Obama administration surveillance of Americans during his last four years

Sharyl Attkisson compiled timelines cross-referencing Obama-era surveillance of whistleblowers, journalists and other U.S. citizens with Russia surveillance allegations. This post includes the last four years of Obama's presidency.

2013:

Obama administration brings court-martial against Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, who has changed his name to Chelsea, for a 2010 leak of classified information to WikiLeaks that revealed American military and diplomatic activities across the world. Manning is sentenced to 35 years in prison, the longest punishment ever given in a U.S. leak case.

January 2013:

Two forensics examinations confirm unauthorized remote intrusions and monitoring of Attkisson’s work and personal computers. The information is not publicly reported at this time.

January 23, 2013:

The Obama administration prosecutes CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou for leaks to a reporter as he blew the whistle on the CIA’s secret torture program. He’s the first CIA officer convicted of providing classified information to a reporter.

March 12, 2013:

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testifies to Congress, falsely stating that intelligence officials are not collecting mass data on tens of millions of Americans.


April 12, 2013:

The government Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Agency (FISA) court secretly approves the latest FBI request to continue obtaining daily telephone records of millions of U.S. Verizon customers. The judge orders Verizon to turn over the information to the National Security Agency (NSA). This directly contradicts Clapper’s March 12 testimony to Congress.

April 2013:

A secret government memo later exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden discusses how the U.S. is collecting information “directly from the servers of …Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.”

May 10, 2013:

After longstanding denials, the IRS admits to and apologizes for targeting Republican Tea Party groups for mischief, which included discussing developing pretenses for prosecution, leading up to the 2012 election.

May 13, 2013:

The Associated Press (AP) publicly announces that it has learned of the Justice Department’s secret subpoena of phone records for 20 AP reporters, in a leak investigation. Attorney General Holder personally approved the subpoenas, which were issued to Verizon rather than AP. AP calls it a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into news-gathering operations.

May 17, 2013:

Fox News learns that the Justice Department secretly labeled reporter James Rosen a possible “criminal co-conspirator” and “flight-risk” in obtaining warrants to monitor Rosen’s State Department movements, phone records and emails in a leak investigation starting in 2011.

June 2013:

The FBI secretly opens a case on Attkisson’s computer intrusions under the auspices of a national security issue. The FBI contacts CBS without Attkisson’s knowledge, but fails to contact or interview Attkisson. (The FBI later withholds Attkisson’s FBI file in its entirety without explanation, and other documents, despite multiple Freedom of Information Act requests.)

News of the FBI case involving Attkisson’s computer intrusions is circulated internally to the Justice Department’s national cyber security group, and grouped with a set of cases opened in November 2012.

Former National Security Agency NSA contractor Snowden begins releasing documents showing extensive efforts by the government to surveil and collect information on U.S. citizens.

Snowden is charged with three felonies in his absence from the U.S.

June 6, 2013:

At a hearing, Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Illinois, asks Attorney General Eric Holder if the NSA spies on members of Congress. Holder answers that the NSA has no “intent” to spy on Congress, but that the issue is better addressed in private.

July 2, 2013:

Director of National Intelligence Clapper apologizes to Congress for his false testimony in March regarding widespread collection of data on Americans.

August 6, 2013:

Armed Coast Guard agents under the Department of Homeland Security raid the home of reporter Audrey Hudson at 4:30am with a search warrant for her husband’s firearms. As they searched the house, they read Hudson her Miranda rights and confiscated documents that contained “confidential notes, draft articles, and other newsgathering materials” belonging to Hudson including the identities of whistleblowers at the Department of Homeland Security. (Hudson sues and later receives a settlement from the government.)

August 7, 2013:

CBS News publicly announces confirmation of Attkisson’s computer intrusions.

“Attkisson’s computer was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions late in 2012…This party also used sophisticated methods to remove all possible indications of unauthorized activity, and alter system times to cause further confusion.—CBS News

September 19, 2013

The Obama Justice Department charges FBI agent and contractor Donald Sachtleben with leaking to an AP reporter details of disrupted terrorist bomb plot. He’s sentenced to 43 months in prison.

January 23, 2014:

Sen. Bernie Sanders asks the NSA if it spies on members of Congress. The NSA does not provide a direct answer and states that Congress is afforded “the same privacy protections as all U.S. persons.”

March 2014:

Congress accuses the CIA of improperly accessing Senate Intelligence committee computers. CIA Director Brennan denies it.

