Washington Post reporter responds to all the criticism of his front-page piece on Obama Muslim “rumors.”

Earlier today we heard that Rudy was going to appear on Jim Cramer’s show to address the Shag Fund questions. From ABC …

Giuliani is expected to appear on CNBC at 6 p.m. today to answer questions about the accounting procedures.

Interview has just ended. Not a single question about the Shag Fund. Issue of the day apparently is tariff policy.

George Allen, former U.S. senator and noted “new media” expert:

A number of blogs, including TalkLeft and McJoan at DailyKos have noted that what Rudy Giuliani did — giving then-mistress Judi Nathan a city car and driver — looks a lot like, actually worse, than what ended former NY State Comptroller Alan Hevesi’s career and forced him to plead guilty to misappropriating state funds. Hevesi had a taxpayer car and driver at the disposal of his sick wife.

Well, there’s no doubt Rudy would be tried and convicted in the court of history, posterity, generally shameless behavior and various other metaphorical jurisdictions.

Indeed, having state employees chauffeur your sick wife seems considerably more justifiable than having a car and driver detailed for your mistress.

But we’ve been looking into this and from what we can see Rudy probably skates.

Again, this is preliminary and we’re in touch with experts on New York law. But the law that snagged Hevesi applies to state officials, not all public officials in the state of New York. So even though Rudy did something considerably more egregious we’re pretty sure the law simply doesn’t apply to him as a city elected official (probably a case where the diminutive nature of his office is something he’s thankful for).

We’re looking to see if there’s a parallel law that applies in New York City. But so far we haven’t found it.

Don’t worry, we’ll keep looking …

Seems he was doing it for the men in blue. From the AP …

On Thursday, Joe Lohta, who was deputy mayor and budget director under Giuliani, said the billing practice was necessary because the police officers did not make a lot of money and their department took up to two months to repay them for their travel expenses. So Giuliani’s office got a credit card and paid it off with funds from the various agencies. At the end of each fiscal year, the New York Police Department repaid the divisions.

We’re a little unclear on this, though. The first hints of this story came when the city comptroller found that Rudy’s administration had hidden money for “non-local travel” in the budget’s of various obscure city agencies. It’s not clear from the letter from the comptroller that these monies were ever reimbursed. Indeed, the whole point of the letter seems premised on the assumption that they weren’t.

That said, the whole issue of subsequent reimbursement is basically a red-herring since the issue is why these they put them in these out of the way accounts in the first place. Presumably a subsequent reimbursement to the NYPD would have some effect of hiding the nature of the original expenditure.

And this explanation also seems bogus for another reason — one which, as we’ll see, should give us some further sense of how a Giuliani White House might operate. The City Comptroller started finding these irregularities in 2002 after Rudy left office. When the comptroller’s office asked Rudy’s people for an explanation, they refused to discuss it citing “security” reasons.

Now, I think we’ve all gotten used to the fact that the current crew at the White House uses various security-based excuses to refuse to answer questions about all sorts of things. But he’s actually the president. And while I think they’ve terribly abused this dodge to create a climate of extreme secrecy and non-trasnsparency, at the end of the day there actually are legitimate security issues tied to the president — both to the protection of his person and a decent amount of what he does on the job.

But the mayor? Please. At the end of the day, the Mayor of New York City is a mayor. Not James Bond or the Secretary of Defense. The idea that there are security reasons why he can’t explain to the city budget watch dog how he allocated money for his security detail is a joke.

And it is an instructive joke in this case. Because if this is all it’s about, helping out the guy’s on the security detail, why’d they refuse to say so back in 2002?

Face it: these clowns are blowing smoke like a three-alarm fire. They’ll do anything not to get this looked at.

Late Update: From this late report from Jake Tapper at ABC News, it now appears that Mayor Bloomberg’s office is saying that it “believes” (and there seems to be a heavy on that word “believes” in the statement) the fees were eventually reimbursed. As I said above, though, it’s basically a distraction. The issue was why they were paying these bills out of these obscure accounts in the first place. Reimbursement or not, it still has the effect of hiding what Rudy was doing.

