Welp. It’s a banner day for New York politicians getting arrested.

(H/T: Jammie Wearing Fools) Geez Louise.

State Sen. Malcolm Smith and city Councilman Dan Halloran were arrested this morning on charges they were plotting to rig this year’s mayoral election through fraud and bribes.

The pols allegedly formed an alliance built on cash payments and fraud to get Smith — one of the state’s top Democrats — placed on the GOP mayoral ballot, sources said.

FBI agents arrested them both at their Queens homes shortly after 6 a.m.

You may remember Malcolm Smith from last December, when he half-broke from the Democratic party in order to join the Independent Democratic Caucus, which is the organization that is allowing the NY GOP to retain control of the state Senate.  I don’t think that Smith being thrown out on his ear will be enough to flip the state Senate back, but I guess that we’re about to find out! Dan Halloran is the neo-pagan guy (I mention this for identification purposes only: no, seriously, some of my best friends really ARE neo-pagans) who ran for Congress last year, and lost.  There’s a bunch of other people who got arrested, including some top NYC GOP party officials (Joseph Savino and Vincent Tabone) and the (Democratic*) mayor and assistant mayor of Spring Valley: which may explain why this story will be slow getting off the launching pad.  Everybody’s really busy checking first to make sure that none of their people are actually in the blast zone. Continue reading Welp. It’s a banner day for New York politicians getting arrested.

It says a good deal about my unique political situation…

…that my first reaction on reading this article on Dan Halloran, the neopagan Republican running for Queens City Council (H/T: Ben Smith) was to see whether I knew the guy. It was possible, if not likely: even if Halloran is a member of the SCA folks from NYC tend not to go too far south for events. It’s a weird demographic thing.

What? Look, if he’s down with a general small-government program I don’t care if he worships an ongoing reconstruction of the original Germanic gods.

Moe Lane

PS: City Council races are fun, apparently. This is all part of a quite entertaining brawl.

Crossposted to RedState.