Hugo Chávez gives President Obama a gift: A leftist book on American intervention in Latin America. That and other political news in today's TPMDC Saturday Roundup.

Iraq now safe enough to drink, party and have sex.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

With the apparent desire of some Texans to secede from the United States, one cost conscious eBayer has taken it upon themselves to place the state on the auction block and sell it off to the highest bidder as a way of defraying the cost of the bank bailout and possibly some portion of the national debt.

The minimum bid for Texas was set at $100,000. But it's already been bid up to over $65 million.

A lot of information in three short grafs, from the Times ...

The first use of waterboarding and other rough treatment against a prisoner from Al Qaeda was ordered by senior Central Intelligence Agency officials despite the belief of interrogators that the prisoner had already told them all he knew, according to former intelligence officials and a footnote in a newly released legal memorandum.

The escalation to especially brutal interrogation tactics against the prisoner, Abu Zubaydah, including confining him in boxes and slamming him against the wall, was ordered by officials at C.I.A. headquarters based on a highly inflated assessment of his importance, interviews and a review of newly released documents show.

Abu Zubaydah had provided much valuable information under less severe treatment, and the harsher handling produced no breakthroughs, according to one former intelligence official with direct knowledge of the case. Instead, watching his torment caused great distress to his captors, the official said.

We asked some experts about Tom DeLay's double-bank shot plan to get Texas done seceded out of the USA.

Remember when we were all Georgians?

French President Sarkozy's dismissive remarks about President Obama got picked up in the right-wing press in the US. But actually, in a free-ranging (and one imagines perhaps also well-lubricated) chat with reporters, Sarkozy dumped on the record with pretty much every head of government in Europe.

It's not every head of state who gets to divorce his wife, have a nervous breakdown and marry a super-model during his first few months in office.

I was still out of the country when Eric Kleefeld reported this: but, hey, Chris Chocola, old TPM parody-nemesis, is taking over as the head of the Club for Growth, the right-wing pressure group that specializes in killing off moderate GOPers with hard-right anti-tax Republicans who can't get elected to anything.

Chocola is taking over because former Rep. Pat Toomey (R-PA) is resigning to try to primary Arlen Specter (R-PA) out of the senate for the second time.

The Club was founded by Stephen Moore back in 1999. But since Toomey took over a few years ago, there's something telling about the fact that the outfit is run by politicians -- specifically, former members of Congress -- who have proven unable themselves to actually continue getting elected.

In any case, I'm excited to have Chocola back on the scene.

Who wrote the torture memos? And where are they know?

(Hint: One of them is a federal circuit court judge.)

The GOP is the party of ideas.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

James Horne is a leading sleep research expert. He was a bit bummed to learn that his research was cited in the torture memos to justify keeping detainees awake for as long as 11 days. Zack Roth just spoke to him over at TPMmuckraker.

Remember the Scott Beauchamp story? He was the Army private who wrote a piece for the New Republic describing out of control US soldiers in Iraq. He got a few facts wrong -- though, at least to me, it was always pretty fuzzy whether there was any reason to believe there was any bad faith involved -- and on the basis of that the Pentagon and pretty much all the right-wing media crucified the guy. Now it turns out that one of the soldiers who The Weekly Standard relied on as a sort of anti-character witness against Beauchamp was just convicted of executing four handcuffed and blindfolded Iraqi men. Remember that great journalism by Michael Goldfarb? Brian Beutler has the details.

This is pretty amazing. Steve Schmidt, a Karl Rove protege and respected, hardball GOP operative who was brought in last year to run John McCain's campaign is going to tell the GOP they need to just get it over with an get behind the movement to grant full marriage equality to same sex couples.

Former top McCain adviser Steve Schmidt is planning to use a Friday speech to the Log Cabin Republicans to urge the GOP to drop its opposition to same-sex marriage.

"I'm confident American public opinion will continue to move on the question toward majority support, and sooner or later the Republican Party will catch up to it," Schmidt plans to say according to excerpts provided to ABC News.

Schmidt's push for Republicans to endorse same-sex marriage comes as his party is grappling with a string of gay rights victories in Iowa, Vermont, and Washington, D.C.

To be clear, in the speech, ABC reports that Schmidt will also make the argument for marriage equality on the merits. He's not simply saying it's necessary politically.

Just out: EPA declares greenhouse gases threat to public health.

Sen. Chris Dodd received just five campaign contributions from Connecticut residents in the last quarter. That and the day's other news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Time to lower the boom, says Simon Johnson.

Sarah Palin thinks she's running for president.