Dick Armey on $8 million payout he got after the FreedomWorks coup: I “couldn’t leave with empty pockets.”
Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has spent millions of his own dollars over the years running for political office. He spent more than $20 million on this year’s loss to Ted Cruz in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate alone.
Now, Dewhurst is accusing the man who served as his campaign manager since 2008 of stealing a pretty hefty amount of cash from the campaign for lieutenant governor. So far, campaign aides say at least $600,000 is missing, and they’re still counting. Here’s our report.
The Golden Dukes are in their 6th Year! Our annual awards to honor the standout performers in scandal, public corruption and where appropriate simple ridiculousness and Teh Crazy.
Ladies and Gentlemen, here are your winners!
From TPM Reader RG …
I’ve been reading and communicating with you for some years. I own a few small businesses, and earlier this morning I had a conversation with the woman who does our payroll, as I’m planning the coming week’s activity. I think that something that is simply not getting enough airtime is the really nitty gritty about the cost of this fiscal cliff insanity.
Key Democratic Senate aide tells TPM Dems aren’t interested in a short term fiscal cliff deal.
One of the great benign facts of today’s America is that crime of most sorts has dropped dramatically over the last two decades. There’s plenty of argument over causes. Some significant role goes to the end of the major crack wars of the 80s and early 90s. Different law enforcement strategies play a role. My own take is that the biggest factors are social trends we are only dimly able to understand or analyze. One day, certainly. For now we’re largely limited to measuring the effects rather than isolating causes.
But far all that, your chances of getting murdered remain wildly different in different parts of the country. Read More
Anyone who knows me or has worked with me knows I’m a creature of tablets — old-fashioned, narrow-ruled, white paper tablets. I write out notes, sketches, lists. Like many of us, I think by writing things out. And unlike some people I keep the tablets. One part lapsed historian, one part pack-rat, I don’t like losing my record of the ideas and thoughts I put on paper. Read More
As you’ve probably heard, there’s a growing furor about the decision of a suburban New York newspaper to publish a database of the names and addresses of registered gun owners in two New York counties (Rockland and Westchester) just north of New York City. The data is already in the public domain. You or I could have accessed it a week ago. But it’s a little different to have it in a fingertips-ready web 2.0 form. Read More
Some fascinating findings from Pew’s on-going number crunching of the 2012 election. African-Americans, for the first time ever, may have voted at higher rates than American whites. Read More