PILING ON (AND POSSIBLY SHIFTING SOME OF THE BLAME)

Well, everyone's in on the act, and the New York Post is no exception:

Rudy Giuliani'S breakup with Donna Hanover cost tax payers a lot more than his extramarital relationship with Judith Nathan, according to city documents.

The documents show that the distraught Hanover repeatedly fled Gracie Mansion to seek refuge with her parents in California as her high-profile marriage was crumbling.

At all times, she was accompanied by an NYPD security detail that ran up at least $110,000 in credit-card charges for airfare, lodging, car rentals and gasoline.

"They're stuck on you," said one source of the protective detail. "They go where you go." ...

One one hand, it's hard to see how voters across the country could read this and not see it as a big, sleazy mess (assuming they don't just shrug it off). On the other hand, this story wasn't on the front page (the Post has never put the scandal on the front page), there's a quote from former mayor Ed Koch, a longtime Giuliani critic, defending the security, and, of course, the first sentence says that the ex-wife was responsible for much more frittering away of taxpayer dollars than the current wife.

Did I say "the ex-wife"? I meant "the ex-wife who performed The Vagina Monolgues and appeared in The People vs. Larry Flynt." (Is there some hope on Murdoch's part that she can become the Hollywood-liberal villain of this piece?)

At Lucianne.com, by the way, this story is teased with what seems an awful lot like slander of Hanover:

More of the drip-drip-drip on the Merry Wives of Rudy has Wife 2 fleeing to California at the taxpayers' expense to seek solace with Mummy and Daddy. Some say she had more interesting things to do in the Golden State. That's not in the story, just vicious gossip which is usually true.

Does your lawyer know you posted that, Lucianne?