Markos writes about it:

On 11/30, Rasmussen's tracking poll had Giuliani at 27%, 14% ahead of his nearest competitor. Today, he limps in at 20% after three consecutive days of losses. Meanwhile, Huckabee, at 13% on the 30th, is now at 17% and surging.

With Rudy a sure fire also ran in Iowa and trailing badly in New Hampshire, with the government funded trysts still to be explained, Rudy seems to be, well, over.

Tweety and MoDo will weep.

Obama moves up:

Obama, an Illinois senator, leads for the first time in the Register's poll as the choice of 28 percent of likely caucusgoers, up from 22 percent in October. Clinton, a New York senator, was the preferred candidate of 25 percent, down from 29 percent in the previous poll. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who led in the Register's May poll, held steady with 23 percent, in third place, but part of the three-way battle.

Can I note one more time that Sen. Edwards' attacks on Senator Clinton have NOT helped him, that he has ceded the Hillary alternative mantle to Senator Obama? Well, I just did. Note, this is all within the margin of error stuff so who is actually ahead is not easy to say. What DOES seem clear is that Obama is moving up, Hillary down and Edwards is not moving at all.

Via Kagro, it gets worse:

[Rudy Giuliani's then- girlfriend when he was married to Donna Hanover, Judi] Nathan's detail was approved by the NYPD after a stranger made an unspecified threat to her. The commissioner at the time was Bernard Kerik, who was recently indicted on tax fraud charges in an unrelated matter. "It wasn't about her being the mayor's girlfriend," Kerik said. "The person spoke to her by name and made comments to her."

Kerik signed off on all of this. Makes Rudy's support for Kerik, even after being informed of his alleged criminal activities, easier to understand.

Rudy's latest story that the cops were complaining about late payments falls apart:

New questions were raised today about Rudy Giuliani's explanation for submitting police security expenses to obscure city agencies while he was mayor of New York and carried on a secret affair with his mistress, who also was given use of a police driver and city car. Giuliani said Thursday the unusual billing practice was not intended to hide anything but instead to speed payment of American Express credit card bills.

But the current New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said today he knew of no problems with the delay of payments before Giuliani was mayor, when Kelly served under Mayor David Dinkins, or since.

He said all bills for the police details for Dinkins and now for Mayor Mike Bloomberg are handled directly "through the police department."

The Giuliani campaign is now backtracking on its claims that prior mayors also used obscure agencies to bill expenses:

Joe Lhota, a deputy mayor in Giuliani's City Hall, told the Daily News Wednesday night that the administration's practice of allocating security expenses to small city offices that had nothing to do with mayoral protection has "gone on for years" and "predates Giuliani."

When told budget officials from the administrations of Ed Koch and David Dinkins said they did no such thing, Lhota caved Thursday, "I'm going to reverse myself on that. I'm just going to talk about the Giuliani era," Lhota said. "I should only talk about what I know about."

The New York Times reports the statistics Rudy Giuliani uses to tout his accomplishments as Mayor of New York don't back him up.

Is he done yet?

Via Atrios:

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.

There oughta be a law! Oh wait, there is one:

[NY State Comptroller Alan Hevesi's] decision to step down came as Albany prosecutors were preparing to ask a grand jury to indict him on charges of defrauding the government and on other felonies stemming from his use of state employees as chauffeurs and aides to his wife, a law enforcement official said, charges that could have yielded a prison sentence had he been convicted.

Sounds like Rudy committed a felony to me.

Sam Stein of HuffPo reports:

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani acted improperly and appeared to be covering something up when he charged the cost of his and his girlfriend's security detail to obscure New York City agencies, former mayor Ed Koch told the Huffington Post.

. . . "There is something improper about charging costs to a department other than the NYPD," said Koch. "They are the ones who are supposed to pick him up no matter where he is whether or not it's in the city."

Koch, who served as the mayor of New York City from 1978 to 1989, said that the episode gave off the appearance that Giuliani, who was at the time married to his second wife Donna Hanover, was trying to hide his affair. He also suggested that Judith Nathan received her own personal protection, which would have been, according to Koch, a flagrant misuse of taxpayer money.

"I found it strange that his lady friend was given protection," said the long-time New York politico. "That was bizarre. She's not the city's responsibility. Rudy is the city's responsibility. Your wife and his children get protection, and that's understood. But certainly not your lady friend."

Government funded trysts.

Via Digby:

In his speeches and often on the Internet, the part of Sen. Barack Obama's biography that gets the most attention is not his race but his connections to the Muslim world.

Since declaring his candidacy for president in February, Obama, a member of a congregation of the United Church of Christ in Chicago, has had to address assertions that he is a Muslim or that he had received training in Islam in Indonesia, where he lived from ages 6 to 10. While his father was an atheist and his mother did not practice religion, Obama's stepfather did occasionally attend services at a mosque there.

Despite his denials, rumors and e-mails circulating on the Internet continue to allege that Obama (D-Ill.) is a Muslim, a "Muslim plant" in a conspiracy against America, and that, if elected president, he would take the oath of office using a Koran, rather than a Bible, as did Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the only Muslim in Congress, when he was sworn in earlier this year.

This is about as low as I have seen an Establishment paper go. This is shameful stuff.

Politico has a major story about Rudy Giuliani. Through a freedom of information act request, it obtained copies of Rudy's Amex bills and billing records that show Rudy billed the city using obscure agencies for hundreds of thousands of dollars for his and his detail's travels, including many trips to Southampton, during the early days of his and Judith Nathan's relationship.

The point is not that he was married. Everyone knows he cheated on his wife. The point is the unusual billing to other agencies and his office's refusal to provide the documents to the comptroller's office investigating the expenses and billing, citing "security concerns." The comptroller then alerted Bloomberg's office who forwarded the matter for investigation.

One thing I find unforgivable is his billing of $400,000, including his 2001 Southampton expenses (he went there every weekend in August and the first in September and none of the trips were listed on his official schedule) to the Assigned Counsel Administrative Office -- the office that provides lawyers for the poor. As if they aren't already underfunded, Rudy took more money out of that till.

More...

The New York Times re-examines the 2000 Senate race between Hillary and Rudy Giuliani.

One interpretation: Leopards don't change their spots. The Rudy who lost interest when he couldn't do it his way in 2000 is the same Rudy who will lose if nominated by Republicans in 2008.

As spring arrived, Mr. Giuliani had yet to give a major speech on federal issues. He was barely campaigning upstate. Mr. Giuliani dismissed the concerns of Republican leaders, explaining that he, unlike Mrs. Clinton, had a full-time job.
Mr. Giuliani’s campaign began to falter in March.

A typical Rudy faux-pas: [More...]

A new Strategic Vision Iowa poll among likely Democratic caucus voters in Iowa show Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama tied at 29% with John Edwards trailing at 23%.

Poll results are here.

Also noteworthy:

• 85% of Dems polled say they favor a full troop withdrawal from Iraq within 6 months (compared to 51% of Republicans)
• 33% say experience is most important in picking a President
• 29% say ideology is most important, 27% say charisma.

Republican Congressman Dennis Hastert has resigned, effective tonight.

In his letter, Hastert said he chose Monday because he was advised it would give Blagojevich sufficient time to set a special primary election for Feb. 5 so voters can pick candidates to run for the remainder of his term, which ends in January 2009.

....If Blagojevich calls the special primary for that day, voters in Hastert's northern Illinois district not only will choose candidates to run for his unexpired term, but also cast ballots in a regular primary election to whittle down the candidates who will run to be Hastert's full-time replacement.

Hastert says he has no firm plans.