[Washington Examiner] Questions about government missteps in the electronic surveillance of a onetime Trump campaign adviser had former CIA Director John Brennan pointing at the FBI.
Meet the Press host Chuck Todd pressed Brennan to open up about the Justice Department inspector general's report on the Trump-Russia investigation, which outlined several "significant" errors and omissions in the FBI's effort to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants to monitor Carter Page.
"I would defer to the bureau on the FISA matter, because they’re the ones that actually initiate and then follow through on it," Brennan said Tuesday on MSNBC regarding whether he would make a determination if there should have been an approved FISA warrant application. Notice how skillfully Brennan skirts the approval process.
Brennan oversaw the CIA when the FBI began its counterintelligence investigation into members of the Trump campaign suspected of working on behalf of Russia in the summer of 2016. That inquiry, code-named Crossfire Hurricane, was later wrapped into special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, which was unable to establish criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
Todd noted that Brennan, now an MSNBC contributor, was limited in what he could say due to guidelines on classified information, but that did not stop Todd from trying to pry information from Brennan about how the CIA shared relevant information with the bureau.
#1
The use of Mr. Page (or anyone else) by United States Law Enforcement, to collect intelligence information on foreign officials (Russians in this case), falls under the purview of of the offices of the Director of Intelligence/Director CIA.
#2
Reports are that Brennan collaborated throughout with the FBI.
He should be called to testify as to when he set up his inter-agency "war room" that was designed to share info across the counterintelligence and espionage investigations.
#4
Ah yes, someone reliable, someone who has Russian contacts who could easily gain access, someone who could be monitored through some sort of legal, law enforcement process.... I believe we may have just the fellow you are looking for.
#5
^ Its now out in the open: so f---ing obvious that they knew Page was on our side and yet they tried to claim he was worth wiretapping because ... he was on the side of the Russians.
They must have known - surely they can't have been so stupid as to believe the opposite - that Trump's business never had a prayer of striking a major real estate deal in the center of Moscow.
Obviously, their goal was ever and always to nail the OrangeMan using false pretenses. They thought that the whole shitty crew held over from Obama's DOJ and FBI would protect them once Hillary took office.
Do they really think we're so stupid as to swallow their horseshit?
#12
Don't worry Mr Brennan, we will get to you in good time. Your efforts in developing the whole dossier and getting this coup started is dually noted. Please don't fret, you will get your moment in the sun just as soon as we are done with the FBI and certain congress critters and their kids. In the mean time, please "Stay Bitter".
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
12/13/2019 11:11 Comments ||
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#13
Nellie Ohr, her curious radio license in late middle age and her previous employment history before/during the GPS era keep being circled in open source reporting. Maybe John knows something about how that is a problem for him eventually now that the IG found her husbands insertion into the dossier story so interesting.
[PJ] On Wednesday during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) dropped a bomb about FBI interference in the 2016 election while questioning Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz about his report regarding misconduct in the espionage operation against the Trump campaign in 2016.
"Is it worse to have a foreign government trying to meddle in our elections, or is it worse to have our own government meddling in the election?" asked Hawley. Referring to the report, Hawley continued: "It shows that our government, the most powerful law enforcement agency in the nation, the FBI, effectively meddled in an ongoing presidential campaign."
Hawley then called out the Democratic National Committee for instigating the whole mess.
"The DNC pays for the Steele dossier, solicits the Steele dossier, and then gets the Federal Bureau of Investigation to go get FISA warrants, surveil an American citizen, and surveil a presidential campaign all on the basis of this manufactured garbage that they paid for. I mean that’s extraordinary," he complained. "That has got to be a first time in history. In fact, let me just ask you, Mr. Horowitz, are you aware ever of another presidential campaign being targeted by the FBI like the Trump campaign was?"
[The Federalist] As part of an investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general (IG) into how the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) abused protocols for obtaining warrants against a Trump campaign aide, the IG conducted more than 170 interviews involving more than 100 witnesses. Yet when asked direct questions about their behavior throughout 2016 and 2017, many key witnesses said they could not remember.
The IG report includes the phrase "not remember" 25 times and the phrase "not recall" 240 times. Here are just 10 details in the report that they claimed slipped from witnesses’ minds when asked by investigators.
via NEO via Instapundit
[Independent] - Boris Johnson hailed a political "earthquake" which saw Labour support crumble in its heartlands, handing him a decisive majority in parliament. The Conservatives are expected to finish up on 364 seats.
