Public Servants on Parade: Hillary, Mike, and Shelly

Hillary Clinton will get a big role, and a big roll call vote, at the Democratic Convention, and some observers claim she has thus pwn3d Obama, and even hint that she may seize the nomination. But onetime Hillary challenger Jonathan Tasini says in a New York Daily News Op-Ed that Hillary has only pwn3d herself. Tasini says he opposed Hillary Clinton in the 2005 primary race to "to challenge Clinton's support for the Iraq war" and promote "a debate about the war." Clinton did everything she could to duck that debate, Tasini says, and while that served her short-term interests, it gave Obama, whose opposition to the war was more in tune with Democrats across the country, his opening and his victory.

To show his solidarity with working New Yorkers, Mayor Bloomberg has let it be known that he takes the subway -- after being driven to it, of course, in an SUV. Yesterday he encountered a busker on the 4 train, reports the New York Post, and instead of ordering the minstrel arrested as an example to quality-of-life offenders everywhere, Bloomberg asked for a song and gave the man, identified as Daniel Scott, a tip. Scott lavished praised the Mayor, advising the riders to "give him four more years." New York magazine's Intelligencer is skeptical: "Did anyone get a good look at the busker? Because it's a good bet you would have recognized him from in a bit part on Law & Order..."

Explore the softer side of Shelly. To Albany and on his official page, he's Sheldon Silver, Assembly Speaker and pre-eminent political fixer. To the folks back home, he's simply Shelly, "our Assemblyman, always there for you." The site has many pictures of Silver making nice with the old, the young, the drivers of buses, and a Google map pinpointing the sites of his many recent achievements and endeavors, which you can click for details. The stretch by the Williamsburg Bridge which, our own Tom Robbins has reported, Silver has kept a desolate blight for decades, is represented by "A new traffic light to make street crossing safer."