A helpful reader reports the bumptious Malloys were spotted engaging in what looked like real estate shopping last weekend in Stonington, a charming village.

Parking can be a challenge. This could be a problem for Mrs. Malloy.

If the past is prologue, a Malloy move will mean a bonanza of taxpayer money to big local corporations that lard the millions on executives. If Stonington’s been dreaming of a heliport paid for by working men and women, this may be its chance.

The Daily Mail has found an interview in which the Lady refused to engage in the interviewer’s gimmick of getting guests to jump. See it here.

Why pretend? It’s the yearly marketing event for the the Brown Rudnick Ritter Cafero merchants of influence. Clients and prospective clients will gather in Hartford Thursday night to witness a parade of players dropping by the annual party. Private invitations received by members of the permanent government had eyes rolling two weeks ago. With all the attention the unseemly axis between Brown Rudnick lawyer/lobbyist Thomas Ritter and his Brown Rudnick colleague House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero have been getting in and out of court, insiders thought they might forego drawing more attention to themselves.

This invitation appeared in the legislature’s daily bulletin on April 4th:

Brown Rudnick LLP cordially invites all legislators and staff to its annual reception on Thursday, April 11, 2013 at 6:00 P.M. at the Bond Ballroom, 338 Asylum Avenue, Hartford, Connecticut. For further information, or to R.S.V.P., please call (860) 509-6560 by Wednesday, April 10, 2013. Red Wine Night is in compliance with Connecticut ethics laws C.G.S. Section 1-91 (G) (10).

Note that the invitation does not say that the government relations arm of Brown Rudnick LLP invites all legislators and staff to the party. Where is the Chinese wall between law firm and lobbying group that Cafero often mentions? The one that kept Cafero ignorant of firm dealings with the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority (CRRA) until his appointments to the board were needed. CRRA paid Brown Rudnick $2.8 million between 2006 and 2012. That’s a lot of vino.

In case guests imbibe too much, the hosts have a block of rooms at a nearby hotel that will be available at a discounted rate.

Her remarkable like came to an end today. Yours is better for the way she lived hers. Here she is on the day she resigned, betrayed by what she called “treachery with a smiling face.” Triumphant even in defeat. “Too Damn Good for the Lot of Them,” as one paper declared on its front page in 1990.

Baseball season began last week and the movie “42″ opens on Friday. Here are two What’s My Line clips to mark both occasions.

My Courant column this weekend tells the dispiriting story of DCF Commissioner Joette Katz’s taste for privilege. The consequences of blowing the whistle on Katz’s use of a state parking garage to store her Germany luxury sports car may fall on longtime state employee Antoinette Alphonse, of the Department of Economic and Community Development. There was, I understand, much internal bobbing and weaving over who would draw the short straw and confront the disagreeable former judge about storing the car in the state garage.

Katz was not willing to say much through her spokesman last week. She declined to disclose why she stored her ragtop at the state garage and refused to say how long it had been there. She characterized the period as “a number of weeks.” So much for that (cringe alert) “easy, accessible brilliance” a fawning Courant profile alleged Katz possessed. When first asked on about the car on Tuesday, Katz would only concede that it was “a privately-owned” vehicle. She later acknowledged the BMW that accumulated dust for months is hers.

You will want to read about the federal investigation into political corruption in New York that broke big on Tuesday morning with the arrests of a prominent state senator, some Republican party officials, and a couple of suburban municipal elected officials, roiling city and state politics. These federal wire wearers capture some of the most startling and revealing conversations.

POLITICO Influence reports today that state Representative Sean Williams (R-Watertown) has been hired by Airlines for America, an industry trade group. Williams, who is in his sixth term as a members of the House of Representatives, will be vice president of state and local affairs and “will lead the trade group’s state and local affairs team and is expected to play a central role in the group’s effort to get state-level support for a comprehensive national airline policy,” according to POLITICO.

Williams serves as the House ranking member of the legislature’s Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee.

An appearance by Mahalia Jackson was an event.

The legislature’s Government Administration and Elections Committee will invite the special interests they once claimed posed a threat to their integrity to increase their contributions to the trough today. The committee meets at 11 a.m. today and looks poised to pass three bills that will allow what the used to condemn. They will increase the limits on contributions to party state central committees, expands contributions through the use of program books, and allows state contractors to make contributions to campaigns.

The items are numbers 10, 11, and 12 on the committee agenda.