From the NY Times:

The episode resulted in an alcohol-fueled all-night debate that left some members so drunk they had to be carried out of the Assembly chamber, according to an account in The New York Times on April 14, 1920.

Upon their expulsion, two of the assemblymen said, “The constitution has been lynched.” It was the last time, legislators believe, that a sitting member was expelled by his peers.

Albany — no less a stranger to political infighting and disreputable behavior today — is about to hold one of its own up to the same kind of investigative process that led to the removal in 1920 of the five assemblymen, and a sixth in 1921, on the grounds that as members of the Socialist Party of America they were part of a group that sympathized with Germany during World War I and supported the Communist Soviet Union.

Read the Rest…