America's royal family, the Kennedys. But Caroline Kennedy for the Senate? First we had to put off with Hillary Clinton, the nouveau riche of politics, suddenly becoming senator in the nation's second most populous state.

The wife of a president landed her magic carpet and Vuitton bags in a fancy suburb north of the city and was practically appointed to the Senate — when Rudy Giuliani dropped out, she got to face a candidate who was so weak that you've already forgotten his name.

Sitting somewhat obediently in our civics classes, we were told that people invented this country, at least in part, because they were tired of monarchies. Doesn't look as if we're that tired of kings and queens and princesses.

So now we're going to replace Hillary Clinton with Caroline Kennedy? And we're not even going to elect Kennedy; we're going to appoint her? At least Hillary Clinton went through the electoral process. However, don't tell me about Hillary's brains and savvy. She's been a mediocre senator, far less skilled at both arm-twisting and hard-won-consensus politics than the likes of Chuck Schumer, Chuck Hegel, and Chuck Grassley or battle-worthy non-Chucks like Dick Lugar, Barbara Boxer, Bob Dole (not his wife, Libby), even that schmuck Joe Lieberman — you name 'em.

Excepting a few celeb pols like Ted Kennedy (who's been busy and serious for three decades since Chappaquidick drowned his chances for the presidency), look past the Clintons and Kennedys and you'll see a better breed of American political family entering the Senate, a family whose bent comes closer to "public service" and "common good" than practically all others. (Notwithstanding Jackie Kennedy Onassis's truly noble and lasting achievement: She used her celebrity to lead the successful fight to save wondrous Grand Central Station from destruction.)

You want a political family that deserves royal-like admiration without fawning? Try the Udalls, whom I wrote about yesterday. After Stew and Mo worked their asses off in the House and Interior Department, now we have their sons Mark and Tom, who traded on more than their last names during their climb up Capitol Hill to claim Senate seats next month.

Now don't turn the Udalls into celebrities. Read about your usual celebs — including the Kennedys and Clintons — worship them and envy them if you want, be amused and/or disgusted by them, but don't elect them or appoint them to run your lives because they're celebrities. Camelot? I'll take Spamalot — without Clay Aiken, thanks. No more American idols, please.

Other items on a (relatively) slow (so far) news day ...

NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

N.Y. Daily News: 'Ticketed while giving out gifts'

N.Y. Post: 'FIRETRUCK HIT HURTS 30'

N.Y. Daily News: 'Caroline Kennedy can lock in Senate seat by saying she'll run in 2010'

N.Y. Post: 'BARBIE'S FOR THE BIRDS'

Times (U.K.): 'Fed stuns the world with rate cut to "virtually zero"'

Wall Street Journal: 'Fairfield Group Forced to Confront Its Madoff Ties'

N.Y. Post: 'SICK WORLD OF "BABY HITLER": NAZI-NAMING PARENTS IN NJ'

N.Y. Daily News: 'N.Y. sounds off on iTax plans'

N.Y. Times: 'Bush Prepares Crisis Briefings to Aid Obama'

International Herald Tribune: 'Prison for nuke engineer who took software to Iran'

Reuters: 'Madoff fraud could burn early pullouts'

Reuters: 'Iraq shoe-thrower inspires Bush-bashing Web game'

AP: 'NY gov proposes tax on drinks, downloaded music'

N.Y. Times: 'Fixing Interior'

N.Y. Daily News: 'SEC: We blew it'

Chicago Sun-Times: 'Who's next for Obama's basketball dream team?'

N.Y. Times: 'Obama Team Has Forged Another Link With Clintons'

Washington Post: 'A Longer Race to Run'

You load 16 tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. But the standard weights and measures are so out of whack that, in Britain, 20 billion of their pounds probably won't outweigh those 16 tons that Wall Street's bankers carelessly offloaded on us.

At least the Brits are trying, even though it means even more debt. Yes, there's big news from Parliament today: a $30 billion stimulus plan to bail out commoners. But you wouldn't know it by the U.S. press outlets, most of which grossly underplayed the Labor government's scheme announced by Chancellor Alistair Darling.

