The police announced last week that they’d wrap their reunion tour in the city this summer, just as a fortnight in which every little thing Hillary Clinton did was magic came to a screeching halt. Our newly populist senator told Indianans that Wall Street was to blame for all their mortgage troubles, but Barack Obama’s investment in North Carolina pushed his presidential delegate count to an almost insurmountable level. Married Staten Island congressman Vito Fossella admitted he has a child with the woman he called to bail him out after his DWI arrest. The summer’s blockbuster divorce trial, starring New Jersey’s former First Family, the McGreeveys, went into turnaround when the couple brokered a potential settlement.

Last week’s news that marijuana-related arrests in the city were up tenfold in the past decade could help explain a rash of fuzzy thinking. Barack Obama, who had been waiting for the smoke to clear over the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s sermons, instead snuffed out his relationship with his former pastor after Wright gave an aggressive, paranoid press conference. Hillary Clinton, gaining on her Democratic foe in North Carolina, showed possibly impaired thinking when she came out strongly in favor of the unanimously economist-opposed plan to suspend gasoline taxes this summer. Governor Paterson seconded the idea, then in the same breath warned of disastrous, looming state-budget deficits. Mayor Bloomberg revealed that he’s writing an advice book titled Do the Hard Things First, while the city yanked 25,000 dubious parking permits.

In a week when spring temperatures broke 80 degrees and gas hit $4 a gallon, Hillary Clinton’s Earth Day victory in the Pennsylvania primary all but guaranteed a long, hot summer ahead. Contributors seemed to buy the cash-poor Democrat’s heated rhetoric — she promised to “obliterate” Iran if it bombed Israel — and pledged a cool $10 million the day following her win. After a judge acquitted three cops in the shooting death of Sean Bell, the city didn’t ignite in protest.

The news that hordes of European tourists were propping up New York City’s economy comes as no surprise to those who caught a glimpse of a German fellow cruising the streets in a late-model Popemobile today. His Holiness Benedict XVI made a sightseeing trip up Fifth Avenue, blessing the Catholic faithful, and is scheduled to make stops at ground zero and Yankee Stadium. British P.M. Gordon Brown hit the U.N., where he napped. Barack Obama, still praying that rural Pennsylvania voters would forget his observation that bitter country folk feel clingy toward guns and religion, was charged by Hillary Clinton with overfriendliness toward a member of the Weather Underground. Clinton’s spokesman dismissed as “ridiculous” rumors of her seeking a job in Albany; Mayor Bloomberg denied that he hoped to repeal term limits and go for a third term. (He said he wants to tour the Empire State instead. Hmmm.)

In a week filled with lost causes, none was sadder than the fizzling of the congestion-pricing crusade. Mayor Bloomberg, the Saint Jude of $8 traffic fees, described State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver as having a "special type of cowardice" after he refused to bring the bill to a vote. (Hizzoner recovered enough by the following day to unveil a sunnier new cause — requiring solar panels on municipal buildings.) Hillary Clinton demoted unpopular swami Mark Penn; polls still showed her lead over Barack Obama in Pennsylvania to be slipping.

Madonna pushed her relationship with the city close to the breaking point last week, claiming that New York “is not the exciting place it used to be,” others looked back to the glory days of the eighties, too. Hillary Clinton fashioned herself the protagonist of Rocky III, ready for a comeback against Barack Obama’s merciless Clubber Lang. Mario Cuomo issued a quaint, Mondale-esque proclamation that the Democratic front-runners should join forces on a unified ticket.

Posters for Spike TV’s broadcast of the Star Wars movies covered bus shelters last week, Hillary Clinton’s embattled presidential campaign used the force. Staying on target despite having her tale about landing in Bosnia under sniper attack disproved, the candidate forged a rebel alliance with conservative dark lord Richard Mellon Scaife and dragged the name of Barack Obama’s angry spiritual Yoda, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, back into the headlines.

For another week, almost all politics was both local and sleazy. New governor David Paterson preemptively revealed that both he and his wife, Michelle, had engaged in extramarital affairs — in his case with state employees. (“My conscience is clear,” he added.) Ashley Dupré, Eliot Spitzer’s imperial pal, shocked no one by turning up in an old Girls Gone Wild video. Not to be outdone, former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey confirmed his straight driver’s claim that they’d joined ex-wife Dina Matos McGreevey for threesomes après nachos at T.G.I. Friday’s. (She denied partaking in any alleged dessert.) President Bush marked the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war by congratulating himself for good judgment — peacenik grannies armed with knitting needles marched through Times Square in rebuttal — while somewhere in deepest Pakistan, cranky Osama bin Laden was still complaining, via audiotape, about those Danish cartoons. Hillary Clinton — who, after Florida and Michigan backed off primary do-overs, is presumably praying for a skeleton to emerge from Barack Obama’s closet — released her White House itineraries, which revealed she’d been home during the Monica-gate episodes. For his part, Obama delivered a lengthy speech about race in America to quell muttering about his most active skeleton, conspiracy theorist–pastor Jeremiah Wright. Mayor Bloomberg, pushing up against congestion pricing’s March 31 deadline, questioned the intelligence of querulous Gracie Mansion aspirant Anthony Weiner. Commissioner Ray Kelly confirmed he’d been told to hire 1,000 fewer police recruits next year. Nixzmary Brown’s stepfather was convicted of first- degree manslaughter, while a frayed nylon strap was the primary suspect in the deadly crane accident on East 51st Street. Cosmetics kingpin Leonard Lauder gave $131 million to the Whitney Museum — almost enough to buy another Klimt. A married securities trader kicked in the cranium during a vigorous lap dance sued for damages. And onetime big swingers at Bear Stearns suffered two major indignities as their company’s holdings plunged 90 percent in less than a week — and they now work for JPMorgan Chase.

This poor, poor lady. First 79-year-old Ethel Tropez endured the floods of Hurricane Katrina in her hometown of Live Oak, Texas (no, we are not making these names up), and then she comes to New York City, all refugee style, and is promptly scalded to within an inch of her life by her shower at the swanky Chandler Hotel in midtown. She and H20 are not friends! Tropez has slapped the hotel with a $100 million negligence lawsuit, which is sort of an understandable instinct considering she was trapped in the stall (you know, with the scalding water?) for um, half an hour. The water "was close to boiling," her lawyer told the AP. "It was hot enough to burn her skin off. She suffered third-degree burns. It was awful." God, it sounds awful. Also sort of awful? The central photograph on the "Rooms" page of the Chandler Hotel's Website. People, switch in a shot of the minibar for goodness sake.

The scary mini terror bombing on Times Square was immediately forgotten amid the much bigger detonation of Eliot Spitzer’s political career. Echoes continued through the week: Ashley Alexandra Dupré, the call girl from Room 871 of the Mayflower Hotel, pleaded with Empire Staters not think of her as a “monster.” Silda Wall Spitzer pushed her husband not to resign but stood by him as he abdicated. The new governor, Harlem’s David Paterson, prepared to step up and face Albany’s $4 billion budget deficit; State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno stifled his glee and announced it was “time to move forward.” (The one predictable exception to grown-up behavior was on Wall Street, where traders celebrated the demise of their onetime antagonist amid the biggest one-day stock rally in five years.)