Director of National Intelligence Clapper bans intelligence community officials from unauthorized contact with reporters.

April 2, 2014:

Former state department contractor Stephen Jin-Woo Kim is sentenced to prison for disclosing classified information to Fox News reporter James Rosen.

July 31, 2014:

CIA Inspector General reveals that five CIA officials improperly accessed Senate Intelligence Committee computers and searched certain staff emails. The findings contradict denials made in March by CIA director Brennan. Brennan apologizes to Senate staff.

December 2014:

Attorney General Holder seeks to subpoena a 60 Minutes producer in connection with a terrorism trial, but pulls back the request after public criticism.

Spring 2015:

The Obama administration finishes secretive negotiations of an Iran nuclear deal that will return billions of dollars in frozen funds to the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism in return for assurances from that country. It’s later reported that Obama intel officials have been incidentally capturing communications of U.S. members of Congress and organizations in the U.S. while secretly recording Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s discussions about the Iran deal, which he opposes.

As of now, the New York Times reports “since 2009, six current or former government employees and two government contractors have been indicted or prosecuted under the Espionage Act for leaking information to the public. There were only three such prosecutions under all previous U.S. presidents combined since 1917.”

May 2015:

Former CIA employee Jeffrey Alexander Sterling is convicted on espionage charges for leaks to New York Times reporter James Risen. He’s sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison.

December 2015:

The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) passes. It requires private Internet companies to “transmit cyber-threat indicators” to the Department of Homeland Security and granting the companies immunity from prosecution for sharing customers’ personal data in those cases.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Obama administration incidentally collected private communications by members of Congress while it spied on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

The NSA sweeping up “private conversations with U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups… raised fears [of]—an ‘Oh-s— moment,’ one senior U.S. official said—that the executive branch would be accused of spying on Congress.”–Wall Street Journal, December 29, 2015

July 2016:

Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination for president.

According to later news reports, after Trump’s nomination, internal White House logs show Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice begins to show increased interest in National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence material that included “unmasked” Americans’ identities.

Summer 2016:

The FBI reportedly obtains a secret FISA court order to monitor communications of Trump adviser Carter Page, convincing a judge there’s probable cause to believe Page is acting as a Russian agent. Surveillance of Page theoretically allows government officials to “incidentally” collect communications of Trump associates (or Trump himself) if they communicate with Page.

2016:

It’s not yet known publicly, but CNN later reports that the Obama Justice Department wiretapped Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort before the 2016 election over Russia ties, closed the investigation, then began surveillance anew sometime in the fall and continued it through the early part of 2017.

Fall 2016:

Trump opponents “shop” to reporters a political opposition research “dossier” alleging Trump is guilty of various inappropriate acts regarding Russia. The information is unverified (and some of it is false) and the press doesn’t publish it, but a copy is provided to the FBI.

September 26, 2016:

It’s not publicly known at the time, but the government makes a proposal to the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) court to allow the National Counter Terrorism Center to access “unmasked” intel on Americans acquired by the FBI and NSA. (The Court later approves as “appropriate”.)

October 7, 2016:

Former vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff James Cartwright pleads guilty in a leak investigation to lying to the FBI about his discussions with reporters regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

October 26, 2016:

At closed-door hearing before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Obama administration disclosed that it had been violating surveillance safeguards, according to Circa.

November 8, 2016:

Donald Trump is elected President.

November 2016-January 2017:

News reports claim Rice’s interest in the NSA materials accelerates after President Trump’s election through his January inauguration. Surveillance reportedly included Trump transition figures and/or foreign officials discussing a Trump administration.

December 2016:

FBI secretly monitors and records communications between Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who later became President Trump’s national security adviser.


After Trump’s election, Obama officials take steps to ensure certain intelligence gathered regarding Trump associates is “spread across the government.” One Obama official would later say it’s because they were afraid once Trump officials “found out how we knew what we knew,” the intelligence would be destroyed. However, Obama critics later theorize Obama officials were working to mount opposition to Trump’s presidency.

January 10, 2017:

The media reports on the leaked anti-Trump “dossier” compiled by a political opposition research group containing unverified and at least partly untrue allegations of misconduct involving Trump and Russia.

January 12, 2017:

The Obama administration finalizes new rules allowing the National Security Agency (NSA) to spread certain intelligence to 16 other U.S. intel agencies without the normal privacy protections.

President Obama commutes all but the last four months of Manning’s sentence for leaking intelligence information to WikiLeaks.

