Nanc couldn't quite leave well enough alone. the original headline from the Post reads: "RANGEL COP 'NIECE' EYED IN PERP BOOST." Note the quotation marks around the word "niece." This morning's edition reads: "RANGEL: 'NIECE' NO KIN OF MINE" (www.nypost.com). And yesterday's edition of the Daily News carried "Rangel's Challenge" in Elizabeth Benjamin's "The Daily Politics" column:

Rep. Charles Rangel is putting his money where his mouth is to deny a New York Post story, the DN's David Saltonstall reports.

The tab claims Port Authority police Lt. Coretta Smith, "who officials believe is the niece" of the veteran Harlem congressman, is "getting lenient treatment" for her alleged decision to go easy on some cons "because of her high-powered uncle."

But Rangel told the DN yesterday that not only is he not related to Smith, he's never even heard of her. And he offered to give $1,000 of his own money to the favored charity of anyone who can prove he is related to Smith.

"It is going to be difficult for you to print this, but the only connection between that woman and me is she is a person of color," Rangel said after attending graduation ceremonies at The Mott Hall School in Harlem with ex-president Bill Clinton.

"I have never heard of her, I don't know anybody that knows her, and I don't know why The Post would do this, except that I am a public official."

"But...I am prepared to give a charity $1,000 if they can find any connection between this lady and me. I don't know the woman."

Asked a second time if he might be distantly related to Smith through blood or marriage, the powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee denied any and all ties to her.

"Blood, marriage, fraternity, neighborhood - it is just as though (the Post editors) are drunk with ignorance and they wake up in the morning and say, What can we make up?'" he said.
"And I don't know how to be more forceful in saying not just how untrue it is, but how vicious it is."
www.nydailynews.com