When Lolita Grabovitch complained yesterday to Trump Tower neighbor Esther Shoppingale about the rapidly escalating price of Jimmy Choo to-die-for pedipretties, she never fathomed that congressional care would come so quickly.

Yet sure enough, by dinner U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) had announced a wide-ranging investigation into price gouging by shoe designers, shoe stores and shoe leather producers, domestic, foreign and terrorist.

"Who is this Choo, anyway, and how much did he pay himself last year," Schumer snarled.  "No one can tell me this leopard print is worth anywhere near $700.  It's a slingback and doesn't even have laces.  I'm going to drop the other Rockport on this, and if President Bush is involved, well, that's what Impeachment is for.  We all know who is to blame for this outrage."

Schumer's tough stance was immediately followed by an editorial in The New York Times.  "The people of Darfur don't even have shoes, and if they did, they'd have to eat them.  This smacks of genocide," the paper -- which features ads for handbags that cost more than rent -- opined. 

Adding considerable gravitas to Schumer's initiative, Katie Couric announced that when she joins CBS, she will renounce spike heels and wear only Uggs and Birkenstocks.

Orlando Jiminez, like Grabovitch, never realized what a friend he has in Schumer.  Jiminez, 38, is a native of Tejano, Mexico, where he was a plastic surgeon to local movie stars before losing his license after 23 consecutive botched breast augmentations.  He has struggled to feed his family since being smuggled into the U.S. by nefarious Norwegian cruise ship operators (called "herring traffickers" in Border Patrol vernacular) six years ago.

Jiminez now has one of those jobs no American will do, trundling a Brie, Chablis and chocolate-covered strawberry pushcart up and down Ellis Island every day, providing sustenance to tourists who marvel at the quaint historic practices of legal immigration.

At a 6 a.m. press conference, his first for the day, Schumer put his arm around Jiminez's stooped shoulders and said, "Look at what this heroic undocumented worker has done.  He was forced to flee his beloved country by George Bush's friend, Vicente Fox.  But after a perilous journey, he has made a new life for himself here, all the while being profiled as an 'illegal.'

"This man deserves amnesty, citizenship and a scholarship to Harvard Medical School so he can return to his true calling.  What has George Bush offered him?  A lousy right-wing guest worker program picking lettuce.  That's just not compassionate enough.  I'm concerned.  We must do better than that.  We can do better than that, after the 2006 elections."

Running late, Schumer was quickly pulled into a helicopter waiting to zoom him to a fund-raising breakfast with Wall Street executives.  The elite group of America's best and brightest listened attentively as Schumer elaborately explained that the Bush economy is the worst since that of J. Edgar Hoover.  Schumer's impassioned argument that tax increases coupled with increased government regulation of everything except corn (which we must subsidize to reduce dependence on foreign oil) would easily double the Dow (immediately following the 2006 elections) produced a frenzy of check writing that yielded $1.5 million for liberal candidates and several offers of executive wives to serve as campaign "hostesses."

In a private brunch meeting with environmentalists, leaked within minutes by Schumer's new press secretary, former CIA staffer Mary McCarthy, he told an audience dressed entirely in hemp that the pristine wilderness of ANWR will not be opened to a Wal-Mart Superstore as long as he lives.  The applause was said to resemble a riot in a CIA secret prison by one attendee, who looked as if he would know and was granted anonymity because his name is too hard to spell.

At a luncheon press conference, scheduled since last week to denounce anything that George Bush said yesterday, Schumer renewed his attack on the War in Iraq, conservative judicial nominations, Halliburton, global warming, the failure of drug coverage for seniors, the Patriot Act, capitalism, Jeb Bush (for being George Bush's brother), the dead who pay no taxes, states that won't allow felons to vote, Big Everything (except government), obesity, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld (for working for George Bush) and Secretary of State Rice (for not having fixed the problems in the Middle East after more than a year on the job).

Asked by several reporters about Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) staffers illegally obtaining the credit report of Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele, Schumer, who heads that committee, looked at his watch, said he had to run and promised to answer the questions later, probably after the 2006 elections.

At a 2 p.m. press conference to announce tomorrow's press conference agenda, Schumer denied a rumor, which he also denied starting, that he would, shortly after the 2006 elections, be simultaneously nominated for Nobel Prizes in every category.

Leaving Schumer's press conference caravan only halfway through the day to file this story, your intrepid reporter called the White House for reaction.

"Who's Schumer?" President Bush asked.