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Looks like someone's trying to out teabag "going rogue" Sarah. Tim Pawlenty's obviously planning on running in 2012 and has decided his best course of action is to throw in with the conservative wing of the party. From The Hill--Pawlenty takes on Snowe:

Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) warned Olympia Snowe today that she's risking her position in the GOP by considering a vote for healthcare reform.

"She's somebody who has gotten into the middle of the healthcare debate in a way that makes Republicans mad," Pawlenty said on Morning Joe. "They make accept that, but they're not going to accept her deviating on many other things."

Asked whether he was glad Snowe was a Republican, Pawlenty hedged.

"There is a process in her state that is broad based that endorses her, and the Republicans in that state say 'we want her to be our candidate,'" Pawlenty said.

Pressed on the issue, Pawlenty made clear he wouldn't offer a definitive answer.

PAWLENTY: "I think Olympia Snowe is somebody who is more liberal than most Republicans would like but she is better than having a Democrat represent me."

SCARBOROUGH: "Is that a yes? I think that's a yes."

PAWLENTY: Well look, the people of Maine have an open process, they selected her. It's different [than Scozzafava]."

Olympia Snowe responded to Pawlenty's criticism...via The Politico:

"I've been a lifelong Republican -- I haven't changed, I don't know what the problem is -- I really don't," said Snowe, speaking to POLITICO at the Capitol. "I know Gov. Pawlenty to be a thoughtful person and i know if he could have rephrased it or re characterized it he would."

But Snowe, who is pro-abortion rights, took serious issue with Pawlenty's underlying argument that some members of the GOP's fast shrinking left flank, including one-time NY-23 candidate Dede Scozzafava, are so far out of the party's anti-abortion, anti-gay rights mainstream they are a "joke."

"All I know is that I've been a life-long Republican, I [spent] 16 years toiling in the minority in the House of Representatives and [was part of] the effort to get us the majority in 1994 -- now were in the minority and I'm still here," she added, with a laugh.

"So, i don't know -- I think they could probably borrow more from me in that sense, in terms of being in touch with your constituents..."

"Senator, that I don't recall remembering." With those six words uttered during the furor over his purge of U.S. prosecutors, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales likely etched his epitaph. But as it turns out, "hypothetical" may be the most important word Gonzales ever spoke to Congress. New revelations this week suggest that in the spring of 2002 then-White House Counsel Gonzales personally approved the use of waterboarding, months before the Justice Department's infamous Bybee memo blessed the practice. By labeling such questions "hypothetical" during his 2005 confirmation hearings, Attorney General Gonzales may well have committed perjury.

As NPR reported this week, Gonzales apparently played a central role in authorizing the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques months before the August 2002 Bybee memo defined torture as "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." In April and May 2002, it was White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales who gave CIA interrogation contractor James Mitchell the greenlight to waterboard detainee Abu Zubaydah:

One source with knowledge of Zubaydah's interrogations agreed to describe the legal guidance process, on the condition of anonymity.

The source says nearly every day, Mitchell would sit at his computer and write a top-secret cable to the CIA's counterterrorism center. Each day, Mitchell would request permission to use enhanced interrogation techniques on Zubaydah. The source says the CIA would then forward the request to the White House, where White House counsel Alberto Gonzales would sign off on the technique. That would provide the administration's legal blessing for Mitchell to increase the pressure on Zubaydah in the next interrogation.

But that's not what Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee during his January 2005 confirmation as Attorney General.

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So were these officials actively undermining Iraq's government - or are they political rivals taken out with one big swoop?

If the latter, then Bush certainly has turned Iraq into his kind of "democracy":

BAGHDAD, Dec. 18 -- At least 34 Iraqi security officials inside Iraq's Interior Ministry have been arrested, possibly in connection with corruption and working to rebuild an illegal party formed by supporters of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, according to several ministry officials.

Those arrested, both Sunnis and Shiites, include high-ranking generals at the Interior Ministry, which oversees the country's police and other security services. Most of those arrested -- at least 17 -- were members of the traffic police, including the general who leads the department, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The arrests were made by a special counterterrorism task force that reports to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the officials said.

It was unclear precisely why the officials were arrested. Some said it was because they were involved in corruption involving the issuing of fake documents and car license plates. Others described a more diabolical plot to resurrect al-Awda, or the Return, a party composed of Hussein's loyalists that has been banned by the government. "It's a political group to resist against the government," said an Interior Ministry officer.

Also unknown was whether the officials were trying to plot the overthrow of Maliki, who has been trying to cement his power in recent months, raising tensions with various political parties. At least six additional officials were being sought for arrest, the officials said.