Tonight is the 61st Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, a gala event benefiting Catholic charities held annually at the Waldorf-Astoria. All the stars of New York politics will be out and shining like jewels. We just got the list of who's at our table, and it appears we're sitting between an H. Clinton and an E. Spitzer. Hope they like to party, cuz we're planning on getting d-runk 2 nite!

Here's some pregame action courtesy of the Internet Archive: Al Smith Toasts the Passing of Prohibition. The Happy Warrior was the most prominent "wet" of his day. During the 1928 presidential campaign, his gravely voice was often referred to as "whiskey breath" by anti-immigrant demagogues who feared the first Catholic presidential nominee might wash away their vision of Babbitt's America in a tide of rye and Romanism. In 1933, Al was an even happier warrior when the Eighteenth Amendment bit the barroom sawdust after thirteen years of tyranny over the American liver.