After Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) issued a statement of apology for using her escort service Monday night, and with the potential for more high profile names to be revealed from her phone list, so-called D.C. Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey is finally making the sort of splash Washington, D.C. had been dreading (or desperately praying for, depending on your point of view). While we all patiently wait for the 46 lb. phone list to live up to its promise, today the Madam headlines are focused on the announced partnership between Palfrey and Hustler magazine impresario Larry Flynt. In a statement Tuesday by Hustler, the publisher took personal credit for the Vitter confession, saying it was the result of “a multi-pronged investigation launched and run by Larry Flynt.”

In June, Flynt took out an ad in The Washington Post offering $1 million to anyone who could provide proof of illicit sex with a member of Congress “or a high-ranking government official.” Of course, this isn’t the first time Flynt has offered such a bounty: in 1998, Flynt made a similar offer during the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton, and netted former House Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde, former impeachment prosecutor Bob Barr, and of course, the almost-Speaker Bob Livingston.

So a few obvious questions arise from this marriage of convenience. First, will Flynt offer Palfrey, who has over and over publicly declared that she is broke since the government seized all of her assets pending trial for running an illegal escort service, part or all of that $1 million bounty? And second, given the reason he did this in the past, does the fact that Flynt has once again gotten into the business of soliciting Republican sex scandals mean that the publisher is convinced that Sen. Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee for president?