Britney’s hosting gig at Vegas Club LAX might have gone off without a hitch despite earlier reports that she wasn’t planning to go, but she’s not going to escape controversy any time soon. This week’s National Enquirer is set to report that, along with all the other parenting mishaps she’s been criticized for, she actually left her infant boys alone at home while she went out with her new boyfriend, Criss Angel.

Britney called a nanny service to watch her sons, but she took off before the person got to her place, leaving the boys alone and screaming in their cribs for an hour. She says there was a housekeeper there to watch them, but they were crying hysterically and no one was with them when the nanny finally arrived.

Kevin found out and wanted to take the children from her immediately, but his lawyer advised him to use it as ammunition in his custody battle.

Kevin had left the children – Sean, 23 months, and Jayden, 11 months – with Britney to go to North Caroline to work on a TV Show. But on Friday night, Aug. 24, the singer realized that she needed someone to watch her babies so she could visit Criss in Los Vegas.

Revealed a close source: “She waited till the kids were sleepy and called a service to send a nanny.”

Unbelievably, the source claims that Britney left at least an hour before the nanny arrived. According to the source, the nanny got to the home and was shocked to find “two screaming babies in their cribs.”

The service tried to reach both K-Fed and Britney, says the insider. The source says that Kevin was reached by his lawyer – and went through the roof. And according to the insider, the nanny agency lodged a complaint with Children’s Protective Services.

“Britney says a housekeeper was at the home with the sleeping babies when she left, says the source, “but the nanny says when she arrived no one was watching the boys.”

[From The National Enquirer, print edition, September 10, 2007]

It’s not like the nanny let herself into the house and the two kids were there, so there was probably a cleaning person or some other help there, as Britney claimed. Still, if no one took responsibility for watching the boys until the nanny came, Britney should be held responsible.

Most of the other complaints against her involve poor parenting skills that are not good for kids, but are certainly not neglect. Forgetting to brush their teeth, not putting them on a good schedule, feeding them junk food and yelling are not in the realm of child abuse or neglect as long as the kids are safe. I never really bought the “booze in the baby bottles” story, and kind of assumed that wasn’t true.

If this latest news is accurate – that Britney actually left them alone for at least an hour – she needs to get reduced and/or supervised custody of the children. That’s ridiculous, and if she didn’t have someone there who could watch them she simply should have waited. At the very least that’s careless, and in a worst case scenario it’s neglect and her children might have harmed themselves.

She always seemed like a yokel to me, but more like a clueless “country” (her own term to explain not using a car seat, not an adjective I would use in this case otherwise) mom than a neglectful bi-polar drunk slut mom. Now I’m not so sure.

Britney is shown in the header image at the opening of club LAX in Vegas with her new boyfriend, magician Criss Angel. Cameron Diaz really dodged a bullet with that one.