The day after Labor Day, just as campaign season was entering its final frenzy, FreedomWorks, the Washington-based tea party organization, went into free fall.
Richard K. Armey, the group’s chairman and a former House majority leader, walked into the group’s Capitol Hill offices with his wife, Susan, and an aide holstering a handgun at his waist. The aim was to seize control of the group and expel Armey’s enemies: The gun-wielding assistant escorted FreedomWorks’ top two employees off the premises, while Armey suspended several others who broke down in sobs at the news.
The coup lasted all of six days. By Sept. 10, Armey was gone — with a promise of $8 million — and the five ousted employees were back. The force behind their return was Richard J. Stephenson, a reclusive Illinois millionaire who has exerted increasing control over one of Washington’s most influential conservative grass-roots organizations.
Stephenson, the founder of the for-profit Cancer Treatment Centers of America and a director on the FreedomWorks board, agreed to commit $400,000 per year over 20 years in exchange for Armey’s agreement to leave the group.
Of course, all these assholes are total Gun nuts...and the price of weilding a weapon IN THE FUCKING WORKPLACE if you are a high-ranking Republican is $8 million dollars. BTW, as the story points out this was only a couple weeks after a shooting at the Family Research Council offices -- a group that worked closely with Freedom Works.
So a guy was then allowed to just stroll in packing heat.
Good security.
But by all means, these folks should totally be allowed to govern. ...of course, if only another Freedom Works idiot was armed with a gun Dick Armey could never have held them for $8 million in ransom money that was obtained days after the incident.
Yeah, it makes that much sense.