The Morning Read: October 6, 2006

If the boat was technically not her property, investigators theorized that it could bolster their case that onboard intercepted conversations would be illegal

The Post asked Rudy Giuliani about the Pirro-Bernie Kerik-Giuliani Partners connection, and ducked.

Meanwhile, the Times fronts a story about Pirro's opponent, Andrew Cuomo, who invested more than half of his campaign money in a hedge fund and got a 19 percent return on it when the Dow Jones average went up about only 1 percent. Said Democracy 21 watchdog Fred Wertheimer: "There's no way to know what's going on with a hedge fund."

Malcolm Smith flunked his first big press conference as senate minority leader because he couldn't say whether he supported same-sex marriage.

John Spencer says that Hillary Clinton is giving comfort to the terrorists. And the News has a bonus fact: Spencer's campaign account is 1/28 the size of his opponent's.

State Democrats and Republicans argue about who's worse at handling sex scandals.

The Times speculates about the real agenda behind Bill Clinton's high-profile advocacy of good works.

And in another story that the Clinton people are going to love: Mark Foley's sex scandal, George Allen's "macaca" comment and Bill Clinton's fit on FoxNews are signs of a new era in politics, according to the Washington Post.

Cumulatively, the stories highlight a new brand of politics in which nearly any revelation in the news becomes a weapon or shield in the daily partisan wars, and the aim of candidates and their operatives is not so much to win an argument as to brand opponents as fundamentally unfit.