Jeremy Corbyn blamed Brexit for Labour’s devastating defeat, as he announced he would stand down as leader after overseeing a "period of reflection". The party is set to take just 203 seats ‐ its worst election performance since 1935.
Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson lost her seat to the SNP and quit as party leader. Nicola Sturgeon said she had a "strengthened" mandate for a second vote on Scottish independence, as the SNP made a series of gains.
[FoxNews] Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear signed an executive order Thursday to restore voting rights to nearly 140,000 convicted felons, making good on an inaugural promise he made just days ago after being sworn in.
The order applies to Kentuckians who have committed non-violent offenses and have completed their sentences and does not include sex offenders, rapists or murderers, Beshear, a Democrat, said to a group of voting rights supporters. On the other hand -
Kentucky was just one of two states with lifetime disenfranchisement laws that barred convicted felons from voting, regardless of the crime. Currently, Iowa is the only other state left with such laws.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/13/2019 08:16 ||
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#1
Back at the start of the republic, felons hung. Resources didn't exist to house a million sociopaths. The state has no interest in providing real justice, just ritual to keep the rubes from getting too excited.
So, when are you going to get around allowing them to purchase guns too?
Again, back at the start, the right to vote was indirectly tied to gun ownership, aka skin in the game. See - the two militia acts of 1792
#2
Capital crime offenders usually were hung. A lot of petty theft was prison and a brand on the thumb.
Some felonies I'm ok with restoring all rights. The war on drugs has brought too many minor crimes into downright felon territory and there is no need for it, IMHO.
Do your time, keep your nose clean and be a productive member of society for 5-10 years after release and I welcome you back as a full citizen.
However, repeat offenders that keep going back get a trip to the gallows after so many failures.
#3
I'm cool with this. If they did their time, they get the right back. prison is time out. Plus, i highly doubt many felons are really that civic minded.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
12/13/2019 10:39 Comments ||
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#4
I agree with #3. The ones looking to stick it to the man are not waiting around to vote every other year.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/13/2019 14:40 Comments ||
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#5
It's not hard too become a felon, I'm one and very conservative. If illegals are allowed too have more rights than me then why as a natural born citizen can't I have my right too vote?
Posted by: chris ||
12/13/2019 16:48 Comments ||
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h/t Instapundit
[The Federalist] The widely discredited Steele Dossier at the heart of the Russian collusion hoax peddled an insane conspiracy theory about how Russians were convincing Jewish Americans of Russian descent to download malicious malware on American computers.
On page five in the third paragraph of the dossier, former British spy Christopher Steele wrote that agents of the FSB, the Russian Federal Security Service, were approaching Russian-Jewish-Americans who worked in the IT industry to conduct covert operations. No matter where it starts, it always comes to this.
#2
Ref #1: If the Dems through Steele and Comey were using foreign intelligence agents to enable spying on US persons, then they may well be guilty of treason.
Yes, and it could be one of the reasons AG Barr recently traveled overseas.
#5
^ that nonsense, about nefarious Jews, has the fingerprints of the Russian security services all over it. The oldest Russian state conspiracy theory of all, dating from the Romanovs' security agencies and their Protocoms of the Elders of Zion fraud.
#11
Every time I hear or see "The jews did" or "The jews control" I want to kick the speaker in the balls just to put them on the ground for followup with sledgehammer. I get seriously sick and tired of people blaming the 'jews' or 'white priviledge' or what the hell ever for problems of their own making or the fact they aren't in the 1%.
Maybe I'm just weird but I've never understood how this sort of vile thinking comes about.
Mossad must have the patience of angels to not simply kill everyone of these idiots.
Screw them, I'm tossing a pizza or something to the IDF tonight.
[Daily Mail, Where America Gets Its News] House Judiciary Committee Republicans offered their first amendment to impeachment articles against Donald Trump: striking an 'abuse of power' article
After it was voted down, Rep. Matt Gaetz brought up an amendment naming Hunter Biden
He used the amendment to outline Biden's brush with the law when a crack pipe and white powder were found in his rental car
Republicans say Trump was trying to investigate Hunter Biden and Burisma and was not abusing his power
Democrats began their Thursday hearing by having a clerk read two impeachment articles against President Trump
Chairman Jerry Nadler introduced a 'substitute' amendment changing articles to impeach 'Donald John Trump,' from earlier articles naming 'Donald J. Trump'
Trump defended himself in real-time on Twitter
Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert named seven people during a Wednesday impeachment hearing who he said should be called as witnesses
One of them is widely thought to have been the Ukraine whistle-blower who launched the impeachment saga
[NYPOST] Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib appeared to blame the Jersey City shooting on "white supremacy" Thursday ‐ even though the attackers have been identified as members of an hard boy "anti-white and anti-Semitic" movement.
