G(iuliani)NR Lies

By spinning in ten different directions at once with regard to the Shag Fund, the Giuliani campaign is simply reinforcing the now well-established image of them as fabricators, which The New York Times finally blows the whistle on today.

Discussing his crime-fighting success as mayor, Mr. Giuliani told a television interviewer that New York was “the only city in America that has reduced crime every single year since 1994.” In New Hampshire this week, he told a public forum that when he became mayor in 1994, New York “had been averaging like 1,800, 1,900 murders for almost 30 years.” When a recent Republican debate turned to the question of fiscal responsibility, he boasted that “under me, spending went down by 7 percent.”

All of these statements are incomplete, exaggerated or just plain wrong.

When a campaign has earned a reputation as flat-out liars, explaining away a story of the magnitude of the Shag Fund gets even more difficult. And really, it's about time that somebody noticed how Team Giuliani operates, although the Times pretty much confines it to statistics about his record in New York City, rather than the other examples, like making up stats about England's record on prostate cancer.

The point is that today is the day when the lying catches up to Rudy Giuliani.