Surveillance during Obama's first four years.

Sharyl Attkisson has built comprehensive timelines cross-referencing Obama-era surveillance of whistleblowers, journalists and other U.S. citizens with Russia surveillance allegations. I have some excerpts here. One of the most interesting aspects is how they shut up David Petraeus before he could reveal the lies about Benghazi.

April 2009:

Someone leaks the unmasked name of Congresswoman Jane Harmon to the press. According to news reports, the Bush administration NSA incidentally recorded and saved Harmon’s phone conversations with pro-Israel lobbyists who were under investigation for espionage. The story is first broken by Congressional Quarterly’s Jeff Stein.

December 17, 2009:

The Obama administration prosecutes FBI contractor Shamai Leibowitz for leaking documents to the media in April 2009. Leibowitz says he leaked because he felt FBI practices were “an abuse of power and a violation of the law” which he reported to his superiors at the FBI “who did nothing about them.”

2010:

The IRS secretly begins “targeting” conservative groups that are seeking nonprofit tax-exempt status, by singling out ones that have “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in their names.

Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning begins illegally leaks classified information to WikiLeaks revealing, among other matters, that the U.S. is extensively spying on the United Nations.

Obama Attorney General Eric Holder renews a Bush-era subpoena of New York Times reporter James Risen in a leak investigation.

Obama administration pursues espionage charges against NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake. (According to the ACLU: spy charges were later dropped and Drake pled guilty to a misdemeanor. The judge called the government’s conduct in the case “unconscionable.”)

May 28, 2010:

The government secretly applies for a warrant to obtain Google email information of Fox News reporter James Rosen in a leak investigation, without telling Rosen


...Internal email entitled “Obama Leak Investigations” at “global intelligence” company Stratfor claims Obama’s then-Homeland Security adviser John Brennan is targeting journalists.

Early February 2011:

After receiving an anonymous tip, CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson begins researching the Department of Justice “gunwalking” operation nicknamed “Fast and Furious” that secretly let thousands of weapons be trafficked to Mexican drug cartels. One of the “walked” guns had been used by illegal aliens who murdered U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010.

February 22, 2011:

CBS’ Attkisson breaks news about “Fast and Furious” on The CBS Evening News.

CBS News’ Attkisson exclusively interviews sitting ATF special agent John Dodson. He gives a firsthand account contradicting government denials re: Fast and Furious.

May 2011:

White House recruits democratic operative Eric Schultz to spin on Fast and Furious and to counter the House Oversight Committee’s investigative work on the case. (Schultz previously served as intern to Sen. Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton.)

Spring 2011:

Obama intel officials capture and record incidental private communications between Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat, and a Libyan official. The recordings are later leaked to the press.

2011:

Fox News reporter Mike Levine is subpoenaed by the Department of Justice regarding a story he reported about a federal grand jury’s indictments of terrorism suspects. The subpoena is later dropped.

June 28, 2011:

Obama U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke secretly leaks sensitive government information to Fox News, allegedly to retaliate against ATF whistleblower John Dodson in the Fast and Furious case. (Burke is former chief of staff to former Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano.)

August 2011:

U.S. Attorney Burke resigns while under investigation for the improper leak of sensitive information about Dodson. The Inspector General later confirms the leak and Burke apologizes.

September 2011:

White House operative Schultz invites Attkisson and several other national journalists to off the record backgrounder about Fast and Furious documents subpoenaed by Congress. Later, on the phone, Shultz screams and cusses at Attkisson as she asks questions raised by the Fast and Furious documents.

October 3, 2011:

Obama administration secretly changes longstanding policy. The change creates a “loophole” that Sen. Ron Wyden would later say allows the NSA to conduct “backdoor searches” of “incidental collection” of U.S. citizens’ domestic communications.

The same day, CBS News airs Attkisson’s report on newly-uncovered memos that contradict Attorney General Eric Holders’ denials about Fast and Furious.

February 13, 2012:

At approximately 10:30pm, remote intruders secretly download new spy software proprietary to a federal agency onto Attkisson’s CBS work computer. (The software was secretly attached to a legitimate Hotmail email and downloaded in the background after a pop-up ad appeared).

April-May 2012:

The Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI publicly announce vast expansion of cyber related efforts to address alleged “national security-related cyber issues.”

In violation of longstanding practice, DOJ secretly and without notice seizes personal and phone records of journalists from Associated Press from this two-month period in a leak investigation.