The Democratic congresswoman retweeted a photo of one of the victims of Tuesday’s shooting, 24-year-old Moshe Deutsch, an Orthodox Jew, with the caption: "This is heartbreaking. white supremacy ...the pernicious doctrine that laws were intended to be obeyed, that society works better when people don't pour shreiking from their places of worship every Friday for a weekend of rioting over insults real or imagined; and that cannibalism, beastiality, incest, murder, theft, rape, and similar activities are bad. A Dead White European (which invalidates his opinion) philosopher once opined that societies thrive when a person's word can be relied upon, and that a society which puts individual happiness first will invariably fail. Strangely enough, other successful societies, such as China, Japan, Korea, and those kinds of places could also be lumped with white supremacist societies, since they push the same values... Kills."
Twitter users were quick to call out Tlaib.
"Um, @RashidaTlaib the shooters were black...," wrote conservative political consultant @CalebJHull.
Shooters David Anderson and Francine Graham were followers of the Black Hebrew Israelites, a fringe religious movement, not affiliated with mainstream Judaism, that’s been labeled a hate group by experts who track snuffies in the US.
The tweet, which was posted to her personal account, had been deleted by Thursday afternoon.
#3
Rep. Rashida Tlaib Talk at Westview High School ‘Bumped’ by Poway Schools:
A day after the Council on American-Islamic Relations won approval to host a talk by controversial Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan at a Torrey Ranch-area school, permission was revoked Thursday due to a schedule conflict.
The cancellation had nothing to do with a 420-word protest letter sent by the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund, said a spokeswoman for the Poway Unified School District, the venue landlord.
“The superintendent didn’t even know about the letter,” said Christine Paik of the Poway district.
Approval of the Tlaib event Dec. 21 at Westview High School was made in error, she said.
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/13/2019 9:28 Comments ||
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#4
“The superintendent didn’t even know about the letter,” said Christine Paik of the Poway district.
"We got a letter that you don't even want to know about. You'd better act on it immediately..."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/13/2019 11:52 Comments ||
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#5
"Wrongly", i.e. "intentionally" on the basis that far more people know about the original narrative than the retraction.
blamed “white supremacy” for a shooting in New Jersey targeting a Jewish kosher grocery store which was carried out by a member of a black supremacist group.
Three civilians and one police officer were killed during the shooting on Tuesday, with the civilian victims later being named as members of the local Chassidic community.
The tragedy took place in a “historically black neighborhood where an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community recently has taken root,” reported the Wall Street Journal.
David Anderson was subsequently named as one of the shooters, with NBC New York reporting that he had made anti-Semitic and anti-police statements online.
[WASHINGTONEXAMINER] Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert said the alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella should testify in the House's impeachment proceedings.
He made the demand during the House Judiciary Committee's hearing on Wednesday night regarding the articles of impeachment against President Trump. Gohmert was railing against how the Democrats have handled the investigation and subsequent hearings, and he noted that there were several individuals he thought should testify about the situation.
"A vague abuse of power, obstruction of Congress, the very things the majority has done in preventing us from having the witnesses that could shed light on this, not opinion, but fact witnesses. We needed to hear from those witnesses," Gohmert said. "People like Sean Misko [a former National Security Council aide who joined Adam Schiff
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
12/13/2019 00:00 ||
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#1
Is there a whistleblower ?? Been thinking that "RAT" Schiff just made it up...
[FOXNEWS] The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday night began the first phase of a fiery ...a single two-syllable word carrying connotations of both incoherence and viciousness. A fiery delivery implies an audience of rubes and yokels, preferably forming up into a mob... "markup" process for the two articles of impeachment against President Trump that they have settled on, barreling toward a final floor vote even as moderate Democrats in GOP-leaning districts have floated the idea of backing down in favor of a censure resolution.
Almost immediately, the evening proceedings broke out into heated disagreement, as the panel's top Democrat declared that it would be unsafe to wait until the 2020 election to remove Trump, and another claimed Trump's actions were an "affront to the memory of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr." Meanwhile, ...back at the railroad tracks, Little Nell tried to kick her bound feet and scream post the snotty handkerchief Scarface Al had stuff into her mouth... the ranking Republican slammed Democrats for attacking Ukraine's leader because he had undercut their case against Trump, which has foundered in several battleground polls.
