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“Travesty” is not a nice word. It usually is applied to gross perversions of justice, and that apparently is the context Attorney General William Barr desired when he dropped it into an interview answer the other day in the breezy courtyard of the Department of Justice (DOJ). His composed, understated delivery almost disguised the weighty magnitude of that disturbing word and the loaded adjective that preceded it. “I think what happened to him,” he said, referring to the president and the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into his campaign, “was one of the greatest travesties in American history.” Okay, it’s important to...

The Trump administration is set to pare desk jobs at the top of the intelligence community, invoking the argument that its staffs are too large and duplicative, knowledgeable sources say. One of the first targets is the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), where Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany and a favorite of President Trump, arrived as acting director in February. Mr. Grenell has brought in Kash Patel, once a close aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican. Mr. Patel principally wrote the 2018 Nunes memo that exposed the FBI’s reliance on the discredited Christopher Steele...

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is breaking with President Trump's decision to fire Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for the intelligence community, saying his removal was "not warranted." "While I recognize that the President has the authority to appoint and remove Inspectors General, I believe Inspector General Atkinson served the intelligence community and the American people well, and his removal was not warranted," she said in a statement over the weekend. Collins noted that by giving the heads of the House and Senate Intelligence committees a 30-day notification that he was removing Atkinson, Trump...

This is like finding out that U.S. intelligence has formally concluded that China is maintaining concentration camps for Uighurs.We all already know. But it’s gratifying to see them call a lie a lie. Next they’re going to tell us that Russia and Iran are hiding the scope of the outbreak within their own borders.It seemed beyond belief that a country with 80,000+ official cases of a highly infectious novel virus somehow brought the number down to zero new cases in the span of about 10 weeks. Even the most draconian lockdown can achieve only so much. Confirmed: It’s beyond...

Google is using AI to design chips that will accelerate AI A new reinforcement-learning algorithm has learned to optimize the placement of components on a computer chip to make it more efficient and less power-hungry. 3D Tetris: Chip placement, also known as chip floor planning, is a complex three-dimensional design problem. It requires the careful configuration of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of components across multiple layers in a constrained area. Traditionally, engineers will manually design configurations that minimize the amount of wire used between components as a proxy for efficiency. They then use electronic design automation software to simulate and verify...

Google is creating AI-powered robots that navigate without human intervention—a prerequisite to being useful in the real world. ====================================================================== Within 10 minutes of its birth, a baby fawn is able to stand. Within seven hours, it is able to walk. Between those two milestones, it engages in a highly adorable, highly frenetic flailing of limbs to figure it all out. That’s the idea behind AI-powered robotics. While autonomous robots, like self-driving cars, are already a familiar concept, autonomously learning robots are still just an aspiration. Existing reinforcement-learning algorithms that allow robots to learn movements through trial and error still rely...

President Donald Trump (I still never tire of typing those three glorious words) loves to make history. He’s really good at it – better than anyone, in fact. Last night, the President decided to make another piece of history that all of his predecessors in office, from the most conservative Republican to the most leftist Democrat, have taken a pass on doing: Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump I am pleased to announce that our highly respected Ambassador to Germany, @RichardGrenell, will become the Acting Director of National Intelligence. Rick has represented our Country exceedingly well and I look forward to...

Washington - A counter-terrorism analyst at the US Defense Intelligence Agency pleaded guilty on Thursday to leaking secret information to journalists, including details about foreign countries' weapons systems. Henry Kyle Frese, 31, who was arrested in October, faces a maximum of 10 years in prison when he is sentenced in June, the Department of Justice said in a statement. It detailed how Frese had leaked information to two unnamed journalists, one of whom he lived with, in 2018 and 2019. The journalists involved appeared to work for CNBC and NBC News, according to US media. CNBC, citing "sources with direct...

The aftermath of the Soleimani strike is filled with unhappy subplots but a rare enjoyable one will be watching Fox’s 8 p.m. guy tussle with, well, pretty much everyone else on the network over whether aggression towards Iran is a good or bad thing.Tucker is clear and consistent. He doesn’t trust America’s hawkish national security establishment, be it in the context of Saddam’s WMDs, the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia, or the supposedly “imminent” threat posed by Qassem Soleimani. Especially the latter, as he’s been an outspoken critic of belligerence towards Iran throughout Trump’s presidency. He was the...

