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It seems Hillary's staff must be sort of like her husband...

"We're having a heat wave, so it's only reasonable to shed a layer of clothing now and then. But members of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's staff might be taking things too far -- if you believe the New York Post (and after some due diligence, we find no reason not to).

According to yesterday's Page Six column, the New York Democrat's thirty-something economic development director, Kara Hughes, was ejected from the Ritz-Carlton in Manhattan's Battery Park City Friday night after stripping down to her bra in the hotels 14th-floor Rise bar.

Page Six's spy -- who may or may not have been one of former mayor Rudy Giuliani's staffers who we hear were present -- reported that after having some drinks, Hughes decamped to an open-air patio and chatted up a Wall Streetish fellow wearing a dress shirt. When he suddenly removed his shirt, Hughes allegedly unbuttoned her blouse and tossed it to the floor.

An embarrassed friend retrieved the blouse and coaxed Hughes back inside, Page Six reported. "It appeared to be some sort of dare," the witness said. "I'd say about 60 or 70 people saw her do it. She was getting pretty loud, so once she took off her shirt, everyone noticed."

Moments later, an allegedly wobbly Hughes, her blouse restored, returned to the patio, the tabloid said. "She started to take her top off again," the witness recounted. "It was about halfway to three-quarters of the way off when two hotel security guys came up to her and dragged her off."

Hughes didn't return our call yesterday. We phoned Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines about the report, which also noted that Reines had himself stripped down to the altogether last September "to boost the sagging morale" of campaign workers for losing mayoral candidate Peter Vallone. (We're told that Reines was actually wearing two Vallone campaign signs.) But when we sought clarification and enlightenment, he tersely responded: "We don't comment on stories about staffers' personal lives -- including mine.""