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This is a pretty in-depth article, but I want to know if any of the information within is false. After all, it's from the Nation.

I expect it's shaded but it probably reveals some of the lines of attack that the Dims would use against him in the general election. We'd better find out before it's too late.

article: Giuliani also governed in a fashion that created problems beneath the surface, for which the bill of reckoning is only now coming due. His borrowing left his successor with a $4.5 billion budget deficit only eighteen months after Rudy sat on a $3 billion surplus.

We should look into this more. The economic record is, at best, mixed. The same scrutiny should be applied to Romney's record as well.

Some of the stuff about defending really indefensible police killings is going to come back to haunt the ex-mayor. It was way over the top, however you slice it.

article: In eight years, Giuliani's most famous comment about public education was that the school system should be "blown up."

Not a good quote.

article: Even Michael Bloomberg, Giuliani's Republican successor, who was elected with the help of a powerful Giuliani TV commercial, told me: "Giuliani never got his hands around the school system. There is no question that it's gotten worse the last eight years, not better."

Many people who dump on Bloomberg don't want to admit he is Rudy's pick. And Giuliani has recently been bragging about electing him as mayor. It's all part of the package. If you don't like Bloomberg, then why do you like the guy who put him in office when he pursues many of the same policies but, according to recent polls, is considered by New Yorkers a much better mayor and potential presidential candidate that Giuliani, at least according to recent polls where Bloomberg beat Giuliani hands down with the polled voters?

article: The next chancellor was Ramon Cortines, who was selected by Giuliani's supporters on the board. Cortines, Mexican-American and gay, was subjected to a brutal campaign of personal abuse by Giuliani, who called him "precious" and "the little victim."

Some of this is pretty ugly even by the standards of the right wing and religious conservatives.

article: On August 3, 1999, Giuliani wrote a nasty letter to Crew and leaked it to the tabloids, together with a blind quote from an aide saying, "It seems he's got one foot out the door." This was the same day that Crew was burying his first wife, Angela, in a private ceremony in upstate Poughkeepsie. Crew had to respond to press calls before delivering his eulogy.

Later Crew told Barrett: "This is a maniac. On the day I was burying my wife, I have these people concocting this world of treachery....

"When Rudy sees a need to take someone out, he has a machine, a roomful of henchmen, nicking away at you, leaking crazy stories. He is not bound by the truth. I have studied animal life, and their predator/prey relations are more graceful than his."

Do we really think this is how we can achieve school choice and vouchers? Someone who operates like this is, well, a big-city machine Democrat. With an 'R' next to his name.

It's repellent.

We shouldn't take the Nation as gospel on anything. But we'd better know the full story before all the money and support is cornered by a candidate who is so un-Republican in outlook and unprincipled in his performance. And the same tough standard for scrutiny should apply to every Republican candidate for president.