June 2012:

Attorney General Holder secretly initiates investigations into AP and the New York Times regarding government leaks.

June 28, 2012:

The House of Representatives holds Attorney General Holder in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over subpoenaed documents related to Fast and Furious.

July 2012:

The Department of Justice designates U.S. Attorneys’ offices to act as “force multipliers” in further stepped-up cyber efforts in the name of national security.

Intruders remotely “refresh” ongoing surveillance of Attkisson’s CBS News Toshiba laptop.

September 11, 2012:

Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens are murdered in Benghazi, Libya during attacks by Islamic extremist terrorists. Despite internal communications that acknowledge the terrorist nature of the attacks within minutes, the Obama administration falsely reports to the public that the attacks were instead a protest gone awry after an anti-Islamic YouTube video.

Some Obama officials become frustrated with CIA Director Petraeus and his post-Benghazi attack behavior, as he opposes efforts to edit out mentions of terrorism from the public Benghazi talking points. Petraeus deputy Mike Morell is given authority over the edits, and aligns with Hillary Clinton’s State Department against Petraeus’s desires.

October 2012:

CBS begins airing Attkisson’s Benghazi stories which rely on whistleblowers and numerous government-linked confidential sources. These sources report that the Executive Branch is clamping down on leaks to reporters re: Benghazi.

DOJ continues its stepped-up National Security Division cyber efforts, holding specialized training at DOJ headquarters for the National Security Cyber Specialists (NSCS) network and the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS).

President Obama issues top secret presidential directive on Oct. 16 ordering intelligence officials to draw up a list of overseas targets for cyberattacks. According to The Guardian, the directive also “contemplates the possible use of cyber actions inside the US.”

As CIA Director Petraeus’s interagency relationships become increasingly strained over his stance on Benghazi, unnamed FBI agents reach out to Republicans in Congress to tell about Petraeus’s affair. They eventually land at the office of Republican majority leader Eric Cantor. With the presidential elections about a week away, Cantor stays mum on the Petraeus rumors and instead contacts the FBI about them.

The FBI interviews Petraeus and Broadwell a second time.

November 6, 2012:

President Obama defeats Mitt Romney in Campaign 2012.

CIA Director Petraeus is scheduled to testify to Congress next week about the Benghazi attacks.

Officials claim this day is the first time Director of National Intelligence Clapper is notified about the Petraeus affair by an unspecified official at the Justice Department. Clapper calls Petraeus and urges him to resign.

November 7-9, 2012:

Attorney General Holder hosts a national training conference at DOJ headquarters for the expanded efforts of DOJ’s National Security Cyber Specialists (NSCS).

The Obama administration says somebody unspecified notifies someone at the White House about the Petraeus affair on Nov. 7. The President is reportedly looped in for the first time on Nov. 8 and accepts Petraeus’ resignation on Nov. 9. Petraeus’ planned appearance before Congress to testify on Benghazi is canceled.

November 13, 2012:

The F.B.I. initiates a body of cyber security case investigations that would later relate to Attkisson’s computer intrusions.

December 2012:

Two intelligence-connected sources separately suggest to Attkisson that she’s likely under government surveillance due to her reporting. One source tells her the government has pushed the envelope like never before and that public would be shocked to “learn the extent that the government is conducting surveillance of private citizens.”

As Attkisson arranges a forensic exam of her computer, evidence later shows the intruders then attempted to cover their tracks and to erase evidence of their intrusion. However, the erasures leave additional forensic evidence.

December 27, 2012:

Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.), who have classified knowledge as members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, publicly warn of the “back-door search loophole” or searches of incidental collection of innocent Americans.

As it is written, there is nothing to prohibit the intelligence community from searching through a pile of communications, which may have been incidentally or accidentally been collected without a warrant, to deliberately search for the phone calls or e-mails of specific Americans.—Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colorado.

Bronco star fired from auto dealer endorsement contract after taking a knee.

An auto dealer in Colorado Springs has fired Von Miller. Tom Kackley reports for KOAA,

Phil Long dealerships has asked KOAA-TV to stop airing their ads featuring Broncos linebacker Von Miller after he kneeled during the National Anthem before the Broncos vs. Bills game Sunday.

The dealership said Miller is fired from his endorsement deal and will no longer represent the company.

Read more here.

Just like that!

Hat tip Misanthropic Humanitarian

Big changes coming tomorrow after one more sunny day today.