"We cannot rely on an election to solve our problems, when the president threatens the very integrity of that election," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said in his opening statement,
No, dear boy, you can’t. Because we are going to elect him by a landslide in eleven short months from now.
claiming Trump's discussions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about Joe and Hunter Biden's dealings in the country, and the White House's temporary withholding of military aid to Ukraine, constituted an "urgent" threat to national security.
"This committee now owes it to the American people to give these articles careful attention," Nadler added at the beginning of the markup for the impeachment articles, which included obstruction of Congress and abuse of power.
#6
So we're now hearing from Democrats of all persuasions - new, old, left, moderate, morons and sophisticated alike - that when it comes to OrangeMan, our Constitution is meaningless.
A Virginia (D) tells her constituents in effect that for OrangeMan there is no such thing as the Constitutional presumption of innocence.
Schifferbrains and Nodding-offer tell the nation that when it comes to OrangeMan, elections must not be tolerated.
The entire Dem establishment agrees that Constitutional provisions against entrapment, domestic spying, illegal search and seizure etc do not apply to anyone connected to the Evil OrangeMan.
Q: Where in the Constitution is this all-nullifying OrangeMan Clause?
#9
The Democratic Party sounds so ... democratic. "We must have a coup d'état against an elected President because we are afraid the voters will reelect him!"
Why are they roiled? After over a century of this kind of thing, they should be used to it.
[THEHILL] A sprawling federal investigation into lobbying, patronage and alleged corruption threatens to upend Illinois’s powerful Democratic machine as agents raid offices and interrogate witnesses from reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown ...home of Al Capone, the Chicago Black Sox, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel... to Springfield.
Federal agents have conducted searches of at least nine homes and offices in connection to a probe of Commonwealth Edison, the state’s largest utility, and the political operation run by state House Speaker Mike Madigan, the most powerful Democrat in Illinois.
Those agents have been asking questions about Madigan, his associates and his political operation, according to two people who have sat for interviews with law enforcement.
A part of the investigation appears to focus on the army of lobbyists Commonwealth Edison and its parent company, Exelon, employ in Springfield, some of whom allegedly won contracts for no-show jobs.
The companies have publicly acknowledged receiving at least two subpoenas seeking information about their lobbying practices in Springfield and their relationship with former state Sen. Martin Sandoval (D).
Of the 23 lobbying firms Exelon paid to advocate on their behalf this year, 15 have ties to Madigan, the radio station WBEZ reported. Eight employ former top Madigan staffers. Five employ retired state Democratic politicians who served under Madigan. And two employ lawyers who worked for Madigan while also lobbying for the utility.
It is midday and hot as a firecracker in the historic town of Mount Vernon, Ill.
The sun is nearly unbearable on the asphalt parking lot of the Fairfield Inn out by the highway as a stream of people makes its way inside the lobby; spry retirees in couples; middle-aged people carefully shepherding white-haired parents in their 80s; a few younger folks.
Inside, state Rep. Brad Halbrook, one of the event’s organizers, is on damage control, ricocheting between groups of men in wide suspenders and ladies in T-shirts and slacks. He shakes hands, apologizing, explaining to the crowd spilling through the lobby that they will have to wait for a second session of the meeting they have come to attend — the meeting room is already standing room only. The July 20 event, planned for about 60 people and advertised on Facebook, seems to have drawn around 200.
Ron and Carolyn Carnell, a couple from Hartford, Ill., didn’t take any chances — they brought their own folding nylon chairs and snagged a spot inside the meeting room. Ron made Carolyn forego lunch at the Cracker Barrel so that they could arrive early. “I knew in my heart of hearts this thing was going to be packed,” he says. A former mayor of his small town, he knows a lot of people, and in his circles, the topic of today’s meeting comes up a lot, he says.
On the screen at the front of the room, the first slide of a Power Point presentation hovers: “A Plan for Splitting the State of Illinois.”
#3
..make these maga-cities, independent city states. See how long they survive. Well, they claim the collective brilliance that the low landers just don't understand. Shouldn't be a problem.
#4
make these maga-cities, independent city states.
