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In the midst of the raging controversies over secret surveillance and new healthcare plans, there were some curious and unsettling sightings in the coverage. Individuals once thought to have passed from political existence reappeared to hold forth on the very subjects of their demise.

In ancient times such figures were called druagr or, in Old Norse, revenant. The two most recent revenants were James Clapper and Jonathan Gruber. They are ample proof that no one really dies in Washington; their scandals just fade away.

Clapper on Surveillance Programs

James Clapper is being widely quoted as proof that President Donald TrumpDonald TrumpWash. judge upholds fines for faithless electors Is Trump throwing Ukraine to the Kremlin sharks? Republican state strength will withstand Democrat lawsuits MORE was lying in saying that there was surveillance of Trump Tower carried out by President Barack ObamaBarack ObamaPence dodges on whether he believes Obama wiretapped Trump Tower Graham says he would subpoena for evidence on Trump wiretap claim Republican state strength will withstand Democrat lawsuits MORE. Clapper went public to say categorically that no such surveillance operations occurred. That ended the issue for many in the media. After all, as the former Director of National Intelligence, Clapper would know right?

Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!

When then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper appeared before the Senate, he was asked directly, Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans? Clapper responded, No, sir. Not wittingly.

Note this was not a situation like the controversy over Attorney General Jeff SessionsJeff SessionsArmstrong Williams op-ed: America will have to deal with Putin's Russia long after Trump leaves office Huntsman accepts ambassadorship to Russia: report Put Trump under oath MORE who went beyond a question asked him about how he would respond to any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. Sessions voluntarily stated that he had no interaction with Russians in responding but failed to mention two brief meetings with the Russian ambassador.

Sessions insisted that he was thinking of campaign discussions not any meeting with any Russian at any time. In comparison, Clapper denied a direct question about the existence of a program that he was fully aware of and the question itself was all too clear.

"3 reasons to take Trump's wiretapping claims at his word ... for now" https://t.co/L7wIXXQRNB pic.twitter.com/na7j5zTs7B

Clapper later admitted that he did not want to answer the question and said that his testimony was the least untruthful statement he could make. Yet, of course, that would still make it an untrue statement which most people call a lie and lawyers call perjury.

What was particularly disturbing was the portrayal of Clapper and the Obama administration generally as denying that the administration would ever surveil political opponents in such a matter. This is the same administration that hid the massive secret surveillance program and put journalists under surveillance. Clapper himself played the most controversial role in misleading Congress on the existence of the program.

Unless media is looking for the least untruthful answer, Clapper would hardly seem a compelling witness on the existence of surveillance operations. This is not to say that the media was wrong in asking Clapper about the alleged surveillance given his earlier position. However, he has emerged apparently shed of his highly controversial history.

Gruber on Healthcare

With the move to repeal and replace ObamaCare, various media outlets turned to MIT professor Jonathan Gruber who is widely referred to as an architect of Obamacare. Gruber promptly denounced the replacement of the law and warned that it could result in 30 million people losing health insurance coverage. He previously juxtaposed "a strong and coherent health care agenda" of President Obama as opposed to Trump's "garbage salad of right-wing talking points.

Grubers resurrection as an architect of ObamaCare is impressive even by Washington metrics. It was not long ago that no one in the Obama administration appeared to know Grubers name. While a key person in the drafting of ObamaCare (who received $400,000 to work on Obamacare andmade over $2 million from the Department of Health and Human Services), Gruber became persona non grata after he spoke frankly about what was something of a bait-and-switch used to pass Obamacare.

Gruber told an audience at the University of Rhode Island in 2012 that they were able to pass Obamacare because of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter.

In another view from at an October 2013 event at Washington University in St. Louis, Gruber said that passed, because the American people are too stupid to understand the difference. Likewise, in 2009, Gruber denied that they were really trying to reduce costs as opposed to increase coverage saying that Obamacare might not produce lower cost health care for many citizens. This statement was made five months before the passage of the Act but not publicly known until long after passage.

Following these and other remarks, Democratic leaders suddenly began saying Gruber who? Democratic minority leader Nancy Pelosi expressed a complete lack of knowledge of who Gruber is, was, or will be. The Obama administration denied that he was really all that important after all.

So, with the move to repeal and replace, who surfaces to evaluate the proposals? The man who said that he and others secured passage of ObamaCare in part on the basis of the stupidity of the American citizen. Suddenly he is an architect again and a reliable source.

"GOP's health plan isn't perfect, but tackles ObamaCare's biggest flaws" https://t.co/fMLudX0gUa pic.twitter.com/V03KvGUOkx

What is fascinating is that there are ample reasons to question both the surveillance allegations and the proposals for a new healthcare system. Yet, there is no interest in the rather checkered history of either of these key players from the prior administration.

There are, of course, Republican revenants who seemed to rise Phoenix-like from their political ashes like Gov. Chris Christie or Gov. Rick Perry. Yet, the use of revenants like Clapper and Gruber reflects the limited attention span of modern media coverage.

