Hillary is F*cking Obama???

It's clear that there has been a wave of infidelity in our society. Ex-governor Eliot Spitzer. Current governor David Paterson (and his wife). Even two of our favorite celebrity couples, Jimmy Kimmel/Sarah Silverman and Matt Damon/Ben Affleck have failed to be faithful to each other.

Well now it has become evident that the two contenders for the Democratic Presidential Nomination, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, are closer than we may have thought...

On the Spitzer resignation--

--what Katie said.

(Oh, you didn't know Cambridge Common was back? Well, Cambridge Common is back, in a fancy new house. Here also is an important post about political and practical issues in recovering New Orleans, and here are the parts of an illuminating argument two CC'ers had with Garrett about minority rights, universalism, and the QRAC controversy. Go read!)

A recap of the last 2 years of NYS politics

OK. I don't really know what to do with this whole "Eliot Spitzer slept with a hooker" thing. Part of me wants to scream, "Your whole campaign was about cleaning up Albany, and you've spent your entire term mired in one scandal after another!"

But another part of me just wants to laugh, because this is another in a long string of ironies and other hilarious occurrences in New York State politics over the last couple years.

Come, let me take you on a journey through time:

• 8/10/05: Republican Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro announces she will run to unseat Sen. Hillary Clinton in 2006. At the press conference, she loses a page of her speech and looks for it in silence for a full 32 seconds, making for perhaps the best political ad of all time. (If you click one link in this post, it should be that one. On that page, click any of the links that say "Video.")

• 12/2/05: Pirro, after receiving support and money from exactly zero people, drops out of the Senate race to run for NYS DA.
• 9/23/06: It is revealed that Democratic State Comptroller Alan Hevesi, running for reelection, used state money to buy his wife a chauffeur. He is outed when his opponent calls the hotline that Hevesi himself set up for people to report "misuse of the public’s money." And yes, that would be the state's head accountant stealing from the public.
• 9/28/06: Just one month before the election, Pirro falls under federal investigation for allegedly having Bernard Kerik (remember him?) wiretap her husband, whom she feared was having an affair. And yes, that would be a candidate for District Attorney under investigation.
• 11/7/06: Pirro loses. Hevesi, who decided to keep running despite a report basically saying he was guilty, still wins with 57% of the vote.
• 12/23/06: He then promptly pleads guilty and resigns.
• 2/8/07: Newly-elected Gov. Spitzer appoints a panel of experts, which selects three possible well-qualified replacements for Hevesi. Instead of picking one of them, the New York State Legislature picks...a New York State Legislator.
• August 2007: Gov. Spitzer illegally uses the State Police to catch Republican State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno illegally taking flights on state-owned airplanes. In response, a Bruno staffer leaves the following message on Gov. Spitzer's 83-year-old father's phone: "There is not a goddamn thing your phony, psycho, piece-of-shit son can do about [a potential subpoena]. Bernie, your phony loans are about to catch up with you. You will be forced to tell the truth and the fact that your son’s a pathological liar will be known to all."
• 2007: Pirro joins Fox News as a commentator, loses a tooth:
  
  
  

• 2/12/08: Spitzer appears on Colbert and seems to be getting his talking points straight from the prostitute he would sleep with the next day:
  

  Colbert: I would like to see some pictures of you in that outfit.
  Spitzer: Well, for that you have to pay extra.

  
  

• 2/13/08: Spitzer sleeps with a prostitute.
• 3/10/08: We all find out about it. The one upshot is that if he resigns, NY will have the first ever blind Governor!
• 11/23/50-Present: Sen. Chuck Schumer is Jewish. Not actually a scandal, but it gives me an excuse to show you this video featuring the Broadway casts of two of the best musicals of all time (plus a cameo from our favorite current U.S. President).

OK, now back to my work...