An email thread between city council members regarding a Puerto Rican radical ended up in exactly the kind of appropriate place you'd imagine reasonable city council members might take it: the magical land of hyperbolic 9/11 comparisons.
Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito sent out an email asking her colleagues to support the parole of Oscar Lopez Rivera, a leader of the FALN, who she described as a political prisoner "not accused of causing harm or taking a life." But Queens Republican Dan Halloran was outraged at the notion, and sent off an angry response to the entire council: "This terrorist, like all terrorists, should rot in jail forever...I guess the 9-11 bombers could make the same argument. They were merely responding to the 'evils' of the U.S. Will you be asking for them to be pardoned too?" Mark-Viverito called Halloran's 9/11 comparison "overblown, inappropriate and offensive." Hyperbolic Halloran is best known for his crusade to take down power-hungry Traffic Agent "Big Bad Dan" Chu...and for maybe being a pagan.
