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.
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.
We asked some experts about Tom DeLay’s double-bank shot plan to get Texas done seceded out of the USA.
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.
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.
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.
John Boehner declares: “the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide.” That and other political news in today’s TPMDC Sunday Roundup.