevesi has no shame.