Do you remember when Rudy Giuliani made the outrageous claim that it was unfair for anyone to criticize him and his administration because no one could have been prepared for jets flying into buildings? Or that it was not his fault he chose to put the mayoral emergency response bunker, a $61 million emergency-command center and obvious terrorist target inside 7 World Trade Center?

Well, the Memory Hole doesn't want you to forget the facts:  read more »

Amidst all the back and forth over extending term limits to three from two, I haven't seen any discussion of what the proposal means for prior mayors term-limited out of office - including Rudy Giuliani. In order to be constitutionally viable, this proposal needs to apply to everyone who's held office under the City Charter - including Giuliani. Anglo-American jurisprudence does not tolerate one-person-one-time exceptions to applicable law, obviously.

It's widely assumed - and New York republicans, catching a whiff of hope amidst their desolation, certainly hope for it - that Giuliani will run for governor in 2010. If he does, he'll lose, but then what?

He's not going to run for President again after his disastrous campaign, so what does that leave? That's right, the mayoralty of New York. And if Bloomberg gets a third term, there is no way he can be stopped from running, not under a Constitution that insists the laws apply equally to everyone.

[Update]: Oh, that's why nobody's written about it: because Giuliani can already run for a third term, as Dan points out in comments. Never mind.

The RNC just released excerpts of Rudy's prepared remarks to the faithful in Saint Paul.

This is not a personal attack....it's a statement of fact - Barack Obama has never led anything.

Nothing. Nada.

Strong words coming from someone who ran his own Presidential campaign into the ground and reigns supreme as the most hated mayor in New York City history, but there you have it. If you want to know how Barack Obama would run the country, look at his campaign; if you want to know how John McCain would, look at his campaign.

The New York Times features Rudy Giuliani, casually devoting some thoughts to his inglorious defeat in the primaries and then running away from that sissy self-reflection stuff.

But here's a curious statement.

The consuming focus on Florida and the absence of effort in New Hampshire — those are not matters that Mr. Giuliani says he has spent any time exploring, choosing instead to embrace the concept that it was not that he failed but that he was overtaken by a solid opponent who ran a better campaign. [Emph. added]

That's just flat-out false. Giuliani spent a lot of money in New Hampshire and campaigned there on multiple occasions. The problem was simply that the more time and effort he expended there, the less people seemed to like him.

Is this the beginning of the newest round of Giuliani revisionism?

Once again let me remind people that judicial races are at least as important as any other local election. Judges determine the fates of citizens more directly than any other elected position. We need good judges and we need judges we can trust.

This is a follow-up diary to one I wrote earlier about the 1st Civil Court District in Brooklyn. This year a friend of mine (Devin Cohen) is running. His opponent is Roger Adler. Both are good, smart lawyers who are fully qualified to be judge. Adler has been practicing law longer than Devin, but Devin Cohen has more actual civil court experience. So it comes down to a question of temperment and trustworthiness. In my earlier article I addressed both issues. But I have found out more about Roger Adler, who claims to be a Democrat with progressive values, yet I discover that by far his largest contributions are to some of the most conservaitve organizations and politicians in NY State.  read more »