LEADERSHIP: Mattis Shows Up Unannounced, Gives Middle East Policy Office A Pop Quiz.

Related: Apparently, Mattis Is Making Lots Of Friends…In The Pentagon Laundry Room. “Defense Secretary Jim Mattis seems to have settled into his new gig at the Pentagon, and he’s already making lots of friends … while doing his own laundry in the basement.”

CASS SUNSTEIN: Trump’s Safe and Sane ‘Regulatory Reform’ Idea is Actually Reasonable and Good. “Trump’s emphasis on cost-benefit analysis is both welcome and hugely important.”

WAIT, WHAT? Tony Blair has attended a secret meeting at the White House amid claims he is in discussions to become an advisor to Donald Trump. Color me skeptical. Also, why?

FROM A FORMER STUDENT OF MINE:The Garia Cycle: A Kingdom of Glass.

ASTROTURFING IS ALL THE ROOTS THEY HAVE: Anti-Trump #FakeTownhall goal is to make GOP look ‘cowardly’.

THE REAL LIFE CONSEQUENCES OF SCHOOL CHOICE: Denisha Merriweather’s Witness.

YEAH, BUT IT’S “DIFFERENT” WHEN THEY DO IT:Democrats’ attack on Sessions is a McCarthyist witch hunt.

I’M LETTING THIS SIT TILL WE FIGURE IT OUT: But one of these people has a reputation for lying every time his lips move, while the other, if anything, tends to say too much.  Sure, Trump can be misinformed or mistaken.  On the other hand I used to believe whatever Obama said the opposite was true, and I’ve seen no reason to change that. Trump Claims Obama Wiretapped Him During Campaign; Obama Refutes It .

IT’S TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN: The New DNC Chair Had a Hillary Clinton-Esque Email Scandal.

EMBRACE THE POWER OF AND:Stupid/Fake News of the Day: DO IT FOR THE CHILDREN!!!

DOES IT ALSO RECORD AFFIRMATIVE CONSENT? This ‘smart condom’ measures performance, warns about STIs.

OOPS: So THAT’s why he loves civil asset forfeiture so much!

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: It’s Not the ‘Deep State,’ It’s ‘Revenge of the Losers.’

I don’t think there is any question that the former president was intent on leaving behind landmines. And you are right, the NSA stuff is curious. Normally, when NSA is listening in on a foreigner, they take great care to redact any American involved. The NSA is not supposed to spy on Americans. Here it was the reverse, and there was an obvious attempt as was reported in the New York Times to make sure that this was spread as widely as possible, that it would become a problem for the Trump administration. I wouldn’t call it the “deep state,” it gives it a le Carré feel that there is this ominous enemy of the United States hidden in bureaucracy. What this is, is the revenge of the losers. These are people who wanted to make trouble for an administration of a guy who they thought wasn’t going to win and shouldn’t have won, and to see what happens. That is what I think is going on. To some extent, it has happened in other administrations. But I think it’s more obvious and we are going to get to the bottom of it, because there are going to be a lot of investigations.

We need a special prosecutor to sort this out.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Four Reasons for the Death of America’s Car Culture.

SO A SURPRISINGLY LARGE NUMBER OF MY LEFTY FACEBOOK FRIENDS SEEM TO THINK THIS STORY MEANS SOMETHING: European Parliament votes to end visa-free travel for Americans. Even though the story says it’s a “non-binding resolution,” which makes sense since the EU Parliament doesn’t have the power to do much of anything on its own. But, although they think of themselves as smart cosmopolitans, none of them know anything about EU law, or even bothered to read the actual story.

KURT SCHLICHTER: President Trump Needs To Keep His Promises No Matter How Hard The Haters Squeal. “There are a thousand plausible-sounding excuses for not repealing Obamacare. There is one reason why you must – because you said you would, over and over again.”

WE NEED A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR TO INVESTIGATE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION POLITICAL SPYING: Yes, There Could Be Serious Legal Problems if Obama Admin Involved in Illegal Surveillance.

JONATHAN TURLEY: Obama Spying on Trump Should be ‘Investigated.’

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ASSOCIATED PRESS, WHOSE REPORTERS OBAMA TAPPED,* leaps to Obama’s defense over claims he tapped Trump.