I like the idea in theory, but in practice you just end up with a bunch of districts, like DC, wanting full representation. At the level of giving Chiraq, EllAy, Detoilet, NYC and other commie enclaves their own senators it's a complete non starter.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/13/2019 9:52 Comments ||
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#5
..when I say independent, I mean separate completely. Their own little nation. See - Singapore.
#7
When even the chumbolones start to say "what's that smell?"
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/13/2019 11:11 Comments ||
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#8
Can those federal agents come to California when they're done with Illinois? Please?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/13/2019 13:05 Comments ||
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#9
My first thought was to wonder who would take the place of the Madigan machine.
Unfortunately, Aesop was wrong: "A Fox with its tail caught was a feast for Mosquitoes. A Hedgehog offered to remove them. Fox said no; those on him were full; new would take more blood." The bloodsuckers in Chicago and Springfield are never full.
Posted by: James ||
12/13/2019 21:15 Comments ||
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[THEFEDERALIST] Joe Foreign Policy Whiz Kid Biden ...When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'... has learned nothing from the Title IX due process disaster plaguing America’s campuses. The former vice president has released a plan on his website to restore the B.O. regime’s infamous 2011 Dear Colleague letter, which Biden’s plan describes as outlining how to "fairly conduct Title IX proceedings." In reality, the Dear Colleague letter introduced a monstrously unfair process that has forced hundreds of young men to sue for their rights ‐ and reputations ‐ in federal courts.
An accused’s rights to confront his or her accuser through cross examination and to have a neutral adjudicator have long been considered the very basics of due process. In the name of protecting women, the 2011 guidance encouraged universities to abandon these well-tested pillars in favor of a single-investigator model, in which a Title IX administrator both elicits the stories from the involved parties and rules on the outcome. The Dear Colleague letter also pushed universities into lowering the standard of proof and discouraged any kind of cross examination that might probe discrepancies in an alleged victim’s story.
Cynthia Garrett is a Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, attorney and co-president of Families Advocating for Campus Equality (FACE), an organization that advocates for due process and offers resources to the falsely accused. She says she is deeply concerned that Biden appears to be unaware of the downsides of the 2011 guidance.
"It’s particularly concerning that a presidential candidate seems oblivious to the unintended repercussions of a policy he championed. Over 500 lawsuits have been filed by accused students since the 2011 Dear Colleague letter, resulting in at least 161 court decisions in these students’ favor and over 100 pre-decision settlements," Garrett said.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/13/2019 00:00 ||
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#1
Shitshow, Campus Edition.
Nothing shows better the stupidity and corruption of our virtue-signaling, 'woke' political class than the horrors of these Shitshow star chambers where college boys watch their lives being ruined by anonymous accusers, with no right to confront, no right to counsel, no right to cross-examine, no presumption of innocence.
Monstrous indeed.
Anyone who supports the continuation of these totalitarian procedures is not fit to hold any office.
#2
This is not stupid. This is an attempt to continue the march through the institutions. Since DJT is transforming the judiciary the Marxists have to construct an alternative court system with the type of totalitarian rules they prefer.
What you see in these campus tribunals is what they will instrument in all society as soon as they hold the power.
It's all about the power for these two bit Stalins.
#6
This is like the arguments against Sharia Law Courts in the U.S. You cannot have two systems of justice. Campuses are not special despite what occupants might think.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Washington Examiner] Questions about government missteps in the electronic surveillance of a onetime Trump campaign adviser had former CIA Director John Brennan pointing at the FBI.
Excuse me, Carter Page who ? 
[PJ] On Wednesday during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) dropped a bomb about FBI interference in the 2016 election while questioning Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz about his report regarding misconduct in the espionage operation against the Trump campaign in 2016.
[The Federalist] As part of an investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general (IG) into how the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) abused protocols for obtaining warrants against a Trump campaign aide, the IG conducted more than 170 interviews involving more than 100 witnesses. Yet when asked direct questions about their behavior throughout 2016 and 2017, many key witnesses said they could not remember.
...the pernicious doctrine that laws were intended to be obeyed, that society works better when people don't pour shreiking from their places of worship every Friday for a weekend of rioting over insults real or imagined; and that cannibalism, beastiality, incest, murder, theft, rape, and similar activities are bad. A Dead White European (which invalidates his opinion) philosopher once opined that societies thrive when a person's word can be relied upon, and that a society which puts 
Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert said the alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella should testify in the House's impeachment proceedings.
...home of Al Capone, the Chicago Black Sox, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel...
...