Togo - Official Trailer | Disney+ | Streaming Dec. 20 An Original Movie starring Willem Dafoe and Julianne Nicholson, “Togo” is the untold true story set in the winter of 1925 that treks across the treacherous terrain of the Alaskan tundra for an exhilarating and uplifting adventure that will test the strength, courage and determination of one man, Leonhard Seppala, and his lead sled dog, Togo. The poignant and emotional adventure debuts on Disney+ on Dec. 20, 2019.

The University of California is being sued for requiring incoming students to take the SAT and ACT. The lawsuit claims that the tests have a well-known "discriminatory effect" and "exacerbate the inequities" for underrepresented students. The lawsuit says the University of California (UC) is legally obligated to provide equal access to all students. The SAT and ACT, the lawsuit says, "reflect demographic and socioeconomic characteristics like family income, parental education and race" instead of measuring "academic ability or mastery of curriculum." The College Board, the organization behind the SAT, released a 2019 assessment of the SAT/PSAT in California that found...

Important Ed News /// Phonics is winning, finally, at long last, after 85 stupid years, after 50 million functional illiterates, after one of the most stubborn subversive schemes against common sense ever to brutalize a country. Finally, the one correct way to teach reading is again embraced as the one correct way to teach reading. Go ahead, shout "OMG." The fix has been in for so many dumbed down decades that many people may have given up hope. You may think this is now crazy optimism on my part. But I will show you some signs that things have suddenly...

Members of the House Intelligence Committee will begin reviewing a report Monday on the panel's investigation of President Donald Trump's efforts to press Ukraine to investigate his Democratic adversaries, a crucial step in the House's fast-moving impeachment inquiry. Lawmakers on the panel will get a 24-hour review period, according to internal guidance sent to committee members and obtained by POLITICO. On Tuesday, the panel is expected to approve the findings - likely on a party-line vote - teeing it up for consideration by the Judiciary Committee, which is in turn expected to draft and consider articles of impeachment in the...

Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell (CA), who was the first presidential candidate to drop out of the race after receiving virtually no support from voters, appeared to have an embarrassing moment during an interview on Monday as it appeared as though he farted on live television. Swalwell has since responded to incident, after it went viral on social media, and denied that it was him.

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Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the latest star of the Democrat effort to undo the 2016 election, is still at work on the National Security Council. While Trump supporters on the NSC like Rich Higgins and Ezra Cohen-Watnick were forced out, Vindman won't be. NSC staffers who criticized Obama holdovers or sought to expose their misbehavior are gone, but Vindman is still there while undermining Trump. And that’s the SNAFU of things on the NSC. The National Security Council has been ground zero in the campaign against President Trump from the beginning. General Flynn’s appointment as National Security Advisor had touched...

The study, which was published on Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, used a special type of MRI called diffusion tensor imaging to scan white matter in the 47 participants’ brains, and made several alarming finds — particularly relating to the development of language, literacy and cognitive skills. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that kids have limited screen use due to the possible cognitive behavioral risks, including language delay, poor sleep and impaired executive function, according to the study. The study was conducted from August 2017 to November 2018 on participants recruited at a U.S. children’s hospital, and took...

On Sunday’s broadcast of CNN’s “State of the Union,” former National Intelligence Director James Clapper commented on the reported death Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS. Clapper warned the death could “galvanize” ISIS. Clapper said, “What is going to be interesting is to the extent to which this negatively affects ISIS or does it galvanize ISIS, the remnants of ISIS, which still survives as an ideology and has franchises in other places besides Syria.” He added, “ISIS is more than just Baghdadi, as important as he was. 14,000 to 18,000 fighters yet remaining and the franchise are branches in...

Smith continued, “He was going to get the entire senior intelligence service to hand in their resignations. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean he was going to fire everyone. What it means, though, is he wanted everyone to prove what they were doing, that they were doing their jobs, they were doing good for the country, they weren’t wasting money, they weren’t wasting time, and they weren’t running operations like the one they ran against General Flynn.” “The intelligence community, at that point — what has correctly and colorfully became known as the deep state — they rose nearly as one...

Government watchdog group Judicial Watch last week filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the State Department. The group believes prominent conservative journalists, public figures and those with ties to President Donald Trump were being monitored by the State Department in Ukraine under the direction of ousted U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who was appointed to her post by President Barack Obama. "Judicial Watch has obtained information indicating Yovanovitch may have violated laws and government regulations by ordering subordinates to target certain U.S. persons using State Department resources," the watchdog group said in a press release. "Yovanovitch reportedly ordered...