It is too much to expect that the credibility of a former official would be relevant for a revenant, particularly when they fit a narrative of a story. It is Washingtons version of soap opera characters: major figures can suddenly return to life with a simple change in storyline like being found on a desert island or defrosted in some cryogenic lab.

The Obama administration itself had controversies of the veracity of statements on surveillance and health care. That does not make the statements of Trump or his administration any more true. As the New York Times new ad campaign states, Truth is hard to find. But it is all the more difficult when you are looking in all the wrong places.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University.

The views of contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.

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Discredited Obama-era insiders back from the dead to slam Trump - The Hill (blog)

Think what you will of former President Barack Obama, he was a great investor-in-chief.

On March 3, 2009, days before the start of the amazing bull market rally that turns eight this week, he told us that stocks had gotten so cheap they looked like a good deal.

Eight years on, the S&P 500 Index SPX, -0.23% is up 249%. Its posted a compound annual growth rate that would make Warren Buffett smile: 13%.

Now that the market has risen so much, apparently on expectations of business-friendly reforms from President Donald Trump, Id love to know what Obama thinks about whether to buy or sell, given his record.

Alas, we dont know his market view. The truth is, whatever he thinks might be tainted by partisanship. Theres a lot of that going around now. As an investor, you should try to avoid this pitfall, especially if you are on the left. Buffett, who backed Hillary Clinton, recently quipped that for half of his adult life this country had a president he didnt vote for, but that never kept him out of stocks.

But it feels like its time to sell. After all, Trump appears unpredictable, to put it mildly. And at least two signals are telling us to be cautious about this rally.

1. Insiders are bleak

We may no longer have Obama to help us with market guidance, but we can turn to other higher-ups: corporate insiders. The news is bleak for bulls. Insiders are selling this rally hard so hard theyre driving insider sentiment into extremely bearish territory.

Read: In stocks, nearly every type of active manager got worse at their job in 2016

The selling has pummeled an eight-week sell-buy ratio tracked by Vickers Weekly Insider, which analyzes insider activity. It is up to 6.3 from around 3 at the start of November. Insiders have continually stepped up selling, relative to buying, in the post-election rally. The current sentiment reading is solidly bearish, says David Coleman, of Vickers Weekly Insider.

2. Investors may be too bullish

I like to watch investor sentiment for contrarian signals. After all, the best time to buy is when investors are frightened. And a good time to sell is when investors are exuberant. This means there are fewer people left to come in to buy your shares and drive them higher. Besides, in the market, the crowd is often wrong.

Here too, though, we see bad news for bulls. Various sentiment measures I track show lots of optimism.

The Investors Intelligence bull-bear ratio, a measure of stock-newsletter-writer sentiment, rose to 3.82 last week. Generally, anything above 4 is a big red flag. The National Association of Active Investment Managers survey shows an allocation to stocks of 102%, the second-highest level on record. Put buying, a signal of bearishness, is low relative to call buying, which signals optimism.

Still too early to dump the Trump bump

Even though insiders are negative and investors are extremely optimistic often a bad combination for bulls its still too early to sell the Trump bump in the market. Heres why.

First, the insiders. Like many investment analysts, Coleman at Vickers Weekly Insider cautions investors against making decisions on the basis of insider sentiment alone. Insiders can be early. Markets can rally for a while even though they are negative.

Next, while sentiment seems very high, its not high across the board. There are several exceptions that suggest we arent at extremes, maintains Bruce Bittles, the chief investment strategist at Baird. I dont think theres enough optimism to overwhelm the trend in the market, which is decidedly bullish. You need more optimism than this to stop a market that has broken out of a trading range. Thats because, for him, the optimism is not deep-seated.

Also see: Bull markets eight-year anniversary reminds us that the Dow rewards the bold

Retail investors, for example, are still relatively cautious, he points out. The number of bulls in the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) survey recently stood at 37.9%, which is below average.

The yield on 10-year Treasury bonds is still around where it was in the fourth quarter of 2016, suggesting bond vigilantes are cautious on economic growth.

And the financial media remain cautious. Journalists are worth watching for a sentiment read, because they are often very good contrarian indicators. Theyre not necessarily dumb. Theyre just good at knowing what people want to read about. That makes them a good reflection of investor mood.

And, tellingly, the mood in the press remains skeptical of this rally. Nobody wants to talk about the market going higher, says Bittles. Every reporter I talk with is trying to get me to say the market is going to go down because of the uncertainty. But the uncertainty is what drives a market higher.

Here, Bittles is referring to the adage: The markets like to climb a wall of worry. Thats another way of saying you need cautious investors on the sidelines to come in and drive your stocks higher. The cautious media mood is telling us thats still the case.

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Opinion: Will Trump top Obama as investor-in-chief? - MarketWatch

Michelle Obama has led a relatively quiet post-White House life. After taking a break from social media Jan. 20, the former first lady has tweeted only a half-dozen times, including that humble brag about her beach vacation. But in the past week, Mrs. O has gotten her mojo back, starting with a little shade thrown at the Trump White House tucked into an Instagram.

