Too much travel to be fully on top of the Giuliani “shag fund” story this weekend, but one thing I haven’t seen remarked upon is the sheer irresponsibility of it all. This sort of petty corruption happens in politics (though the money sleaze and sex sleaze twofer is impressive) but normally one advantage of your hard-changing ruthless ambition types is that they have the self-restraint necessary to avoid these scandals. It’s not good for your career and it’s not good for your party. Serious politicians have their eyes on a bigger prize.

The question is where does this spirit of discipline come from. For some, it’s a bona fide character trait that happens to be politically useful. Giuliani’s shown plenty of discipline on the trail, but this sordid episode reminds us of how far it is from hizzoner’s natural state. When he thought his political career was dead anyway, he was happy to pull this kind of stunt despite the death blow something like this could deliver to a “law and order” politician. And his career’s always been marked by various outbursts, tantrums, and other episodes of responsibility. The discipline he’s shown up until now in walking the ideological tightrope doesn’t come naturally to him. As GFR says he’s less the working class kid made good than someone like “the self-indulgent, troubled, well-to-do dads of Gossip Girl, right down to the bad relationships with his children and constant wheeling and dealing.”

Meanwhile, one of Giuliani’s core weakness as a politician — he’s an insane sadist — has always also served as a kind of strength. The madness compels opponents to point out how deranged he is, but sometime’s the electorate’s in the mood for a man who’s inclined to push the boundaries and err on the side of a hard line. New York in 1993 was certainly such a place, and the USA in 2008 might be. But nobody’s ever in the mood for a hypocrite who preaches law and order and social stability while using city funds to chauffeur his mistress and her friends around town.

A June Defense Department Task report found that the military system lacks resources to “adequately support the psychological health of service members.” A new investigation by ABC News finds that many counselors and therapists believe that instead, “too often the U.S. military is trying to medicate the problem away.” “Pretty much every person in my caseload is medicated, heavily medicated,” said Andrew Pogany of Veterans for America. “There’s potential for them to become addicted.”

In a court filing submitted yesterday evening, Bush administration lawyers claimed “that the Secret Service has identified a category of highly sensitive documents that might contain information sought in a lawsuit about Abramoff’s trips to the White House.” The AP reports:

The Justice Department, citing a Cold War-era court ruling, declared that the contents of the ”Sensitive Security Records” cannot be publicly revealed even though they could show whether Abramoff made more visits to the White House than those already acknowledged. [...]

”This is an extraordinary development and it raises the specter that there were additional contacts with President Bush or other high White House officials that have yet to be disclosed,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that filed the suit. ”We’ve alleged that the government has committed misconduct in this litigation and frankly this is more fuel for that fire.”

It’s no surprise at this point to see Chuck Hagel noting that George W. Bush is a really bad president or to see Steve Clemons hailing Hagel’s good sense. And, indeed, if Hagel were a blogger, I’d be reading his posts thinking to myself it’s really too bad this guy isn’t a Senator from Nebraska, if he was, he could use the powers of his office to impact the course of events in this country. But of course he is a Senator from Nebraska, and instead of finding myself admiring his work in that capacity I find myself thinking that Hagel would make a damn good “reasonable conservative” blogger.

I mean, at America’s moment of crisis standing in the crossroads is Hagel running for President to offer the country a more credible version of Ron Paul’s efforts to break the Bushist orthodoxy? No. He’s not even running for re-election. He’s retiring and thus guaranteeing that Nebraska’s Senate seat falls into the hands of a more conservative Republican rather than standing and fighting — or doing anything at all — to help advance the ideals he allegedly espouses. It’s a huge horrible waste.

On the Charlie Rose show a little over a week ago, former Bush political adviser Karl Rove attempted to re-write the history of the Iraq war, claiming that “the administration was opposed” to holding the pre-war Iraq vote just ahead of the 2002 elections. “We didn’t think it belonged within the confines of the election,” Rove told Rose.

As ThinkProgress has documented, key leaders in both the House and the Senate were asking Bush in 2002 to delay the Iraq war vote, but were rebuffed when Bush told then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) that “we just have to do this now.” On MSNBC yesterday, former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card disputed Rove’s account, saying “that’s not the way it worked.”

In the Washington Post this morning, Rove’s revisionist history is further discredited by then-White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, who says flatly that Rove is wrong:

Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary at the time, said Daschle had pressed Bush over the summer to bring the matter to Congress but for consultation, not necessarily a vote. Bush decided to seek a vote authorizing force, Fleischer said. “It was definitely the Bush administration that set it in motion and determined the timing, not the Congress,” he said. “I think Karl in this instance just has his facts wrong.”

Despite the fact that multiple members of the administration have now disputed his account, Rove is still clinging to his false claims. In an interview with the Post yesterday, he said it was “disingenuous” for “Democrats to suggest they didn’t want to vote on it before the election”:

Rove repeated his assertion in an interview yesterday, pointing to comments made by Democrats in 2002 that they wanted a vote. “For Democrats to suggest they didn’t want to vote on it before the election is disingenuous,” he said. The vote schedule, he said, was set by lawmakers. “We don’t control that.”

As the Politico’s John Bresnahan, who covered Congress in 2002, wrote yesterday, “Rove’s assertion that Congress was pushing for a quick vote on the use-of-force resolution is just not credible at all.”

Earlier this month, President Bush issued his first signing statement since his party lost control of Congress in the 2006 election, “reserving the right to bypass 11 provisions in a military appropriations bill under his executive powers.” Throughout his presidency, Bush has “quietly claimed the authority to disobey” hundreds of laws passed by Congress with signing statements, but with his party no longer controlling Congress, the president appears to have struck “a less aggressive tone” in an effort to avoid further controversy:

Analysts said the president’s less aggressive tone may be an effort to avoid reigniting a controversy that erupted last year after it came to light that Bush had used signing statements to challenge more laws than all previous presidents combined – including a torture ban. Congress held hearings about signing statements and the American Bar Association called for an end to them.

“They have clearly edited themselves,” said Christopher Kelley, a political science professor at Miami University of Ohio who first analyzed the new statement on his blog Thursday. “They’ve taken out all the rhetoric about executive power.”

White House spokesman Tony Fratto denied any “public relations” motivation behind the tone change, claiming that shorter signing statements are “just easier.”