Rudy and the mistress

By Michael J.W. Stickings

This is awesome:

As New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani billed obscure city agencies for tens of thousands of dollars in security expenses amassed during the time when he was beginning an extramarital relationship with future wife Judith Nathan in the Hamptons, according to previously undisclosed government records.

The documents, obtained by Politico under New York's Freedom of Information Law, show that the mayoral costs had nothing to do with the functions of the little-known city offices that defrayed his tabs, including agencies responsible for regulating loft apartments, aiding the disabled and providing lawyers for indigent defendants.

At the time, the mayor's office refused to explain the accounting to city auditors, citing "security."

I'm sure Giuliani's people will come up with some sort of bullshit explanation. Maybe he was off investigating al Qaeda cells in the Hamptons, for example. You know, because he was all over terrorism pre-9/11. Right?

My opposition to Giuliani has never been directed at his lifestyle, at the choices he's made with respect to his personal life, nor to his more liberal past. So what if he's pro-choice? So what if he lived with a gay couple? So what if he wore a dress in public?

No, what I object to, strenuously, is his quasi-fascist authoritarianism, including his support for the use of torture. It is safe to say that he would be far worse than Bush with respect to waging the so-called war on terror. He would turn America -- and much of the rest of world, wherever possible -- into his own personal police state.

But now there's something else: corruption. Tens of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money, all to spend time with a mistress.

Nice job, Rudy, America's mayor.

Here's hoping your opponents, Republicans and Democrats alike, make a big deal of this going forward into the primaries and, if you happen to win your party's nomination, next year's election campaign.

And here's hoping the media keep digging. I'm sure there's a lot more to be exposed.

(This is the top story at Memeorandum right now. See here.)