For International Womens Day, Obama visitedD.C.s Francis L. Cardozo Education Campus,specifically the high schools International Academy, which caters to newly arrived immigrant students.

I loved visiting this school because it tells the American story in so many ways, wrote Obama on Instagram.

By embracing young immigrants and their diverse cultures and contributions, Cardozo is a model for our entire country, Obama continued. The girls I met with today are ready to take on the world. Weve just got to make sure that the world is ready for them.

Obama has stayed out of politics since exiting the executive mansion in January. But theres no mistaking her very public emphasis of immigrant students as a political stance one that could be seen as at odds with the Trump administrations immigration policies. She has nearly 20 million followers across all social media platforms and has always used new media as a means to get her messaging across.

By contrast, although first lady Melania Trump has remained mum on social media about International Womens Day, she did host a luncheon at the White House in honor of the day. The first ladyarrived to a standing ovation and delivered remarks, but those were not readily available to the press pool. Her stepdaughter Ivanka was also at the White House lunch and tweeted earlier Wednesday, Today, we celebrate women and are reminded of our collective voice and the powerful impact we have on our societies and economies.

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Michelle Obama celebrates 'young immigrants' on International Women's Day. Shade or no? - Washington Post

Former President Obama must answer questions about U.S. government surveillance of Trump Tower during the presidential campaign, Sean Hannity said in his opening monologue tonight.

Hannity pointed to anexplosive new report from Circa News, which found that the FBI briefly investigated a computer server tied to President Trump's business, that was allegedly communicating with a Russian bank.

The agency, however, has not gathered evidence of election tampering to date that would warrant criminal charges against any of the presidents associates.

Hannity said that during the campaign, a plurality of staffers would have had customary technological ties to the Trump Organization.

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Hannity said it's time for Obama and intelligence officials who oversaw this operation to "come clean."

"What do they know? What information was gathered?" Hannity said. "They need to assure you, the American people, that this was not not spying on a political opposition party just weeks before an election."

He added that just days before leaving office, Obama expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share intercepted personal communications with 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.

"We've been asking: Why did President Obama wait until the last minute, two weeks before he leaves, to issue that order?" Hannity said. "It's an order that he did not apply to himself for eight years. And since this order was signed, we've seen an explosion of leaks coming from intelligence agencies."

He said all of this raises "very serious" national security, ethical and privacy issues.

"Until we get answers, we're going to keep asking these questions," Hannity said.

Sara Carter, of Circa News, later said that there were reportedly a total of two simultaneous investigations, and that only one was subject to a FISA warrant.

Watch more above.

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Hannity: Obama Must Answer 'Very Serious Questions' About Wiretaps, Leaks - Fox News Insider

Samantha Bee finally got to weigh in on President Donald Trumps address to the Joint Session of Congress and TV news reaction MSNBC got scorched in the process.

Last week, Americas one-man white supremacist employment program managed to talk about his dystopian agenda using an indoor voice, without mentioning his electoral college win or deporting anyone from Congress, Bee said at the top of TBSs Wednesday night Full Frontal.

For this astonishing feat, the pundits rained golden compliments down on him in the warmest shower hes ever had outside of Moscow. The segment then cut to clips of TV news talking heads foaming over at Trumps performance.

Look, I know its extraordinary that he learned to read something, finally. I didnt think he could do it either! But you dont have to gush like hes a toddler who just made a boom boom on the big-boy potty, she scolded.

According to Bee, only one person in all of TV-news punditry wasnt buying it that night.

Cut to a clip of a black woman in the audience at a CBS News post-speech town hall, complaining: Thats not the Donald Trump that Ive seen for the past 30 days. Where is that guy that says what he wants to say, that is loud? Im gonna look for him on Twitter tomorrow, and see what he really thinks. Great job to the speech writer, but I will see Donald Trump at 12 AM!

Shhh! Dont tell the truth! It sounds biased! Bee cautioned. Then, she added, You know, maybe cable news should hire more black women. Except not you, MSNBC! No, you just sweep her out of the way to make room for whichever Roger Ailes harassment survivor pops out of your underground railroad next week.

Trump did not long get to enjoy his victory over his own tongue, Bee regretted.

Enraged by more leaks, this time having to do with Russia and his new Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Trump became steaming, raging mad. And, as a nervous nation started to wonder if Tiffany was the only one of Trumps acquaintances not talking to the Kremlin, the president did what any strong leader would: hightailed it to Florida faster than a Jewish grandmother in November, Bee continued.

From there, POTUS tweeted on Saturday that former President Barack Obama had wiretapped his office at Trump Tower just before his electoral college win.

Oh, thats new: white guy shoots himself in the dick, tries to pin it on a black guy. When has that ever happened? Bee snarked, rhetorically.

Continued here:
Samantha Bee Explains Donald Trump's Obama Wiretap Tweet: White Guy Shoots Self In D*ck, Tries To Pin It On ... - Deadline