This morning was shaping up to be one of those days. You know, the kind where you oversleep, miss the bus, forgot your umbrella on what looks to be the rainiest day of the year and spilled piping hot coffee all over ourselves. [Ed: We think they're called "Mondays."]

So we were actually feeling pretty crabby until we picked up this morning's New York Daily News and saw that (a) they'd written about their arch-nemesis (and favorite pet topic!) the New York Post, and (b) they'd managed to simultaneously discredit Post editor Col Allan professionally and work the word "portly" into the article's opening lines.

"Portly New York Post Editor Col Allan was blamed yesterday for leading the "Capt. Perfect" of Australian politics into lap-dancing temptation - a drunken debacle that has set off a political tsunami on the other side of the world," barks the Daily News' typically understated lede.

Wait, another article about (the portly!) Col Allan partying it up at the strip clubs? Yawn. But wait! This time, he's allegedly "corrupted" Aussie Kevin Rudd, the leading candidate for Australia's next prime minister.

And, like most politicians caught with their hand in the cookie jar,* Rudd is quick to lie hastily offer up a myriad of completely plausible excuses for his behavior. Which is to say apologize profusely, and dump the whole thing on Allan.

"Col suggested we go on for a drink … and I had actually by that stage had drunk too much," Rudd told Australia's Nine Network. "We ended up not at a bar but a nightclub, and the rest is history."

Unfortunately, the Daily News wasn't totally buying Rudd's story. Presumably because Rudd quickly morphed from reluctant accomplice to stripper-groping fiend.

Rudd didn't just ogle the topless tarts, the bombed "bloke" was warned by the bouncers against touching dancers and for "inappropriate behavior," the Aussie papers reported.

"I have no recollection of that," Rudd, 49, insisted. "I think the big error was made just in going there in the first place."

Naturally.

Meanwhile, speaking of errors in judgment, one has to wonder why, exactly the NYDN thought it prescient to dredge up a "drunken debacle" that took place more than four years ago.

Then again, anything that starts with the word "portly" and ends with the future Australian prime minister apologizing to his wife for fondling topless dancers pretty much circumvents the need for explanation.

*A euphemism for "dirty stripper parts"