Further Giuliani updates

Tim Grieve at Salon lists the various defenses the Giuliani campaign has offered thus far to his charging random NYC agencies for his police entourage while getting booty calls with his then-mistress. They seem to be going for the spaghetti defense: throw out everything they can and see what sticks (so far, none of them have). I think my favorite is number 4, though:

Shortly after the Politico story broke, Joe Lhota, a deputy mayor under Giuliani, told the Daily News that the practice of billing obscure city offices for mayoral security has "gone on for years" and "predates Giuliani." When told Thursday that spokesmen for Giuliani's predecessors disagreed, Lhota said he needed to "reverse" himself. "I'm just going to talk about the Giuliani era," he said. "I should only talk about what I know about."

So when Lhota said "every mayor of New York city does this", he only meant during Giualiani's era. That is, only Giuliani did this.

And it doesn't stop there! There was breaking news yesterday along the theme of misappropriation of city funds for Giuliani's affair:

Well before it was publicly known he was seeing her, then-married New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani provided a police driver and city car for his mistress Judith Nathan, former senior city officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

"She used the PD as her personal taxi service," said one former city official who worked for Giuliani.

...

The former officials told ABCNews.com the extra costs involved overtime and per diem costs for officers traveling with Giuliani to secret weekend rendezvous with Nathan in the fashionable Hamptons resort area on Long Island.