Krik Krak Kerik

The evolving controversy about Bernard Kerik is almost too rich to comment upon. Somewhere soon, I'll expand on the issue I find most engrossing: the way the White House's allegedly thorough but actually shallow background check on Kerik duplicates in miniature the administration's allegedly complete but actually halfhearted attempts to plan for post-invasion Iraq, or to explain why torture's not really torture, or [insert recent White House mendacity here].

But in the meantime, there's this, cribbed from the 12/15/04 Progress Report by the Center for American Progress:

HOMELAND SECURITY – APARTMENT OF ADULTERY
Where did a busy police commissioner and future (now "ex") Bush homeland security chief conduct adulterous affairs? Try an apartment "donated for the use of weary police and rescue workers who were helping at ground zero." The New York Times reports that after 9/11, Kerik "called Anthony Bergamo, a well-connected vice chairman of the Milstein family real estate company and a police buff, and asked for help finding a place for the workers to rest during breaks." In the following months, Kerik, who is married with two children, asked to use the apartment for his own personal use; it then became the site of his extramarital trysts. One bedroom of the love nest faced the rubble of the World Trade Center, where workers continued to toil.

Are you kidding me? He was shtupping his lovers while men and women who reported to Kerik were working - literally outside his window! - in a graveyard? They were inhaling particles of asbestos while he was getting into a piece of ass. Good lord, the hypocrisy is gonna kill me. If only it would kill them first.