No Henry Paulson, he. In the slowest race on record, the British beat us to a bailout of ordinary folk from the crisis dumped on us by Wall Street's collapse (check out the Guardian's "Obama v Darling: the plans compared" video.)

Over here, Barack Obama won't even commit to rescinding George W. Bush's brazen tax cuts for the rich that his handlers enacted in the early daze of the current GOP regime.

And the American way, apparently, is to talk about helping "consumers" — that's how we suckers are viewed by Wall Street types like Paulson, according to our press (see the New York Post's "Paulson Works to Ease Consumer Credit Crunch.")

Paulson wants to help Detroit sell us even more vehicles. In Britain, the government at least pays lip service by often referring to us as "people," not "consumers."

OK, we're in transition and Obama hasn't even taken over yet. But over there, the Yanks aren't coming, so the Brits are robbing Peter the rich guy to pay Paul the plumber. The question is whether Obama is listening. Or is he listening to your pay-me-and-other-average-Americans-no-mind guys like Larry Summers?

So far, at least Obama's words are soothing — and we saw how important even words are when Rudy Giuliani was portrayed as keeping it cool right after 9/11. In "Team Obama promises huge jolt to economy," the Guardian's Ewen MacAskill writes:

Progressive or regressive, that's the question about our new regime, in light of the conservative Clintonian Democrats with whom Obama's surrounding himself.

In Britain, that question's been answered by the Labor government's plan (see the Guardian's glance). It calls for massive government borrowing, but it's a progressive agenda where the citizenry are concerned.

Gordon Brown and his henchman Darling laid out an attack that includes a tax hike for the richest 1 percent of Britons and a higher tax on gasoline. Plus an order to banks to delay foreclosures. Plus more help to homeowners in making mortgage payments. Plus an increase in child-care benefits. Plus £1.3 billion to help the unemployed. Plus a cut in the sales tax. Plus a vow to use government power to stop utilities from gouging their customers.

Plus higher taxes on such vices as national health insurance, alcohol, and tobacco (unfortunately, three things that are necessary for us to survive the onrushing Great '08 Depression). And this conscionable move, as the Washington Post's Kevin Sullivan reports in a story buried on page A8:

So far, we're talking about the opposite approach in Britain to the recession. Shoring up social services, a higher tax on the rich? Doesn't sound like corporate welfare to me. What's wrong with those people? What, is Sheila Bair running Britain's bailout?

The Labor government didn't announce its plan to a roomful of respectful reporters. Sitting only a few feet away from Darling and Brown, the Tories jeered them. (Don't you just love parliamentary democracy?)

More from the WashPost story:

Not much talk these days about who's at fault for this mess. (By the way, can we please put that old antisemitic canard about "international bankers" to rest? We didn't get into this mess because of them. The villains are Wall Street's bankers. Thank you.)

Now see this Oklahoman-American Jew's links to other news ...

NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

Washington Post: '$30 Billion Stimulus Announced In Britain: Plan Cuts Sales Tax, Boosts Borrowing for Major Public Projects'

Guardian (U.K.): 'Team Obama promises huge jolt to economy'

Wall Street Journal: 'Big Players Scale Back Charitable Donations'
"As the recession deepens, the future of charities that depend on corporate donations is becoming more uncertain."

N.Y. Post: 'It's About Time! Paulson Finally Makes Move to Help Consumers'

New Yorker: 'Thinking Big: The promise of universal health care' (Steve Coll)

Guardian (U.K.): 'US intelligence "kept files on Tony Blair's private life", claims ex-US navy operator'

Wall Street Journal: 'Chrysler Workers Fret Buyout Deadline'
"Chrysler workers are torn between accepting a buyout now or hoping to survive involuntary separations expected at year's end."

N.Y. Times: 'Economic Slump May Limit Moves on Clean Energy'
"A poor global economy and plunging prices for coal and oil are upending plans to curb the use of fossil fuels."

N.Y. Daily News: 'Cops nab man who drove 3,000 miles to shoot wife in church'

N.Y. Times: 'Saving Citi May Create More Fear'
"The government's bailout of Citigroup could lead other banks to take bigger risks."