ABC’s got a further run-down on the latest on the Shag Fund.

One nice detail. They had a conversation with NYC Comptroller Bill Thompson, the first guy to stumble across Rudy’s book keeping shenanigans. In response to Rudy’s claims that the whole thing was business as usual — “handled openly, honestly” — Thompson told ABC: “That’s not the way that we operate these days, and it would not be the preferred way of doing business. In the end, it’s a very convoluted way of getting things done. If anyone hoped that no one would notice, they were being foolish.”

Okay, I apologize for this non-Shag Fund post. But this is pretty extraordinary. I’m on Facebook. And I haven’t noticed this. Maybe because I don’t buy enough stuff online. But according to this article in the Times, they’ve got it set up now where your “friends” are notified about what you buy online — presumably by some modern equivalent of cookies. So you get pinged “Josh bought ‘Jack’s Big Music Show DVD” from Blahblah.com!

And you can’t disable the function apparently. [ed.note: Usually I get tips and corrections from readers. In this case it came from my wife. Apparently you can opt out. But not in general. You have to opt out on every single purchase. A box comes up when you buy something and asks “Would you like to tell your friends on Facebook about your purchase of this Large Vibrating Egg (TM)?’ So I think my disgruntlement still applies.]

Doing what I do I live my life with a certain amount of transparency. But I think I might actually close my account just based on the intrusiveness of it. Am I just an old fuddy-duddy?

And as long as we’re on the topic, if you’re a parent of a young child like I am, what’s your favorite tv show for them. I was pretty partial to my childhood favorite Sesame Street. But I think I’ve now got to give the prize to Jack’s Big Music Show.

Any kindred spirits out there?

Late Update: Seems Facebook has now given in.

Just out from Ben Smith at The Politico:

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his senior aides Thursday blamed anonymous bookkeepers for his administration’s practice of billing the travel expenses for his personal security detail to obscure city agencies.

But a top aide was unable to say why Giuliani’s administration and his successor’s rebuffed questions from the city’s top fiscal watchdog in 2001 and 2002. City Comptroller William Thompson said Thursday his auditors were “stonewalled” by the Giuliani administration when they inquired about the unusual billing procedures, which he called “disturbing.”

Instead, Giuliani and his aides focused their attention on the issue of whether the unlikely divisions of the mayor’s office had been reimbursed — not why the expenses were billed to out-of-the-way agencies such as the New York City Loft Board in the first place.

That is the key question: Why did the expenses of Rudy’s security get billed out to obscure agencies within the mayor’s office in the first place?

There’s no question that public funds were used to pay for Rudy’s security detail while he was out on Long Island rendezvousing with Judith Nathan. One way or the other, it was either paid by the mayor’s office or by the NYPD. No one disputes that, not even Rudy. No one cares which pocket the public funds came out of. What everyone cares about–and what The Politico‘s reporting so far seems to suggest–is that the expenses were scattered among various agencies so as to obscure Rudy’s illicit activities and the expenses associated with them.

That’s the question. But Rudy’s campaign won’t answer it and Rudy himself is not getting asked it by the likes of Anderson Cooper or Katie Couric. So he skates for another day.

Pretty impressive. On pollster.com’s poll of pollsters, you’ve got Fred Thompson pulling down a tidy 2.8% in New Hampshire. Guy’s on fire.

Bernie Kerik vouches for Rudy on the Shag Fund (from the Times) …

Bernard B. Kerik, who was Mr. Giuliani’s police commissioner when some of the charges were billed, said in an interview yesterday that the security detail’s travel expenses would normally come out of the Police Department’s budget.

“There would be no need for anyone to conceal his detail’s travel expenses,” said Mr. Kerik, who was indicted earlier this month on unrelated federal tax fraud and corruption charges. “And I think It’s ridiculous for anyone to suggest that the mayor or his staff attempted to do so.”

Well that settles that, right?

When Bernie’s vouching for Rudy and not vice versa you know someone’s slippin’ fast.