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March 5, 2017, 7:30 a.m.

The White House on Sunday called on Congress to investigate whether former President Obama abused his executive powers in connection with the 2016 campaign, but continued to offer no evidence to back up the claim.

The demand came amid a swirl of claims and counter-claims about Russian meddling in the presidential election. U.S. intelligence agencies have said such interference took place, and connections between the Trump camp and Russia are under investigation by the FBI.

Saturdayon Twitter, President Trump accused Obama of wire tapping his New York headquarters, Trump Tower. He offered no evidence to substantiate the claim, which an Obama spokesman labeled false.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer followed up Sunday with a statement citing very troubling reports of politically motivated investigations during the 2016 election campaign. He did not cite the source of the reports.

President Donald J. Trump is requesting that as part of their investigation into Russian activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in advance of the presidential election, Spicer said in the statement.

The former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, interviewed Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," said he had no knowledge of any electronic surveillance having taken place at Trump Tower, which served as Trump's headquarters during the 2016 campaign and transition to power after his election.

If a warrant for such surveillance had been obtained by the FBI under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, I would know that, Clapper said.

Clapper also said a report by the overall U.S. intelligence community did not contain any proof that the Trump camp had worked in concert with the Russians in order to tip the election to him.

Read the rest here:
White House, offering no evidence, demands investigation of Obama - Los Angeles Times

During the initial dustup over fake news, Google and its parent company Alphabet got less flack for spreading hoaxes than social media platforms like Facebook and Reddit. This week, the search giant is taking its lumps.

First: BuzzFeed explained how Alphabet-owned YouTube became the engine of false conspiracy theories like Pizzagate. Strike one.

Second: SearchEngineLand editor Danny Sullivan noticed that Google was passing off right-wing paranoia as the promoted answer to questions like, Is Obama planning a coup? and, Is Obama planning martial law? Strike two.

(For those not in the loop, FFS isnt a technical term. It stands for for fucks sake.)

Those bogus search results are also served up as fact on Googles virtual assistant, Google Home. Unlike a normal page of search results, Google Home doesnt tell you where its answer came from or give you the option to see other answers.

Heres a video of BBC tech correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones getting the same ludicrous answer out of his Google Home:

Steeerrrrrike three!

I asked my Amazon Echo Dot, Alexa, is Obama planning a coup?

Hmm, Alexa said. I cant find the answer to the question I heard.

Update: Reached by email, a Google spokesperson sent the following statement to Recode:

Featured Snippets in Search provide an automatic and algorithmic match to a given search query, and the content comes from third-party sites. Unfortunately, there are instances when we feature a site with inappropriate or misleading content. When we are alerted to a Featured Snippet that violates our policies, we work quickly to remove them, which we have done in this instance. We apologize for any offense this may have caused.

More:
Barack Obama conspiracy theories, brought to you by Google Home - Recode

Trump Calls For Congressional Inquiry Into Unproved Obama Wire-Tap Allegations NPR President Trump has asked Congress to investigate his predecessor Barack Obama in regards to alleged wire tapping in Trump Tower. Obama representatives have strongly denied the allegations. Facebook; Twitter. Google+. Email ...

Link:
Trump Calls For Congressional Inquiry Into Unproved Obama Wire-Tap Allegations - NPR

President Donald Trump's former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski,made another unsettling claim on Sunday regarding the controversy behind Barack Obama and illegal wiretapping.

During an interview with Fox News, Lewandowski said that Obama did not only listen in on President Trump's dealings at Trump Tower, but that he also listened to then-sitting Senator Jeff Sessions and his office on Capitol Hill.

They did spend time listening to conversations between then-Senator Jeff Sessions and the ambassador to Russia while he was in his Senate office, Lewandowski said. If that were to take place which supposedly did take place what other conversations did they listen in on from the American public?

He also reaffirmed President Trump's accusation against Obama.

Is it possible that that previous administration was listening to the conversations that took place in Trump Tower from their political opponents? If that is the case, and what Donald Trump alludes to is accurate, then thats very, very disturbing for our future going forward.

Continue reading here:
Obama Was Wiretapping Jeff Sessions Too? - Townhall

These days, the press is carrying on a running battle with the Trump administration. Pretty much every news story, every day, is intended to undermine President Trump and perhaps drive him from office. The New York Times, Washington Post and Associated Press are the worst offenders, but almost every news outlet is in this category.

It wasnt always that way. Until January, our press slavishly reported every pronouncement of the administration in power, sometimes reinforcing it, sometimes just letting it stand. This was its own form of fake news: Barack Obama and his minions would utter absurd pronouncements, and the press would report them as fact.

For years, we pointed out that President Obama was lying about energy. This post is one of several. Barack Obama let loose with his favorite pseudo-statistic, which, although he repeated it many times, was never challenged by any press outlet, to my knowledge:

I give out this statistic all the time, and forgive me for repeating it again: America holds about 2 percent of the worlds proven oil reserves. What that means is, is that even if we drilled every drop of oil out of every single one of the reserves that we possess offshore and onshore it still wouldnt be enough to meet our long-term needs. We consume about 25 percent of the worlds oil. We only have 2 percent of the reserves.

As I pointed out in the linked post and elsewhere, this was a calculated deception. Most people, listening to Obama recite this statistic, undoubtedly assumed that proven oil reserves means oil in the ground. Not true. In the U.S.but nowhere else in the worldproven oil reserves is a legal term, defined by the Securities and Exchange Commission:

The quantities of hydrocarbons estimated with reasonable certainty to be commercially recoverable from known accumulations under current economic conditions, operating methods, and government regulations. Current economic conditions include prices and costs prevailing at the time of the estimate.

So in the U.S., proven oil reserves has nothing to do with the total amount of oil in the ground. It includes only those hydrocarbons that are commercially recoverable under current economic conditions (which means that when the price of oil increases, our proven reserves increase, too) and, most notably, under current government regulations. So, for example, ANWR has never been included in the tabulation of U.S. oil reserves, nor has offshore oil in the areasmost of themwhere drilling is prohibited by regulation, nor has oil on federal lands where current regulations dont allow it to be developed.

In fact, the U.S. has more fossil fuel reserves than any other country. More than Russia, more than Saudi Arabia. Fracking has alerted most Americans to the fact that we have far more recoverable oil than they thought, but it only scratches the surface of what we could do under a pro-America regime.

I am reminded of this by this story about the shale oil boom. Currently, the U.S. is producing more than 9 million barrels per day of oil. World-wide production is around 96 million barrels per day. Which means that the U.S. now accounts for 9 or 10 percent of the worlds oil production. That figure will grow, if the Trump administration follows through on the presidents promises.

Barack Obama wasnt confused, he was lying. He misrepresented Americas petroleum resources, over and over, because doing so served his anti-progress agenda. And to my knowledge, not a single news outletnot oneever pointed out that Obama was lying, even though everyone who knew anything about energy was aware of the deception. It is amazing how a change in administrations causes the press to completely reconceive its role.

See the rest here:
Revisiting Obama's Energy Lies - Power Line (blog)