Irish Times: 'Democratic triumph heralds realignment in US politics'

N.Y. Times: 'For Lobbyists, No Downturn, Just a Turnover'
"Republican lobbyists are feeling the demand for their services plummet as Democrats ascend in Washington."

N.Y. Daily News: 'Teacher and her pet'
"A Queens teacher, 37, fired for bedding a 17-year-old male model is suing to win back her job. He was no student, she says."

Making a sure bet on finding criminals in lower Manhattan, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo made a pilgrimage to Wall Street today.

Going after goniffs on Wall Street is not only a good thing, but it's a smart career move. It worked for Rudy Giuliani and Eliot Spitzer (not to mention the likes of Thomas Dewey.)

So the AG, the Wall Street Journal reports, "has asked American International Group Inc. to recover millions of dollars worth of 'unreasonable' and 'outrageous' payments it made to executives as the insurance giant neared a collapse earlier this year or face legal action for violating state law."

If Wall Street's an easy mark for crimefighters, then AIG's boardroom is a mobster social club. Like past mobsters John Gotti and Joe Margiotta, the giant insurance company's former CEO, Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, has been the focus of intensive criminal investigations for several years. (See the September 17 Daily Flog: "Deep inside AIG -- the profits of doom.")

Cuomo's letter today to AIG demands info on its execs' bonuses while the company was sliding downhill and its good-time-Charlie road trips right when it was getting a government bailout.

As Wall Street continues to spin out of control, it's not only lawyers like Cuomo who will profit — either politically or monetarily.

As an act of solidarity with the gasping newspaper industry, I'll point you to a December 4, 2007, story in the now-defunct New York Sun. Annie Karni's piece, "Tidal Wave of Lawyers Nears, Bar Data Forewarn," notes that there are 1.14 million lawyers in the U.S. and that one out of every 10 of them live and work in New York City.

To make matters worse, the New York State Bar extrudes lawyers as if it were an Iowa sausage factory:

At that rate, tiemakers are sure to survive the recession.

The rest of the world rushes to Wall Street to try to clean up the vomit and wipe Hank Greenberg's brow, but first . . .

NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

Gulf News (Dubai): 'Traffic violators pardoned if they offer body organs'

Wall Street Journal: 'Worst Crisis Since '30s, With No End Yet in Sight'

N.Y. Times: 'Administration Trying for Spy Satellites Again'

N.Y. Post: 'CONDOMS MAKE NYC RUBBER LAND'

CNBC: 'Morgan Stanley Is in Talks with China for Fresh Funds'

L.A. Times: 'Insurgents in Afghanistan show strength, sophistication'

China Daily: '3 Chinese banks hold $297m in Lehman debt - report'

SmashHits.com: 'Speeding bus kills 14 in India'

MarketWatch: 'Media's Wimpy Wall Street Coverage'

Forum 18: 'BELARUS: Orthodox complain of KGB intimidation at village funeral'

Running down the press:

As other countries' banks join hands, sing "Kumbaya," and try to bail out our financial system (WSJ: "Central Banks Take Coordinated Action"), don't you worry about us New Yorkers. We're going to bounce back.

We're still No. 1 in the stuff that counts. Take a look at David Seifman's piece in this morning's N.Y. Post:

Sadly, few of them went to investment bankers and lawyers, ensuring that we'll continue to be overpopulated with both species and thus always in danger of future Wall Street meltdowns.

The actual truth is that Wall Street hasn't been dominant for quite some time. In fact, many of its denizens are downright submissive, as the Daily News tells us:

Give me those goddamn whips, and I'll show you how to flay the backsides of those downtown bankers.

Financial Times (U.K.): 'Housing data reinforce threat to US growth'

And a bottom of th' mornin' to you from London:

Daniel Pimlott's story notes that this may not be such bad news for the long run:

Well, that's good: One way out of this crisis is for the price of houses to stay too high to afford. And there's more of the same kind of supposedly good news:

Yes, more money for the mortgage bankers and investment houses to play with. That's the kind of thing it will take to lift us out of this crisis. No joke, it really is.

