The Political Whore

It may have been the worst news conference performance by a sitting Speaker of the House ever. Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi harmed her own cause and ratcheted up the torture debate in a newser in which she parsed her knowledge of CIA waterboarding briefings and accused the spy agency of lying to Congress.

Even Florida’s former Sen. Bob Graham (and his infamous lil’ notebooks) has leapt to her side, telling HuffPo that he, too, was lied to by the CIA about torture tactics and use. From that interview:

“When this issue started to resurface I called the appropriate people in the agency and said I would like to know the dates from your records that briefings were held,” Graham recalled. “And they contacted me and gave me four dates — two in April ‘02 and two in September ‘02. Now, one of the things I do, and for which I have taken some flack, is keep a spiral notebook of what I do throughout the day. And so I went through my records and through a combination of my daily schedule, which I keep, and my notebooks, I confirmed and the CIA agreed that my notes were accurate; that three of those four dates there had been no briefing. There was only one day that I had been briefed, which was September the 27th of 2002.”

Video of the full Pelosi news conference after the jump.
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Watching the Florida Channel tonight, the Florida House Republican Conference took the bold step to formally replace former Speaker Ray Sansom as the leader of the House of Representatives. Read the rest of this entry »

Ray Sansom is the incoming speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, a gig that pays $42,000 a year, and yesterday it was learned he just got another new job: the Northwest Florida State College hired him as vice president of development and planning. That paycheck? $110,000 annually.

He got that job, in addition to being speaker, cuz (as the Palm Beach Post reported)

Sansom helped push through a bill to give the school its state college desgination this year, according to the Northwest Florida Daily Herald. He attended the school when it was known as Okaloosa-Walton Junior College.

Today we learn that Sansom, a Republican from Destin (near where the GOP legislators are having a posh getaway this week) did even more for his alma mater:

House Speaker Ray Sansom got $200,000 into the current fiscal year budget to help Northwest Florida State College, his new employer, build a “leadership institute.”

In an interview today, Sansom confirmed his involvement in the appropriation, which caused a behind-the-scenes stir with the Rubio administration since it was not discovered until late in the process.

Of course, that had noooooooothing to do with his getting the gig:

But Sansom said his involvement ended there. “None of that has anything to do with me or how I’m paid,” he told The Buzz.