How did more than 190,000 weapons sent to Iraq for the Iraqi security forces disappear almost as soon as they were unloaded off the C-17s?

Bernard Kerik – former New York City Police Commissioner, Secretary of Homeland Security nominee, and close personal friend of Rudy Giuliani – was formally indicted Friday on a slew of federal corruption charges. With the legal proceedings set to unfold concurrently with the presidential campaign, and with the issue seeming to penetrate the core of Giuliani’s “judgment” and “national security” campaign theme, just how badly does Bernie hurt Rudy?

Watch this episode on YouTube.

So it seems the Giuliani/Kerik relationship is finally starting to get a little attention from the media — in large measure because of the latest indictment and also because his competitors (especially John McCain, for now) are hitting him on it. You can see our roundup of what happened on the Sunday Shows here. And you can find our mega-Kerik scandal list here.

So far, the fact that Rudy was warned about Kerik’s mafia ties before giving him multiple appointments is getting the most attention.

But there’s also this matter of Kerik’s personnel policies. Kerik and the City of New York were twice sued by city corrections employees who claimed that Kerik had blackballed them for not treating his mistress, who was also a corrections department employee while he was head of the department, with kid gloves.

The city settled one of the cases for a quarter of a million dollar pay out. The other case was finally thrown out only this year because a judge said the plaintiff, former Deputy Warden Eric DeRavin, hadn’t come up with enough evidence to sustain the case. Surely Rudy knew about this, no?

Does the internet breed extremism and conformity?

That’s the question from Law Professor Cass Sunstein, author of Republic.com, who is sitting down at TPMCafe’s Table for One for the week to discuss the internet’s effects on democracy.

Former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt tells us about his weekend trip through Iowa to see how the politicking is going.

Implicit in most of the discussion of the Giuliani-Kerik relationship are two basic ideas of what led Rudy to promote Kerik despite all the dirty laundry and criminal conduct in his background. If you’re more sympathetic to Rudy, the idea is that Rudy’s loyal to his friends and supporters. The two bonded. And Rudy just didn’t pay close enough attention to the warning signs. If you take a darker view of Rudy, you probably figure that he heard a lot of this stuff and either didn’t want to hear or didn’t really care. Kerik was loyal and that was enough.

But I’m not so sure.

The red flags with Kerik were so numerous and conspicuous that it seems hard to believe either of these explanations really adds up. Remember that Rudy made his name as a mob prosecutor as US Attorney in New York. So you’d figure he’d have experience not just being sensitive to mob connections of city employees but also used to being suspicious of city employees with ties to organized crime figures.

So we’re digging further into this.

One thing that caught my attention is that Kerik’s period as Rudy’s chauffeur wasn’t as long as I’d understood. According to a December 24th, 1997 article in the New York Post, Kerik volunteered to be Rudy’s driver during his second (and successful) run for mayor in 1993. Then “after six weeks as an official NYPD bodyguard in the mayor’s security detail” Rudy gave him a job at the city Corrections department. Six months after that he was promoted to First Deputy Corrections Commissioner. Three years after that he was in charge of the whole place.

So a few questions. How much time did Rudy and Kerik spend together in the chauffeur phase of the friendship? How much after he got Kerik the job in Corrections?

We’ll keep at it. If you know more, drop us a line.

Bernie Kerik’s alleged lies to White House officials are key to the case against him. How much has the White House cooperated with Kerik investigation?

This is the sort of ad your crazy xenophobic, jingoistic uncle would air if he were running for President. Instead, it’s Rep. Tom Tancredo‘s.

From the Houston Chronicle …

The federal court employee at the center of a sexual misconduct complaint against U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent first went to her boss about the judge allegedly touching her inappropriately in 2003 — four years before the March incident that led to his reprimand by the 5th Circuit judicial council.

In mid-2003, case manager Cathy McBroom told her supervisor that the judge lured her into an office used as an exercise room and groped her, according to interviews with McBroom’s friends, her mother and other sources.

But her female supervisor advised that McBroom could lose her job if she made a formal complaint, and no further action apparently was taken.

…

McBroom was summoned to the judge’s chambers on Friday, March 23, at about 3 p.m.

Her hands were full of legal papers when the judge — a former high school athlete who is more than 6 inches taller and at least 100 pounds heavier — asked for a hug.

She told him she didn’t think that was appropriate, but reluctantly approached.

The judge grabbed Mc-Broom, pulled up her blouse and her bra and put his mouth on her breast. Then, Kent forced her head down toward his crotch.

As McBroom struggled, Kent kept telling the married mother of three what he wanted to do to her in words too graphic to publish. The papers fell to the floor. The pet bulldog Kent kept in his chambers began to bark.

The incident was interrupted by the sound of footsteps from another staff member in the corridor, and the judge loosened his grip. As she left, the judge said McBroom was a good case manager and then made suggestions about engaging in a sexual act.

Rudy gives up on Iowa and New Hampshire.