N.Y. Post: 'PEDAL TO THE METALS: FLIGHT TO SAFETY BOOSTS GOLD, SILVER & OIL'

Paul Tharp's solid story early this morning notes:

Tharp recognizes that the rise in oil prices is a really slippery slope:

McClatchy: 'Pakistan reportedly opens fire on U.S. forces in tribal area'

The only thing that may re-fill the wallets of Wall Street's bankers is another full-scale war from which to profit. They may get their wish, if things don't calm down a little in South Asia:

Sex and money — is there anything else? How about sex, money, and movies? Turn to the Post's Page Six for, among other gossip, "NAUGHTY PRODUCT PLUGS":

BBC: 'India drug firm turns to Giuliani'

Too rich. Our ex-mayor is now trying to help people acquire drugs:

Running down the press:

I know I sound like a broken record by constantly flaying the New York Times for its political coverage, but it's the paper of record that is broken. And because the Times has such influence — particularly in other newsrooms — one can't help but parse the paper.

And nothing personal against Adam Nagourney (it's strictly business), but he's more of a recorder than a reporter, unlike the many fine front-line people on the Times staff. And his prose is amateur. I'm not the editor who chooses to rely on Nagourney for front-page political stories, so don't shoot the messenger.

OK, go ahead and shoot me. But before you lock and load, see this morning's coverage of John McCain's convention speech.

Nagourney's lede:

Now here's the Wall Street Journal's lede, proving that two heads (Jerry Seib and Laura Meckler) are less turgid than one:

Similar, but at least Seib and Meckler chose to detach themselves from simply recording McCain's comments by noting that the "pledge . . . was designed to help him launch the fall campaign." And they threw in some perspective by noting that McCain's "maverick" image is under fire.

Up high, in the fifth graf, they added this bit of interpretation:

Yes, an explanation for McCain's relatively conciliatory and bridge-building words.

Nagourney does some interpreting, but he submerges it under his predictable recounting. He waits until the 12th graf to note:

No mention of how the other Republicans' attacks freed McCain to sound like the Great Conciliator.

And on down in the story, Nagourney, as usual, gives McCain free publicity by saying straight out that his "strength as a candidate is his national-security experience and expertise." A good reporter would say that McCain says or claims that those are his strengths, instead of stating as fact what the candidate claims.

I'm so pedantic.

A dose of the Post is indicated, so moving on . . .

Post: 'TEACHER VANISH MYSTERY'

Don't you just love that terse, verb-less hed? The story is ominous:

Post: 'TERROR-STRIP DEMO? UH, FAT CHANCE'

Not the usual blubber you'd find in staid papers, and so un-P.C. Picking a courtroom moment that other papers might not have even reported, let alone led with, Jennifer Fermino writes:

Daily News: 'Bashed bicyclist beats rap'

Good piece, starting with:

Daily News: 'Deutsche disgrace: Butts, beer found despite fire regulations'

Here's a story that won't make the cover of Cigar Aficionado:

New Yorker: 'Party Faithful: Can the Democrats get a foothold on the religious vote?'

Oh, the perils of working on a weekly. The mag's Philip Gourevitch talked with Palin a couple of weeks ago and now publishes his piece, which really is kind of a softball, but how was he to know back then that she would be chosen? And the mag's Peter J. Boyer, meanwhile, was working on a story about how the GOP's grip on evangelical voters might be slipping. How was he to know that the GOP would take care of that problem? At least Boyer managed to jam in the party's heaven-sent veep pick, probably past the mag's deadline, down low in his story:

Worth reading anyway.

Huffington Post: 'Sebelius Accuses Palin Of Deceiving Voters'

Lame headline but good precursor by Seth Colter Walls of what the Democrats will do more and more of: release Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius to hound the much more lightweight Palin.

McClatchy: 'Community organizers protest mocking by GOP speakers'

Always with the sharp angles, McClatchy nabs this one. William Douglas's story is datelined St. Paul, but it zooms in on New Yorkers:

And once again we see what kind of shameless hypocrite Rudy Giuliani is for now sneering at community activists — he's even more of a lying hypocrite than most other pols:

This is a better story than the Daily News's version, 'Community groups hammer Rudy Giuliani & slam Sarah Palin.'

