It Happens This Week
• Love, Shaquille O’Neal, and the most scrutinized canines in the world all come to town: After Shaq’s Miami Heat face-off against the Knicks, the Westminster Dog Show takes over the Garden, kicking off on Valentine’s Day
•Bryant Park hosts Fashion Week, while Central Park itself becomes a stage as Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates is unveiled.

(Photo: Mark Mainz/Getty Images)

New PAC Attack Tries to Sink U.S.S. Hillary
Wannabe Swift Boaters seek to “stop her now.”
Arthur Finkelstein, the political guru who helped create George Pataki, now wants to Swift Boat-ize Hillary Clinton. Senior New York Republicans say he’s creating a political action committee called “Stop Her Now”—all you need is the pronoun with this crowd, apparently—which will attempt to raise more than $10 million nationwide to use against Her during Her 2006 reelection campaign. The PAC will “bloody her up long before her presidential run,” vows a top state Republican, adding the model is indeed the Swift Boat Vets. Stop Her Now will bludgeon Clinton with ads, whether or not the New York GOP has found a candidate to take her on, which is looking increasingly difficult. Jeanine Pirro, the sex-crime-avenging Westchester D.A., is reportedly considering it. But Pirro aides have whispered that she would rather run for attorney general. Still, one senior GOPer says that some Republicans are urging a Hillary challenge instead, arguing that Pirro’s convicted-tax-evader husband, Al Pirro, makes it tougher for her to replace the squeaky-clean Eliot Spitzer (and Hillary is saddled with Bill’s past).
—Greg Sargent