Today's New York Times editorial page puts some nails in the coffin of Giuliani's campaign by introducing readers to the "real Mr. Giuliani" - "a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power." The paper asserts that Giuliani, "whom many New Yorkers" have already come "to know and mistrust," should be known for his "breathtaking" "arrogance and bad judgment" and the manner in which he "shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, then exploited his city’s and the country’s nightmare to promote his presidential campaign." Just yesterday, one of the paper's blogs ("City Room") ran a scathing indictment of Rudy's improper use of public office, as documented by 25 former prosecutors from the N.Y. region. (New York Times)

Presidential hopeful John McCain has a Rick Davis problem. McCain's top political aide, who has worked on and off with the Senator since 1999, was once part of a lobbying firm that provided political advice to anti-democratic, pro-oligarch candidates in the Ukraine. Davis, who some McCain advisers have concerns about, even arranged a meeting between McCain and the Russian billionaire Oleg Deripsaka, whose alleged ties to organized crime and anti-democracy movements are so serious that the U.S. has revoked his visa. (Washington Post)

The Bush administration, which believes in third chances, has appointed Paul Wolfowitz, the disgraced former president of the World Bank and Under Secretary of Defense, as chairman of the International Security Advisory Board, a high-level advisory panel on arms control that reports to the secretary of state. Wolfowitz will, once again, be providing the government with his wisdom on disarmament, WMD, and nonproliferation. (New York Times)

The man arrested by the Secret Service after he tapped Dick Cheney on the shoulder and criticized the Iraq war, has subpoenaed Cheney. Secret Service agents have presented conflicting views of the encounter (rasing questions of unethical and illegal conduct) and the defendant's attorney asserts that "Mr. Cheney is clearly the best eyewitness to the events in question." (AP)

Though Rudy Giuliani increased his personal net worth from $1 million in 2001 to $17 million last summer (not including $50 million in stocks, business interests, real estate and other assets), he has not always delivered what high paying clients expected. In 2004, for example, Rudy boasted that his new company Bio-ONE would eliminate anthrax from the National Enquirer's office but the quarantine on the building was lifted only in February 2007 when a competing company completed the work. (Los Angeles Times)

Representative John Conyers (Chair of the Judiciary Committee), Robert C. Scott (Chair of Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security), and Ted Poe have asked Attorney General Mukasey and Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England to pursue the issue of legal protections for American contractors in Iraq and especially the issue of the alleged rape of a KBR/Halliburton employee Jamie Leigh Jones. (The Gavel)

The U.S. now has more than 196,000 private contractors working for the Defense Department in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result, according to Jack Bell, the deputy undersecretary of defense for logistics and materiel readiness, the government is "not adequately prepared to address" what he termed "this unprecedented scale of our dependence on contractors." (Washington Post)

Several Senators believe that Director of Homeland Security Michale Chertoff fudged his data about false claims at Canadian border crossings in order to gain support for his agencies new rules. Chertoff told lawmakers that 1,517 false claims of U.S. citizenship have been made at Canadian borders in the past 90 days, but a spokesperson for US Customs and Border Protection asserts that only 210 of 31,060 false claims of citizenship occurred on the Canadian border in the past three years. (Washington Post)

Questions surround the Bush administration's recent payment of a $5 million reward to a former flight instructor who gave the government information in the Zacarias Moussaoui case. Two other flight instructors at the same school who also helped tip off the FBI about Moussaoui - and who were honored by a Senate resolution in 2005 - were not included in the reward. (AP)

The stalemate in the Senate over nominations to the FEC is already causing problems this election year. Three cases were recently delayed because the FEC lacks the quorum required to be able to issue binding opinions. (CQ)

Minnesota-born U.S. citizen Thomas Warziniack was detained for weeks by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and considered a Russian illegal immigrant before officials finally acknowledged evidence that he was in fact an American citizen. Warziniack is one of a small, but growing, number of U.S. citizens mistakenly caught up in the immigration detention system in recent years. (McClatchy)

Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) announced that he will return $10,000 in contributions he received from his PAC after the state Democratic Party filed a complaint with the FEC. The PAC paid out the money shortly after receiving two $5,000 checks from two businessmen who had already donated to Shadegg the maximum allowable for individuals. (Arizona Republic)