But in attempting to get the other side of his story, Michael Saul does accidentally reveal the presence of one of the main gurus for "compassionate conservative" George W. Bush in the Empire State Building:

Last I knew, Olasky — a former Commie Jew who crossed over to the other extreme and became a hardline conservative Christian (see my February 2005 item) — was a journalism professor in Texas. I didn't realize that this fervent evangelical has returned to his East Coast roots to convert Godless New Yorkers from a perch in a skyscraper that reaches into Heaven.

In a world where a no-name Alaskan could suddenly become an aging heartbeat from the U.S. presidency, as Don LaFontaine might have intoned it if he hadn't died before I could hire him, the stunning desperation of that very move got glossed over by 99 percent of the U.S. media.

Matt Scully's speech at the Republican National Convention — recited by Sarah Palin last night — received the imprimatur from the New York Times: "Palin Assails Critics and Electrifies Party."

Like an ER team using the paddles to jump-start a dead patient.

As if they were reporting on the emperor's new clothes, Elizabeth Bumiller and Michael Cooper pronounced the Republican ticket healthy:

What a shock that the delegates said yes.

Of course, Times reporters didn't have to play into the McCain campaign's hands by describing him that way. Closer to the truth is that McCain is an admiral's son who married an Arizona liquor magnate's daughter, carpetbagged into Congress, and built his career by sucking up to the rich and powerful, including financiopath S&L schnook Charles Keating and newspaper publisher/phony war hero Darrow "Duke" Tully.

They got Palin right, however. She really is a hockey mom — even the father of her accidental grandchild is a high-school kid who plays hockey with his buddies.

Is she really a good choice for the ticket? I don't know. Alaska.

A look-see at how the rest of the press handled the GOP's desperate move to offer a Snow White alternative to the Democrats' Negro candidate:

• The Wall Street Journal was more rational, steering clear of the kind of glib labeling used by the likes of the Times and me. The lede by Jerry Seib and Laura Meckler:

• Perhaps influenced by Fashion Week, the big event going on this week in New York City, our hometown Post picked a glamor image and ran with it:

SHE'S A 'PIT BULL WITH LIPSTICK': PALIN WOWS 'EM BY POUNDING DC SNOBS

Michael Vick's pit bulls also had red mouths, but in their case it was blood. Anyway, here's Brendan Scott and Chuck Bennett's lede:

Not the kind of tongue-lashing Larry Craig — the last unknown Republican from the West to make a splash in Minnesota — was prepared to give in that airport bathroom stall, but at least Palin got it done.

(By the way, she didn't "prove her chops." She tried to prove her chops. That's why the WSJ's "countered" is more accurate.)

• The Daily News promo'd its coverage nicely with "Hockey mom drops gloves," but its lede slipped and fell:

This is a theme with Republican pols. Rudy Giuliani in drag was also a pit bull with lipstick.

• McClatchy noted that Palin "defined herself as someone irritated with the news media and Washington."

Well, who isn't?

• Nice job by Newsday's Craig Gordon:

But so what. For all the talk about the feistiness of Palin's speech, you have to remember that the words came from former George W. Bush speechwriter Scully, who's been spraying similar vitriol at liberals since he was an Arizona college student harassing professors two decades ago.

• A surprisingly humdrum lede by the Washington Post:

(Yes, a black man in America is accused of being "elitist," and it's reported with a straight face.)

But the WashPost deserves kudos for Dan Balz's front-page story yesterday that detailed the GOP's desperation and shoddy vetting of Palin:

• Interesting blog analysis from the BBC's U.S. guy Justin Webb:

Webb doesn't point this out, but it's pretty funny that Giuliani has the nerve to talk about what the GOP calls "family values." This is the same mayor who famously shucked his wife and shunted his kids to the sidelines. (See my colleague Wayne Barrett's 2007 piece "Public Displays of Disaffection.")

• The Times (U.K.) had the guts to use the most accurate label for Palin:

• The most clever review of last night's sitcom pilot comes from Der Spiegel. The German outlet's headline and typically (in the foreign press) long subhed:

Gabor Steingart's story is somewhat snooty, but at least it's original, so you can forgive him the factual boo-boo of confusing Alaska with Arizona. (How's a German copy editor going to catch that mistake unless he or she grew up reading Karl May's novels?) Quoting at length from Steingart:

We'll see about that, but congratulations to Steingart for working in a mention of Cheney, who has been our de facto president for the past eight years.

