By now you've heard about the big story that The Politico broke yesterday: That as New York mayor he apparently made trips to the Hamptons to see Judi Nathan on the taxpayer's dime while still married to Donna Hanover.

In light of this, I thought it would be worth recalling a story that everyone's forgotten now but that is suddenly very relevant in light of these revelations:

In 2001, the last year of Rudy's mayoralty, the city gave Judi her own taxpayer-funded security detail, too -- even as it reduced the size of the security detail assigned to Rudy's soon-to-be-ex.

From the New York Post on June 4, 2001:

The Post has learned that city detectives have once again been assigned to protect Mayor Giuliani's girlfriend, even as he has scaled back the size of his estranged wife's police detail.

Nathan and her pooch were seen yesterday being escorted to her Upper East Side apartment by one of the detectives now assigned to watch over her during the day when she's not at the mayor's side.

Police protection, provided by one detective at a time, began about two to three weeks ago after the mayor's divorce case, heated up and brought intense media scrutiny on Nathan, sources said.

Providing a detective for 12 hours every day would likely require at least three cops -- exactly how many were yanked from Hanover's staff when the mayor fired her as first lady May 24.

Each cop who is involved makes about $100,000 a year, including overtime.

Hanover still has a security detail, but she no longer has the three detectives who were assigned to an advance team that would inspect sites where she was scheduled to appear as first lady.

The story wasn't denied by Giuliani's team, and indeed it was picked up by the Associated Press.

What's more, that wasn't the first time Judi enjoyed taxpayer-funded protection, either. She'd been assigned her own detail in January of that year -- but it was yanked after The Post reported on it at the time. Her security detail was quietly reinstated in the spring.

This, combined with Politico's story, reveals just how expensive Rudy's extramarital trysts really were to New Yorkers -- and adds plausibility to the Politico's suggestion that tax money funded Rudy's visits to see Judi in the Hamptons.

The Florida Democratic Party convention came and went this weekend, featuring one and only one presidential candidate: Mike Gravel.

All the other candidates are abiding by the DNC's edict not to campaign in the state, due to the disputes over the state's primary date.

This video that's been making the rounds on the Internet is very ... interesting — it shows former Senator and current presidential candidate Mike Gravel doing nothing but staring into the camera for a solid minute, motionless, as if peering into the viewer's very soul. He then throws a rock in a pond and walks off into the distance. We asked Gravel's spokesman about it, and got some intriguing answers. But first, give it a watch:

Exciting, huh? We asked Mike Gravel's press secretary, Alex Colvin, what the point of it is. And Colvin tells us that there's no single, intrinsic point here at all.

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Hillary, Obama and Edwards might have sucked up all the media attention when they spoke before the DNC winter meeting on Friday, but there were four other candidates who got to speak on Saturday, too: Biden, Richardson, Vilsack, and Gravel. To watch Election Central's highlight videos from their speeches, click here.

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