Checking their pajamas for weapons

Andrew McCarthy writes at National Review,

...It was not enough to get a search warrant to ransack the Virginia home of Paul Manafort, even as the former Trump campaign chairman was cooperating with congressional investigators. Mueller’s bad-asses persuaded a judge to give them permission to pick the door lock. That way, they could break into the premises in the wee hours, while Manafort and his wife were in bed sleeping. They proceeded to secure the premises — of a man they are reportedly investigating for tax and financial crimes, not gang murders and Mafia hits — by drawing their guns on the stunned couple, apparently to check their pajamas for weapons.

Mueller’s probe more resembles an empire, with 17 prosecutors retained on the public dime. So . . . what exactly is the crime of the century that requires five times the number of lawyers the Justice Department customarily assigns to crimes of the century? No one can say. The growing firm is clearly scorching the earth, scrutinizing over a decade of Manafort’s shady business dealings, determined to pluck out some white-collar felony or another that they can use to squeeze him.

...The way it’s supposed to work, the Justice Department learns of a crime, so it assigns a prosecutor. To the contrary, this Justice Department assigned a prosecutor — make that: Seventeen hyper-aggressive prosecutors — and unleashed them to hunt for whatever crime they could find.

If you sense that this cuts against the presumption of innocence, you’re onto something. Because of that presumption, coupled with such other constitutional rights as the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable police searches, prosecutors are supposed to be measured in the use of their awesome powers, to employ only as much compulsion as seems appropriate under the circumstances. You don’t get a search warrant when a subpoena will do; if you have to get a warrant, you don’t do a covert pre-dawn entry when ringing the bell in the daytime will easily get you in the door.

Law enforcement is hard and sometimes dangerous work. Thus, there is leeway for officials to make errors in judgment. Without that leeway, they would be too paralyzed to do their jobs, and there would be no rule of law. But when prosecutors and investigators go way overboard just because they can, it is not law enforcement. It is abuse of law-enforcement power in order to intimidate.

There is no other way to interpret the brass-knuckles treatment of Manafort, a subject in a non-violent-crime investigation who is represented by counsel and was cooperating with Congress at the time Mueller’s Gang of 17 chose to break into his home. Did they really think they couldn’t have gotten the stuff they carted out of Manafort’s residence by calling up his well-regarded lawyers and asking for it? After he had already surrendered 300 pages of documents to investigative committees?

I’m betting he’s not in cuffs because the point of this over-the-top exercise was not to investigate Manafort; it was to demonstrate to Manafort’s very concentrated mind how miserable the prosecutors can make his life if he doesn’t wave the white flag, pronto, and give them whatever he’s got on Donald Trump — which, by the way, had better be something.

Why is this worth pointing out? Because someday, maybe, we’ll get around to asking: What would have happened if Hillary Clinton’s very real email scandal — with its mountainous evidence of felony mishandling of classified information and destruction of government records — had been investigated with the no-holds-barred vigor Mueller and his band of Hillary donors are applying to the surmise of Trump collusion in Russian espionage?

Read more here.

A face of hate

Fox News is now able to identify the murderer at a church in Tennessee today. His name is Emanuel Kidega Samson, immigrated from Sudan two decades ago, police said. He is now 25.

Kudos to this man!

Hat tip Bookworm Room

Being paid to be patriotic

Hat tip Bookworm Room

What might happen if North Korea tries to launch a hydrogen bomb

Dave Mosher reports at Business Insider that nearly all nations now ban nuclear testing.

...The problem with nuclear test explosions is that they create radioactive fallout. Space detonations come with their own risks, including a more widespread electromagnetic pulse.

Only a fraction of a nuclear weapon's core is turned into energy during an explosion; the rest is irradiated, melted, and turned into fine particles. This creates a small amount of fallout that can be lofted into the atmosphere and spread around.

But the risk of fallout vastly increases close to the ground or water.

There, a nuclear explosion can suck up dirt, debris, water, and other materials, creating many tons of radioactive fallout - and this material rises high into the atmosphere, where it drifts for hundreds of miles.

This kind of Cold War-era fallout killed scores of innocent people in the Pacific, including Japanese fishermen, and is still causing cancer and health problems around the world today.

Read more here.

“The left is sitting on the biggest crime committed by a sitting president."

Truth. Sometimes it is easy to see, but sometimes it is not. On those latter occasions, it takes someone willing to dig. I don't know anyone who does a better job of that than Clarice Feldman. I follow her on Facebook daily because I have come to realize the prodigious effort she makes at staying informed.

