Nanny, Nanny, Who's Got the Nanny?

What could be more embarrasing than nominating a person to be in charge of immigration who had an illegal alien nanny? Having a person who made up a story about an imaginary illegal alien nanny to cover up something worse. Josh Marshall, as he so often does, digs up some dirt.

Asking whether there was ever a "nanny" in the first place would seem suddenly to have gone legit. The Times devotes a whole article to the question in Thursday's paper.

And what'd they come up with?

It's pretty hard to prove a negative. But after what seems to have been a pretty exhaustive bit of reporting, they didn't come up with any solid evidence that such a woman existed. And they came up with a lot that points in the other direction.

All there seems to be is one neighbor who remembers seeing a woman with an olive complexion playing with Kerik's children. And there's a form Kerik filled out about the nanny a few weeks ago; but that form is apparently a secret, and no one can look at it. Meanwhile, press reports attributed to Kerik's lawyer claiming the woman was from Mexico? That's no longer operative; the lawyer says he never said any such thing.

You really have to ask yourself some sobering questions at this point. Even the Bushies aren't so stupid as to fail to realize that the illegal immigrant nanny line would look pretty awful for the Homeland Security honcho. So, to make up that as your cover story, what were they trying to cover? The stuff about the alleged mob ties and the extramarital affairs is bad, certainly. But that bad? I'm waiting to see what else turns up. I think that there may be a far larger and smellier rat hiding at the bottom of this political dumpster.