More to the current point, it probably takes a furriner like Steingart to observe our moralistic brand of politics at a safe remove:

Steingart can get away with using "schadenfreude" in a daily news story. He is German, after all. And the Palin melodrama does have its enjoyable moments.

Skipping that messy process of democracy, Bloomberg drafts himself as a presidential candidate

It doesn't matter that New York's mayor, Mike "Michael" Bloomberg, hasn't formally announced a bid for president. He's running, as only this billionaire can: Standing in the shadows, waiting to see how the absurd process shakes out, eager to play a game of cash-as-cash-can.

Reuters reported yesterday on a Quinnipiac poll:

Y'all out in the hustings may want to listen up about Bloomberg. Few New Yorkers knew anything about him until he skipped the democratic process a few years ago and bought Gracie Mansion, succeeding Rudy Giuliani.

The best take on Bloomberg comes from my colleague Tom Robbins. (Full disclosure: I edit Robbins's copy, but he is responsible for its beauty and vigor.) Here's a snatch of his cover piece on Bloomberg from this week's Voice:

As to whether Bloomberg is a Republican or Democrat? He's neither, as Robbins pointed out in an earlier piece. The guy is more like our version of Lee Kuan Yew, the Singaporean despot who was always willing to sacrifice civil liberties in the cause of making the streets safe for corporations.

Luckily, New York was spared the 2012 Olympics, despite the city's costly campaign. If the city had won the North American bid, Bloomberg would have "cleaned up" the place, stifling the disorder of street vendors, dissidents, and commoners that makes the city such a vibrant place.

Bloomberg is prevented by term limits from acquiring another term as mayor and the presidency is up for grabs, so you might want to look out for that limousine drive-by on our democratic — deeply flawed but democratic — process of picking a prexy.

Merrill's Stan O'Neal wasn't ready for subprime time, but he was a record-setting fundraiser for Bush

Merrill Lynch's ouster of CEO E. Stanley O'Neal is good timing for the financial behemoth, but it comes a few years too late for America and for thousands of Merrill employees.

He's being driven out for his reckless bundling of subprime mortgages into shaky securities that Merrill aggressively peddled and that are now shaking Wall Street's foundations. Yes, these big financial institutions play funny money with your monthly payments, making millions while you don't see a dime from their monopoly tactics.

Not that this is anything new. The explosion in subprime mortgages is caused in large part by predatory lending practices, which are particularly aimed at black people (O'Neal used to be one of those) and other minorities.

More on O'Neal in a minute, but as I wrote in April 2001 about this financiopathic scheme — "From the Subprime to the Ridiculous" — when the War of Terror was still being waged almost entirely on the domestic front by banks and companies like Merrill:

In those days, Stan O'Neal, while firing thousands of Merrill employees, was recklessly expanding Merrill's subprime bidness.

In 2003, as I previously noted, O'Neal, the highest-ranking black man on Wall Street, was a reckless bundler in another way: He set a fundraising record for George W. Bush's campaign by sending out a letter that generated $279,750 from other rich people in less than three weeks' time, the most in such a such a short period.

O'Neal, one of the nine Bush "Rangers" on Wall Street, was a prime bundler before the term hit its current vogue.

As this moneychanger is being driven from the temple, he'll be dragging along a big bag of cash. Details of that aren't immediately known, but, like most CEOs, he had one helluva deal. For instance, as the New York Times's Eric Dash noted this past April, O'Neal had a particularly sweet clause in his Merrill deal just in case the big company wobbled so much that it fell under the control of another big company:

Hell, that was incentive for him to be reckless enough take Merrill into the toilet. If he had stayed around long enough to really ruin the company to the extent that some other behemoth would take control, he would have gotten a quarter of a billion.

Now O'Neal joins the ranks of former Merrill employees. He probably won't be asked to join them for commiseration drinks. He fired more than 25,000 of them during his tenure.

Picking Mukasey as AG should help the GOP and Rudy and should scare civil libertarians.

The selection of terror-case judge Michael Mukasey, a pal of Rudy Giuliani's, as the next AG broadly hints at the GOP's strategy for next year's elections: Terror 24-7.

