What happens to democracy when you set up a town (Hoboken) devoted to attracting freshly-barely-graduated frat boys and college cheerleaders turned pharmaceutical sales reps too "sketched out" to cope with the gritty urban realities of Williamsburg or Murray Hill?

Yes folks, like everything else in Hoboken, democracy gets puked upon -- by a corrupt cabal of machine politicians conspiring with rabbis and real estate developers to make money in the sketchiest ways possible--which in this case includes trafficking human body parts.

At least 30 public officials were arrested and hauled into federal court in Newark this morning in a story that is so far short on details and long on awesome names.

There is Jersey City Council President Mariano Vega, Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini, the aforementioned Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano -- who is just 23 days into his term after winning a runoff election by 67 absentee ballots and may have a secret family -- in addition to the longtime Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell and a lot of as-yet-unidentified employees of two Monmouth County religious institutions, the Ohel Yaacob synagogue and the Deal Yeshiva, the latter of which first ran into trouble when the real estate mogul son of its founder deposited a bad $25.2 million check.

The editor of the site Hoboken411 says he will give us a briefing on the "juicy" background of all this once he fixes his server issues...