Clarice has written a piece at American Thinker today that underlines what I am saying about her here. It is entitled, "It was the Deep State that Colluded with the Russians, not Trump." She writes,

I agree with Daniel Greenfield. Based on what I’ve read and observed, while the initial surveillance was to stop Trump and help Clinton, Obama used FISA to provide a “national security” cover for politically spying on Trump right up to the inauguration. As he notes, the first 2016 application was made the month after Trump obtained the nomination and the second in October, the month before the election.

As the unmasking picked up pace after the election, the reasonable assumption is that its purpose was to undo the results of the election or hamstring the incoming President.

Now Obama and his allies are or should be terrified that the scope of the illegal surveillance is revealing their criminal acts.

This is why I believe Mueller is growing increasingly desperate to find one crime by one person he can force by threat of jail to provide any shred of anything that might be used to justify their illegal espionage. Greenfield’s conclusion is apt: “The left is sitting on the biggest crime committed by a sitting president. The only way to cover it up is to destroy his Republican successor. A turning point in history is here. If Obama goes down, the left will go down with him. If his coup succeeds, then America ends.”

Why do I say that Mueller seems increasingly desperate? How else does one explain a middle-of-the-night pick-lock armed entry (and the search of his bedclothes-garbed wife) into the home of a man who by all accounts had been fully cooperating and turning over all requested documents? How else to explain requesting a court grant such a necessary special warrant on the ground that otherwise documents evincing a purported eleven-year-old crime would suddenly be destroyed? How else to explain the effort by Mueller to find out client information from the Skadden Arps and Akin Gump law firms, materials probably covered by attorney-client privilege? With each leak of his conduct – designed, I suppose, by his team to terrify honest men into lying to redeem the special counsel’s misbegotten efforts -- Mueller looks more and more like a petrified enlistee in the secretive repressive state force -- the Stasi -- as the wall is coming down and their conduct made public.

Read more here.

Watters World

Jesse interviews a rising star on the conservative side, Candace Owens. She is very sharp. She says the worst thing you can do with a liberal friend is to try to present them with facts.

Jesse correctly points out that someone is not telling the truth about the wiretapping of Trump Tower. It is a huge issue that we cannot let evaporate.

Since Trump's inauguration, food stamp usage has declined by 1.3 million people!

In 2014 a Muslim man beheaded his co-worker. Obama played down the Islamic angle. The trial is bringing out the Islamic angle.

Cockroaches, Twinkies, and Hillary Clinton

As always, Greg has a brilliant opening monolog. "If ESPN commentators can talk politics, why can't a president talk sports?"

Bre Payton of the Federalist notes, "We're always privy to Trump's inner monolog all the time. Members of the media spend hours and hours and days and days parsing what he really meant. We know exactly what he meant. He said it!" She was referring to Trump's comment that he might be making a mistake endorsing Luther Strange, because Strange's opponent in Tuesday's primary, Judge Roy Moore, is very popular with many Alabamans.

Greg and Tyrus agreed that it feels like Trump is right there in our living rooms. I made that observation yesterday, but I said kitchen.

Kat said all the people who are pretending to be mad at Trump are being "performatively mad." "We all have things in our real lives that make us way madder!"

Rob from Ricochet points out that there are 23 million emaciated North Koreans right now, and the minute it hits the fan, they are not going to go south; they are going to go north into China. It is China's problem to solve.

Greg warns viewers that "if you change the channel, we'll send you a copy of Hillary Clinton's new book!"
"At the end of life on this planet, three things will remain: cockroaches, Twinkies, and Hillary Clinton!"

Evil in Tennessee

Fox News reports that the shooter at the Tennessee church was an African American. He shot himself after killing one woman and wounding several others. He also pistol-whipped an usher. The killer is expected to survive. There is no mention by Fox of the race of the victims.

ABC said police know the identity of the shooter, who is black and has no connection with the church. He unintentionally shot himself in the left pectoral. No mention by ABC or CNN of the race of the victims.

NBC reports,

The usher, who was a licensed gun owner, went to his vehicle and retrieved his own fire arm, returned to the church and "made sure that the gunman didn’t make any more movements until the police department arrived," he said. ...They also said that "all of the wounded except for one is over the age of 60."