Mukasey's close ties to Rudy make him a simply fabulous choice as attorney general. He's practically a running mate for Giuliani during the next year of campaigning.

What about Mukasey and the rest of us? For the next year as lame-duck AG, Mukasey, who presided over the trial of the World Trade Center's 1993 bombers, will be a constant and sympathetic/heroic reminder of the "war on terror." Maybe that will stoke enough fear in us that we'll forget the war of terror we've created in Iraq.

This is a smart move by the GOP. It smacks of Karl Rove, but he supposedly left the building.

Here's the bad news: Mukasey is potentially far more hazardous to our civil liberties than Alberto Gonzales ever was. Gonzales was a dumb-ass, and Mukasey is very sharp. Mukasey thinks so highly of the Patriot Act that he felt compelled to defend it in a 2004 Wall Street Journal op-ed, writing:

Dispensing with the name, Mukasey proceeds to write a scary analysis, particularly his sneering at librarians' concerns and his strong implication that the Bill of Rights, because it was tacked onto the Constitution, has less heft.

His argument is that we ought to give the government the benefit of the doubt in its dealings with we the people. That's the same kind of reasoning that Chief Justice John Roberts uses to give corporations the benefit of the doubt over people, as I wrote in July 2005..

Here are Mukasey's concluding paragraphs from the WSJ op-ed:

Of course, it's the government that determines what measures are required to "keep us alive." This is one scary lawyer, or as Ben Franklin said:

But concerning the really important stuff — the '08 presidential campaign — Giuliani now has a security blanket. Mukasey is, in effect, his running mate. He'll get bipartisan support from the Senate — Chuck Schumer and other Democrats love him, and Mukasey's role as a judge intimately involved with World Trade Center and other terrorism cases while he was a federal judge in New York City will guarantee him a free pass during confirmation hearings.

You'll hear the word "terror" about a million times during those brief hearings, and the horror of the attacks will be brought up again and again.

As to Mukasey's connections with Giuliani? Forget this morning's papers if you want all the details. As Ron Mills pointed out yesterday in his cleverly named blog, Ron Mills — News And Commentary, Mukasey is a really close pal of Rudy's — he administered the oath of office to newly elected Mayor Giuliani twice in 1994 — once in Mukasey's apartment.

Mukasey was already a member of the Giuliani campaign's "Justice Advisory Committee", and Mukasey's son Marc is a partner in Rudy's law firm.

The apartment oath and the fact that Marc Mukasey is a law partner of Rudy's somehow didn't make it into this morning's New York Times story.

But if Rudy wins the '08 election, you can be sure of one detail: Mukasey will stay on as AG.

If you have some time on your hands, go to John Young's insane and great cryptome.org for the complete transcript of the trial stemming from the '93 bombing.

And what a trial that was. The prosecutor won the case, and you'd think that the GOP would love to give him a top job in the Bush administration — except for the fact that the prosecutor was Patrick Fitzgerald.

Why Uzbekistan is something to think about on this day.

By this time on the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 horror, you will have seen plenty of images of pols trying to launch themselves from the sacralized Ground Zero — though Rudy Giuliani got scorched on his latest takeoff when some victims' families accused him of exploiting the tragedy now that he's a presidential candidate.

Giuliani, who would never have been a presidential candidate if not for 9/11, was the first pol to exploit Ground Zero, but he's not the last, of course, and he's probably not even the most worrisome. In 2002, Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov used the sacralized 9/11 site as a photo-op — with the blessing of Giuliani's successor, Mike Bloomberg.

Why bring up Karimov's Ground Zero visit five years after the fact? Who cares if a foreign pol desecrated what has become sacred ground? The reason is that Uzbekistan is nothing but an Iran in the making, Karimov is its shah, and we're the dupes who have helped prop him up. All that in a world that's more dangerous than it was six years ago.

Iraq has become a training ground for terrorists since our 2003 invasion. Uzbekistan, which is about as geopolitically strategic (see map below), is liable to become such a training ground for terrorists even without a U.S. invasion.