Plus, why we need a special prosecutor:

This scandal cries out for aggressive investigation. Let’s see the initial FISA application, and the court order denying it. Then let’s see the second application, and the order that approved it. Let’s put the Obama administration officials who signed the applications under oath, and find out who put them up to it. Let’s find out what judges denied the first application, and what judges granted the second one. Let’s get the details on the Obama administration’s spying. Did they tap the Trump campaign’s telephones? If so, which lines? Did they hack into the Trump campaign’s servers? If so, which ones?

Obviously, as President Trump said, the Obama administration learned nothing of significance from its spying on the Trump campaign. But it now appears that the election of 2016 may have been hacked after all, in a far more meaningful way than an intrusion into Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s email account. It may have been hacked by the Obama administration. We need to find out what happened. Congress should give top priority to this investigation.

Absolutely.

Flashback: New York Times: “The Obama administration, which has a chilling zeal for investigating leaks and prosecuting leakers, has failed to offer a credible justification for secretly combing through the phone records of reporters and editors at The Associated Press in what looks like a fishing expedition for sources and an effort to frighten off whistle-blowers. On Friday, Justice Department officials revealed that they had been going through The A.P.’s records for months. The dragnet covered work, home and cellphone records used by almost 100 people at one of the oldest and most reputable news organizations. James Cole, a deputy attorney general, offered no further explanation on Tuesday.”

So, yeah, it’s crazy talk to suggest Obama might have been spying on Trump.

Related: 64% of investigative journalists say Feds spying on their email, calls, online searches. More here: “Over the past eight years, the administration has prosecuted nine cases involving whistle-blowers and leakers, compared with only three by all previous administrations combined. It has repeatedly used the Espionage Act, a relic of World War I-era red-baiting, not to prosecute spies but to go after government officials who talked to journalists. Under Mr. Obama, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. have spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to other reporters to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify in criminal cases.”

Plus: Ex-CBS reporter: Government agency bugged my computer. More here. (Bumped).

UPDATE: Technically, the phones weren’t “tapped” (a term that has no real meaning in today’s digital era anyway, since it refers to a parallel connection made to electrical wires, to extract an analog signal in the case of phone wires) but rather the phone calls were monitored, to see who was calling who, how often, etc. As far as we know, the calls weren’t actually recorded, though who can say for sure.

JULIETTE OCHIENG: Peeling The Weaponized DOJ Onion.

HMM: Set to Lift Interest Rate, Fed Embraces Investors’ Optimism.

BECAUSE IT’S A STUPID IDEA: Why Conservative Women Won’t Strike on “A Day Without a Woman.”

Well, men have been quietly going on strike for years.

STILL GOOD ADVICE: Stop Taking Pride In Not Knowing How To Do Basic Shit.

Did I think I was just going to wake up one morning and suddenly take everything really seriously? Was there going to be a day where I popped up, naturally, at 6:30 AM, had a light breakfast in my well-appointed and sparkling-clean kitchen, then hit my reasonably-priced gym for a morning workout to invigorate me for a day at my job (which I was passionate about but which did not dominate my life)? I think honestly, on some level, I thought that way.

I think I imagined there was just this Adult Pixie Dust (it maybe looked like glitter in some tasteful, neutral color palette), that was sprinkled over you in your sleep some time in your late 20s/early 30s, that magically changed everything and taught you how to do things like negotiate a salary or wear heels on city streets without destroying them on subway grates. The point is, I thought these things would just manifest in Future Chelsea, and Present Chelsea did not have to deal with it, and could keep getting day-tipsy at expensive brunches and wander around Duane Reade wobbily looking for Q-tips for 30 minutes.

This is ridiculous, and frankly offensive to ourselves, and is in many ways my least favorite part of ~social media culture~. It’s considered adorable and relatable to talk about how “Whoops just spent the rest of my paycheck on a bottle of champagne and pizza, which I’m eating in the dark because I can’t change a lightbulb, while watching a Netflix show on an account I share with seven people, which I have turned up all the way because my smoke alarm has been beeping for the last three months.”

Social media is toxic. I mean, when even IowaHawk quits. . . .

I DIDN’T BLOG ABOUT IOWAHAWK LEAVING TWITTER, because it happened right after my Dad died and I just didn’t have the energy to say anything deep about it. I still don’t, really, but I did want to post this excerpt from his farewell tweetstorm, and note that I hear this kind of thing from more and more people. I certainly don’t miss Twitter, which I still look at a bit to check for breaking news, but otherwise ignore. Getting off regular Twitter use made me feel like I got an injection of fresh brain cells.