If Rudy Giuliani were a Democrat, this would be called "caught in a lie"

But because he's a Republican, it's "backtracking":

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 embarrassing backtrack comes as Giuliani rushed to network airwaves to defend himself against allegations his administration deliberately attempted to conceal the taxpayer cost of his NYPD protection while he engaged in secret Hamptons liaisons with Nathan, his then-mistress and current wife.

In interviews on CBS, ABC and CNN, Giuliani portrayed the allegations as a political "hit job" and "dirty trick" unleashed hours before a big Republican debate. The story was first reported Wednesday on the Politico.com Web site.

Frankly, I really don't much care about this particular scandal where Giuliani is concerned. That Giuliani is a scumbag who spent taxpayer money to go visit his goumah out in the Hamptons shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who saw him announce his separation from Donna Hanover via press conference. Those self-righteous Republicans who have already managed to twist themselves into pretzels to justify supporting Giuliani even if/though his behavior flies in the face of what they fancy to be their own personal morality are probably not going to care much about this. In fact, Giuliani ought to be grateful that the furor over this scandal is obscuring what in a sane world would be the far more damaging one, and that's the fact that he'll associate with anyone -- even those who harbor people we know are terrorists -- if it means cold hard cash in his pocket.

In case you haven't read the Village Voice article yet or don't want to plow through it, Keith Olbermann spoke with the piece's author, Wayne Barrett, the other night:

Giuliani's entire national campaign is based on his so-called toughness on terror. Even when asked a question about how we can heal our image in the Muslim world at the debate Wednesday night, his answer was essentially that we do this by continuing to bomb the hell out of them.

It's both appalling -- and indicative of the level of American idiocy and shallowness that the only scandals the populace seems to understand, and the only ones to which they respond, are of the sexual kind. This is how we had a president nearly brought down by a lie about a sexual liaison, while a president who took the nation to war on lies remains to wreak havoc for another fourteen months.

(UPDATE: What, were Nagourney and Bumiller off today? How else can we explain the fact that the New York Times actually does its job today and quietly and factually eviscerates the entire Giuliani lying-ass mythos?)