Our fairly warm relationship with Karimov grew warmer after 9/11, when we enlisted in our "war on terror" this dictator who conducts a war of terror on his own people. Dangerous move by the Bush regime, because the radical Muslims who will probably take over undemocratic Uzbekistan when the aging despot dies or is deposed will also have long memories. They're sure to remember that, under the once-secret "rendition" scheme, we shipped Muslim prisoners to his jails for interrogation. They'll also remember how our government stood by and did nothing during Karimov's notorious Andijan massacre of dissidents in the spring of 2005 and then tried to suppress an independent investigation of the slaughter.

Expect to see those images of Karimov at Ground Zero and cuddling with Bush used eventually as devices to stir up hatred of the U.S.

The Central Asian "republic" is destined to be the next "-stan" to push its way into headlines, and the news will be bad. Am I crazy? Yes. Am I wrong about Uzbekistan? I don't think so. Here's how the mainstream International Crisis Group summed things up late last month:

If understanding our history with Karimov and Uzbekistan is important, then recalling how we "handled" the shah and Iran is instructive.

Yes, Karimov is following right in the footsteps of Shah Reza Pahlavi. What's worse is that our government is traipsing down the same garden path with Uzbek's dictator as we did with the shah. And our relationship with Karimov and his NSS is similar to our relationship with the shah and his dreaded secret service, SAVAK, which was shaped by the CIA. Alfred McCoy, in A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror, wrote:

Karimov rules the same way the shah did. We haven't been as close to Karimov as we were to the shah, but our allowing Karimov to use 9/11 as a symbol back in 2002 was cynical: The Bush regime buttered him up as an ally, and Bloomberg was careful not to offend him because of New York's large number of Bukharan Jewish emigres, many of whom supported him.

Karimov himself is pretty cynical: In his own nation, he generally tolerates Jews and even protects them, because the Bukharan Jews have lived there for a thousand years and pose no threat to his power. But he harshly represses Christians — and even the Muslims who make up nearly 90 percent of the California-sized country of 27 million people.

As I pointed out a couple of years ago, New York's Jewish Week described the strange embrace of Karimov by the city's Bukharan Jews:

George W. Bush's relationship with Karimov isn't quite as old as Karimov's relationship with Uzbek Jews. Bush's dealings with Karimov date back to 1997, when Dubya was still the hangingest governor in U.S. history: Enron's Ken Lay, Bush's biggest campaign contributor, wanted to make a deal with Uzbekistan so Lay instructed Dubya to meet with one of Karimov's minions to grease the skids.

By 2002, the Bush regime wanted to curry favor with Karimov because Uzbekistan borders on Afghanistan. When Karimov visited the States, he got the royal treatment. At Ground Zero, the dictator looked like the religious type, right? I mean, he laid a wreath and even signed his name on a memorial wall.

Bloomberg gave Karimov freer rein in New York City than he gave the 500,000 Americans protesting at the Republican National Convention in 2004. And in December 2005, Bloomberg blasted a New York transit strike as "morally reprehensible." But it was OK for the mayor to roll out the red carpet three years earlier for a morally reprehensible dictator.

Anyway, by the time of the 2002 visit, Karimov was already known as a harsh despot, and Bloomberg tried to keep the news pretty quiet that he was schlepping a dictator around town. You couldn't find on the mayor's website the photos of him and Karimov in the mayor's office or of Karimov at Ground Zero. But the pix were trumpeted on the Uzbekistan government site.

Five years after his visit to Ground Zero, Karimov is surely nearing the end of his 20-year reign — one sign is that there's more and more repression in Uzbekistan. Forum 18, an Oslo-based religious-freedom group that snoops on repressive regimes around the world, noted just the other day that Karimov and his secret police, the National Security Service, have stepped up their spying on religious communities. Forum 18's Felix Corley wrote on September 5:

It's one thing for a predominantly Muslim country to spy on Christians or for a predominantly Christian nation to spy on Muslims — that happens in many places. But Karimov is playing with fire, just as the shah did in Iran, because he's hassling Muslims in a Muslim country. Forum 18's Corley noted:

Karimov's day of reckoning with his country's Muslim radicals is approaching. And it won't help Americans worried about the spread of terrorists that our government is supporting him till the bitter end.