Rudy Giuliani's kids may not be on the trail with him this time around (the above images feature son Andrew at Giuliani's mayoral inauguration in 1994), but the presence of his daughter Caroline, Obama-curious Harvard '11, was felt at a town-hall meeting in New Hampshire yesterday.  A New Hampshire woman asked how the ex-mayor could expect voters' support when he did not even have the support of his children.  The Associated Press reports,

"I love my family very, very much and will do anything for them. There are complexities in every family in America," Giuliani said calmly and quietly. "The best thing I can say is kind of, 'Leave my family alone, just like I'll leave your family alone.'"

This from the guy who said he'd bring his wife to cabinet meetings.  Judith Nathan aside, the question of how much scrutiny politicians' children deserve -- or ought to be shielded from -- remains hotly contested.  Caroline's Facebook affiliations seem relatively benign to us; but what about Antonio Villaraigosa Jr. bragging about his powers of persuasion with the LAPD?  (Dad Antonio Sr. is the mayor of LA)  Are there times when the sins of the child reflect on the father?  And what value do the "sins" of a teenager talking big on the internet have, anyway? 

And what about poor Chelsea Clinton, who had the terrible misfortune of going through puberty while her dad was in the White House?!  Let's set a ground rule:  Kids with braces should be off-limits.  --MAUREEN O'CONNOR

Our maligned guest stint has come to a close, ladies and gentlemen (we can hear you cheering already), and we're happy to say that it's been grand. We hope we were able to keep you from falling asleep during office meetings, at the very least.

They say it's dull in the summertime, but our two weeks has seen its fair share of scandalicious stories: Caroline Giuliani and Lucy Morrow Caldwell went head to head, the Ivy nerds took revenge, Hillary Clinton showed how she answered the voice crying in the wilderness, Yale's Beta Theta Pi fraternity went the way of the dodo, the Daily Pennsylvanian took heat from one of its own, a four-person crowd of fire-breathing bigots took Ithaca by storm and Cornell was simultaneously voted best and worst motto in all of academia.

(Oh, a few more things: sex, Kazakhs, gambling, MBAs, crime, snobbery, harassment and idiocy.)

So from the bottom of our hearts:

Andrew Nusca: We asked you to bring the comments on, and you brought it. It's been a pleasure to carry the torch for Nick and Chris whilst they tanned on the beach (or drank in the bar), and working with Newell these last two weeks was like enjoying a fresh hoagie from Wawa or a wiz-topped cheesesteak on South Street: nothing short of rewarding. I'll take this opportunity to sign off with my original greeting: Cheerio, fuckers!

Jim Newell: Thank you for reading our stuff. I've enjoyed building loving/hateful relationships with certain commenters. Andrew Nusca for president. And if for some inexplicable reason you want to get in touch with me, or you've got about 27k + benefits to throw away, I can be reached at newell.jim@gmail.com. Let the hate mail begin!

Lastly, I'd like to dedicate a pick-me-up to poor Caroline Giuliani. We all have bad stretches, Caroline. Don't be ashamed to cry it out. It's not unusual at all:

Be nice to the next guest editors and TIP THEM (ivygate.guest@gmail.com)! 

Always,

Jim Newell & Andrew Nusca 

IvyGate's favorite recent character study, Lucy Morrow Caldwell, made an exuberant appearance on CNN's American Morning today to discuss her role in "Caroline Giuliani joined a Facebook group"-gate. CNN's online videos don't have a blog-posting option, but you can watch it here.

One interesting fact to add regards Caldwell's own now-defunct Facebook profile. Facebook actually kicked her off for privacy violations, as the video explains.

Let's just say that if you didn't like her before, we doubt you will now. 

--JIM NEWELL

Lucy Morrow Caldwell.

Just yesterday, this name elicited a firestorm across teh_interwebs when Slate ran a "report" showing that Rudy Giuliani's 17-year-old daughter Caroline, Harvard '11, was a de facto member of the "Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack)" Facebook group.

Links were exchanged, hatred spewed forth like only the 'Net can provide and backlash -- yes, backlash -- ensued, offering up the idea that Ms. Caldwell turned a blind eye to news integrity and unleashed this bit of "breaking news" on the world.

Did Lucy Morrow Caldwell invent breaking news for her own benefit?

According to multiple sources, she just may have. Why? Let us ask you this: Is the joining of a Facebook group by a minor who is not eligible to vote truly a reason to get CNN's news ticker all ticked-off?

For the record, we at IvyGate think Caldwell's motives are suspect. After all, how long was Giuliani a part of that group? Was it breaking just because someone who is not one of her friends on Facebook noticed? Remember -- the noose-tightening line in Caldwell's piece is that she removed herself from the group at an otherwise-uncollegiate-for-the-summer 6:01 a.m. But where was the news when she originally had joined it?

We're actually on the side of Insider Chatter on this one:

If Slate's Lucy Morrow Caldwell is aware of corporate owner WP's Pentagon Papers and Watergate investigative heritage, it is NOT evident in her "undercover" Facebook reporting. Howard Kurtz is billed as the Washington Post media critic, but he is content to regurgitate a college intern's inept public posting of a fellow Facebooker's profile."

Ouch, and that's coming from an editor who's actually been billed as "Howard Kurtz, Jr."

Do we really care about Caroline Giuliani's political views? Here's a little justification to how little this matters for her, thanks to a blistering New York profile of Caroline's stepmother Judith:

When I ran into Rudy at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner in late April, he told me Judith skipped the event because "she's up taking care of our daughter [Whitney] at Skidmore." The locution "our daughter" was hardly calculated to repair his frayed relations with the biological children he shares with [Donna] Hanover, especially 17-year-old Trinity-prep-school senior Caroline, who uses Donna's surname and reportedly didn't bother telling him when she was accepted recently by Harvard. ("In the next few months, Rudy really has to repair his relationships with Andrew and Caroline," says a Republican strategist. "He can't be the Republican nominee and have his kids estranged from him. That ain't gonna cut it.")"

So when the scrutiny comes down on the younger, collegiate Giuliani's profile, which reveals a "liberal" slant -- the most popular of political views on Harvard profiles, and for that matter, Facebook in general -- IvyGate smells some agenda-setting.

Allow us to take a look at the even-handed journalistic history of one Ms. Lucy Morrow (that's with an "o", not a "u", as in Edward R.) Caldwell:

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