The Obama administration reacts to the news about North Korea’s rocket launch. That and other political news in today’s TPMDC Sunday Roundup.

Obama’s town-hall style meeting in Strasbourg on Friday may have been the most memorable event of the trip. We gathered some of the key moments:

It seems like every time former Rep. John Sweeney (R-NY) is about to recede off the front pages and settle into the obscure life typical of a former congressman defeated for re-election he goes and does something to focus attention on himself all over again. It’s like he misses being kicked around by the likes of TPM. This time, it’s another DUI arrest. It happened last night, but in Sweeney’s defense, there was no pretty young thing sitting on his lap when he got pulled over, like there was last time. Progress?

(Thanks to TPM Reader MT for the link.)

Late Update: TPM Reader BD sends along more about the arrest from the Albany Times-Union.

Funny how things work out. Sweeney’s drinking and alleged wife beating while in office doomed him against Kristen Gillibrand in the 2006 election. Then when Sen. Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State, Rep. Gillibrand was appointed to fill Hillary’s empty Senate seat. (If you really want to connect the dots to political misdeeds and carnality, Gillibrand was appointed by David Paterson, who would not be governor if not for Eliot Spitzer’s call girl flameout. But I digress.) The special election for Gillibrand’s seat, the NY-20, was last week and ended in a virtual tie, with both national parties now preparing to battle it out in court over the still-to-be-counted absentee ballots.

So in a way, you could say the men of the Union College chapter of Alpha Delta Phi helped make history. Here they are partying with Sweeney back in ’06, in one of the pics that derailed his political career (if it isn’t terribly obvious, Sweeney is the one wearing a tie):

TPM Reader FF writes in with a mild (and probably justified) complaint, but that’s not why I’m publishing this email:

I think you need a better weekend strategy; a guest blogger, a regular weekend feature (you could have Eric prepare it mid-week) something to satisfy the fix of your regular readers and advertisers … This weekend I was hanging from a harness on Yosemite’s Half Dome, but I had a fair bit of free time belaying and a strong 3G signal (coverage is very good in the valley, the RV/diesel generator crowd would stand for no less) … it’s a new and ugly world.

Amazing. The only thing that gives me pause is the thought of my belay partner surfing the web somewhere down below me, with my life in their hands. My own rock climbing experience (such as it was — you’d never have seen me anywhere near Half Dome) mostly pre-dated cell phones.

Obama just wrapped up his speech to the Turkish parliament. That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Robert Reich: How serious is Tim Geithner really about dumping Wall Street CEOs?

Newt Gingrich’s “fantasy foreign policy” charge, GM’s prospects of bankruptcy, and David Axelrod’s prickly response to Dick Cheney’s recent criticisms. All that and more in today’s Sunday Show Roundup …

The judge in the Ted Stevens case may let the Justice Department drop all the charges against Stevens, but he’s not ready to let DOJ lawyers off the hook quite yet.

The former New York governor faced off with Matt Lauer this morning on Today, about his call girl dalliances:

Spitzer is so good on financial issues that I alternate between sadness and anger for his stupidity.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) replaces naked call for violent revolution with metaphorical violence: “I want [my constituents] to be armed with knowledge, so they can be dangerous to the policies of the left.”

Late Update: Speaking of which, David Weigel attended the annual Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot near Louisville, Ky., over the weekend — and took pictures.

Later Update: Oh, my. Just in case you thought Bachmann was toning things down, she’s now comparing Ted’s Kennedy’s “Serve America Act,” a community service program for young people, with “re-education camps“:

And the real concerns is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums.”