The New York Times, typically, tip-toed around the question of who the other woman was in the Pirro love-boat-bugging triangle (while the Daily News had no such qualms, giving us pictures and practically the address of the hottie), preferring instead to put Pirro’s plight in the light of her history with the husband-from-hell and linking it — natch — to the saga of that other Westchester wannabe, Tammy Wynette Clinton. (Unmentioned in all this is the specter of Geraldine Ferraro, who hovers over the scandal like one of those ghosts from Tony Soprano’s dreams.)

But the Times should have looked a little closer to home — like right there on the same front page, where former Hewlett-Packard chairwoman Patricia Dunn is pictured looking on stoically while a pair of identical bald lawyers whisper behind her as she testifies before a House panel. Like Pirro, Dunn (synonomous with finished) played with fire, or wire, when she bugged board members she suspected of leaking info to the press. Pirro simply talked to Bernie Kerik about bugging her husband’s boat to confirm her suspicions regarding the other woman. When Kerik, captured on tape, said he couldn’t find anyone to do the actual bugging, scared as they were of doing something extralegal for a former prosecutor and possible future attorney general, she asked, rhetorically I suppose, “What am I supposed to do, Bernie? Watch him fuck her every night?”

Yeah, baby.

Leaving aside the wisdom of seeking counsel from Kerik in this matter (this is a man who missed the chance to be director of Homeland Security when it was revealed that, among other things, he used a city-owned apartment to cheat on not just his wife but his mistress), Pirro and Dunn could have saved themselves a lot of time, not to mention a couple of pretty good jobs, if they had just assumed the worst. Yes, your husband is cheating on you, your board member has the Silicon Valley beat reporter on his speed dial — all of your worst fears are confirmed. Now what? By trying to prove what you already knew you just screwed yourself, so to speak. Nixon, forever dangling in history in a spider web of wire and tape, bugged the Democrats in 1972 when they were already headed for a self-created defeat. He proved to himself that John Lennon hated the US government when he could have just bought an album. Assume the worst and you’ll never be disappointed, someone said. Just have the upholstery cleaned before you get on that boat.

JUDGMENT DAY: To all you readers within the sound of my voice — that is, my neighbors in downtown Brooklyn — today is the last day to comment on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement created to give us an idea of what life will be like after the Atlantic Yards is built. If you like sunshine and being able to park, and think schools are quite crowded enough and traffic is plenty snarled already; if you love Brooklyn for its low-rise quality-of-life, your neighborhood for its neighborhood feel; if you think a community should have some say when an outside, Cleveland-born, Upper-East-Side residing developer decides to change the face of your city because he is well-connected and stands to make a billion dollars on the deal, speak now. Today. Before 5:30 pm. You can read up on the DEIS on the Develop Don’t Destory Brooklyn website or (if you’ve heard quite enough) email atlanticyards@empire.state.ny.us and let your voice be heard. Someone actually reads these things, and as union members who live in other places and housing advocates who have been hoodwinked or paid to believe Ratner is going to build them a workers’ paradise are sure to flood the zone with their own cookie-cutter responses, your concerned complaint will register. Go ahead, take five minutes. It’s your community, too.