The New York Times reports,

A man who lives near the church said people had come to his home looking for help, so he headed over. He told the television station WKRN that by the time he arrived, the gunman had shot a woman in the back in the parking lot and “then he turned around, and rolled her over and shot her in the face.”

“Then he went through the church, and he knocked one older man off a walker on the floor,” he added.

The Tennesseean reports,

The church's minister Joey Spann and his wife, Peggy, were both injured in the shooting, said Nashville Christian School in a statement on Facebook. Spann is a Bible teacher and a high school and middle school basketball coach.

Shootings at a Tennessee church today

Lucianne reports,

Multiple people were reportedly shot at a Tennessee Church on Sunday, Nashville police confirmed to Fox News. The shooting happened at Burnette Chapel Church in Antioch, FOX Nashville reported. The church is located outside of Nashville. It’s unclear how many people were shot at this time.

I checked Instapundit since Glenn Reynolds lives in Knoxville, but found no mention of the shootings.

Milo in Berkeley today. So is AntiFa!

In a little less than one hour from now Milo Yiannopolous is scheduled to speak at a rally in a Berkeley park. The conservative student organization that was sponsoring Free Speech week has backed out. AntiFa is planning to stop the speech.

Standing for God Save the Queen, but refusing to stand for the national anthem?

Remember when Tim Tebow was criticized for kneeling to honor God when he played in the NFL for the Denver Broncos? Now those same people think it is cool for players to take a knee instead of standing for our national anthem!

There is mounting opposition to the NFL even though football has long been America's most beloved sport. Many people on Facebook today are expressing disgust with the NFL players who today stood for "God Save the Queen" in England while refusing to stand for our national anthem.

Where will Trump take his movement; or will the movement take itself?

I am interested in the Alabama Republican primary Tuesday. Trump is supporting Luther Strange, the man appointed to replace Jeff Sessions when Trump picked Sessions to be Attorney General. Do you know about Judge Roy Moore? He was twice removed from the State Supreme Court. Jenna Johnson reports in the Washington Post,

Moore outperformed Strange in the first round of the Republican primary last month and has been leading in several polls ahead of Tuesday’s contest. He is best known for having been twice removed from the Alabama Supreme Court — first in 2003, when he refused to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the court building, and again in 2016 when he ordered the state’s probate judges to defy the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing same-sex marriage.

Trump Cabinet member Ben Carson, Sarah Palin, Steve Bannon, and Sebastian Gorka are among the supporters of Judge Roy Moore. Although Trump spoke at a rally Friday night for Strange,

who has attracted the heavy financial support of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s political action committee,

many of the Trump supporters at the rally were supporting Moore, according to Johnson.

Tuesday’s runoff primary election between Strange and Moore presents an early test of the president and the extent of his influence over the political movement that he sparked. In coming elections, it remains to be seen where Trump takes that movement — or where the movement takes itself. Numerous Trump supporters here said that a Moore win should not be viewed as a Trump loss.

Read more here.

Bannon supporting Judge Roy Moore

Did you catch that off-the-cuff line in President Trump's speech when he said something like, "I already got rid of some of them?" I wonder if he was referring to Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka! Breitbart has a story tonight about Steve Bannon going to a rally Monday night in Alabama in support of Judge Roy Moore, the man who is running against Luther Strange, the man Trump is supporting.

Alzheimer's research

David Nield reports at sciencealert.com,

Researchers have identified a new link between Alzheimer's and a protein called tau that could help treat the disease in the future.

..."Once tau accumulates, the brain degenerates," says senior researcher David Holtzman, from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

"What we found was that when ApoE is there, it amplifies the toxic function of tau, which means that if we can reduce ApoE levels we may be able to stop the disease process."

ApoE (or Apolipoprotein E) helps to move cholesterol around the body. In rare cases, people can be born without the ApoE gene, leading to very high cholesterol levels and associated health problems.

To take a closer look at how ApoE could be linked to Alzheimer's and other brain diseases, researchers studied mice given variants of the ApoE gene: ApoE2, ApoE3, and ApoE4. Some mice lacked the gene altogether.

In the absence of the ApoE proteins produced by these genes, especially the ApoE4 variant, tangled clumps of the tau protein were much less harmful to brain cells, so reducing the influence of ApoE could be a promising avenue for future research into treatments.

Read more here.

Antibody capable of attacking 99 percent of HIV strains.

Brad Jones reports at sciencealert.com,

A new study has produced an antibody that's able to kill off 99 percent of HIV strains.

Read more here.