VALHALLA, I AM COMING: FOX FAVE WAS A (VOLUNTARILY) FLOGGED PAGAN

Early in the week, we learned about a bribery plot that was intended to win the Republican mayoral nomination in New York City for Malcolm Smith, a disaffected Democratic state senator from Queens. Smith's co-conspirator was a Republican city councilman from Queens named Dan Halloran.

Halloran, you may recall, was the guy most responsible for spreading the story -- ultimately debunked -- that union snow-removal workers deliberately engaged in a work slowdown after a Christmas-week blizzard hit New York City in 2010. Halloran has also been a frequent guest on Fox News, opining on everything from Mike Bloomberg's large-soda ban to the Obama administration's Middle East policy.

Now we learn (hat tip: Gawker) that Halloran is a pagan, a member of a polytheistic pre-Christian church whose tenets at one point required him to be flogged.

So we are told by the New York Post (apparently Murdoch's media empire no longer has any use for Halloran):

... Dan Halloran (R-Queens) -- who was arrested Tuesday as the suspected bag man in state Sen. Malcolm Smith's alleged plot to buy his way onto the mayoral ticket -- has been publicly flogged and lost a spear-throwing contest as part of his Theodish punishments.

Halloran converted in the 1980s from Catholicism to the pre-Christian Germanic religion....

He learned about their tough disciplinary code when he committed an undisclosed act against a female "thrall" -- or probationary servant.

He was stripped to his waist, strapped to a tree and flogged with a belt 11 times.

Fellow member Nick Ritter refused to discuss the episode, but said the punishment fit the crime.

"He was given a choice," Ritter said. "He was going to leave Theodism or stay and pay the piper." ...

Steven Thrasher of The Village Voice reported on this in 2011:

Halloran was no garden-variety pagan. He was the "First Atheling," or prince, of his own Theodish tribe, called New Normandy. He had "thralls" who swore their allegiance to him. He didn't just spend weekends reconstructing the religious activities of the pre-Christian Norse and Germanic gods -- he led his flock, about 100 people at its height, in their polytheistic celebration of the gods (plural). They'd gather for "blot" (sacrifice and feast), "sumble" ("boast and toast of the gods"), and play games that, to the outside eye, looked like something from Dungeons & Dragons or a Renaissance fair.

But he was unwilling to acknowledge his paganism when he ran (successfully) for the City Council in 2009 as a Republican/Conservative/tea party candidate:

As Thrasher went on to recount, Halloran had attempted to minimize, and even hide, his pagan beliefs, without ever quite refuting them, during the election. He took down the New Normandy website, on which you used to be able to find photos of Halloran swilling mead from horns and dressing in "medieval garb," and wrote a column called "I believe in God." One pagan described his campaign as "[p]andering to monotheism." "There is not a man who knows him well, not a one, who doesn't hate his guts now," said another.

Well, it's a free country -- although the vast majority of Halloran's fellow teabaggers, not to mention most of the Fox News audience and most Fox on-air personalities, would disagree, insisting that America is (choose one) a Christian or a Judeo-Christian nation. But for him they made an exception, while he proved useful to them.

Oh, and Halloran doesn't freedom of religion is for everybody, as the Voice story notes:

In a video made by "Stop Islamization for America," you can see Halloran seated on a dais near Pamela Geller before speaking at an event called "The Ground Zero Mosque: The Second Wave of the 9/11 Attacks."

... "Let me apologize on behalf of the cowards in politics, who choose to stand up for special interests instead of doing what is right," Halloran begins his speech.

Being right, in this case, involved demonizing all Muslims for 9/11. Halloran then proceeds to align himself with his Irish, Roman Catholic, and cop roots, pandering in the crudest possible way to the audience's fears.

"Would World War II veterans stand for a Shinto Temple to be built on the Arizona Memorial? Absolutely not," Halloran says. "The greatest generation would not stand for something like that, and it has nothing to do with tolerance."

So if you're hoisting a flagon of mead right now, hoist it to the law enforcement personnel who brought this jerk down.