It's official: Rudy Giuliani's bestest buddy and former police commissioner, Bernie Kerik, has been indicted by a federal grand jury for tax evasion and corruption.

No real insight to offer--go read the ThinkProgress piece if you want to see the rundown on the ignoble history of "America's Cop."

Still, upon rereading the climax of Giuliani's speech at the 2004 Republican convention, when he said:

Spontaneously, I grabbed the arm of then Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik and said to Bernie, "Thank God George Bush is our President."

Rudy Giuliani has already created an image for himself that even the casual observer could probably identify. He reminds us daily that he was, in fact, the Mayor of New York City during the September 11th terrorist attacks, (a point which I will do my best to remind you of, in case you don't already it have stuck in your head like the lyrics to a bad song). He speaks ad nauseam about his tough stance on terrorism, and his apparent affection for constitution-bending Jack Bauer-style interrogation techniques. Speaking about the torture technique known as waterboarding, Giuliani said:

Well, I'm not sure it is either. It depends on how it's done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it. I think the way it's been defined in the media, it shouldn't be done. The way in which they have described it, particularly in the liberal media. So I would say, if that's the description of it, then I can agree, that it shouldn't be done. But I have to see what the real description of it is.

Giuliani, (the Mayor of New York City during the 9/11 terrorist attacks) is right: The "liberal media" must be making it look much worse than it is. When I think about having someone "simulate" the experience of drowning, it sounds like a blast to me. Don't they offer that at Club Med these days right after snorkeling?

The presidential hopeful (and, did I mention, the Mayor of New York City during the 9/11 terrorist attacks) has developed a bit of an odd talent. Odd talents, like a knack for solving Rubik's Cubes or juggling chainsaws, may have a way of attracting voters on the campaign trail. Other odd talents, such as being able to skew statistics to suit a political message, seem to do anything but win the affection of the public. As it turns out, Giuliani has quite the habit of skewing statistics in just such a way.

When discussing the issue of abortion, Giuliani loves to talk about his success in lowering the number of abortions during his tenure as Mayor of New York City, (during which time he dealt with the 9/11 terrorist attacks). His campaign has said on numerous occasions that "Adoptions went up 65 to 70 percent; abortions went down 16 percent." As FactCheck.org points out, while those numbers aren't exactly a flat out lie, they also aren't the most honest statistics. FactCheck points out that:

Adoptions had already increased by 257 percent in the seven years prior to creation of ACS, the agency Giuliani credits with increasing adoptions...[and] adoptions declined in five of the mayor's last six years.

Perhaps more blatantly misleading is how Giuliani, (who bravely walked the streets of New York City with the Firefighters while they saved lives in the wake of the attack on the World Trade Center by Islamic extremists), uses deceptive numbers regarding healthcare. His campaign recently released a radio ad in which he denounces "socialized medicine" by explaining that he would likely have died of his prostate cancer, had he lived in a country like England that has a form of "socialized medicine." The campaign proclaims that only 44 percent of men survive similar cases of cancer, but here in the US, the chances are 82 percent. FactCheck discovered that those numbers aren't just misleading, they are just flat out lies:

We tracked down the source of that number, which turns out to be the result of bad math by a Giuliani campaign adviser, who admits to us that his figure isn't "technically" a survival rate at all. Furthermore, the co-author of the study on which Giuliani's man based his calculations tells us his work is being misused, and that the 44 percent figure is both wrong and "misleading." A spokesperson for the lead author also calls the figures "incorrect survival statistics."

In the campaign's defense, the stats were apparently taken from an opinion piece from a conservative think tank. That seems like a good place to get statistics for a political ad.

Jonathan Garro is editor of SkipperStyle, a political blog.

This, from a Telegraph (UK) interview with top Giuliani foreign policy adviser and Iran-bombing advocate Norman Podhoretz (who "briefs [Rudy] daily"), strikes me as an ill-advised f'ing insane way to run campaign discussions on the biggest question facing American foreign policy--whether to bomb Iran:

"Does Rudy agree with me?" Mr Podhoretz asked rhetorically. "I don’t know and I don’t wish to know." But he added that "Rudy’s view of the war is very similar to mine."

On Obama and Giuliani and Israel/Palestine.

So I link to Slate a lot. I’ll admit it: I’m obsessed. But I can’t help but share an article today about the continuation of the family troubles of Giuliani. There’s one Obama Girl here that he didn’t count on: his daughter Caroline.

With only six months before the first Caucus in Iowa, the race for the Democratic and Republican nomination is in full swing, but there could be one more name added to the list of potential candidates, a third party candidate.   Could a third party Independent candidate really sweep in and bring an end to the two-party domination of politics as we know it?

Call me crazy, but shouldn't the chairman of a powerful government committee devoted to intelligence on our enemies be an expert on such matters? Especially more than five years after 9/11. Apparently Reyes has never heard the phrase, "Know your enemy."

...

In short, Reyes - and any other elected official, Republican or Democrat - who doesn't know the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites at this advanced stage of the War on Terror is simply unfit to assume a leading post dealing with national intelligence. Is it too much to ask for Reyes and his ilk in Washington to do a simple Google search, or perhaps read some verses from the Koran during one of their long weekends?