Rex Tillerson's 3 a.m. phone call  —  It was nearly 3 o'clock in the morning when the phone rang in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, an impoverished, war-torn country on the tip of the Arabian Peninsula.  —  Hours earlier, Rex Tillerson, then a young, up-and-coming country manager at Exxon …

The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S.  —  WASHINGTON — When Special Agent Adrian Hawkins of the Federal Bureau of Investigation called the Democratic National Committee in September 2015 to pass along some troubling news about its computer network, he was transferred, naturally, to the help desk.

How Clinton lost Michigan — and blew the election  —  Everybody could see Hillary Clinton was cooked in Iowa.  So when, a week-and-a-half out, the Service Employees International Union started hearing anxiety out of Michigan, union officials decided to reroute their volunteers …

Lessig: 20 Trump electors could flip  —  Larry Lessig, a Harvard University constitutional law professor who made a brief run for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, claimed Tuesday that 20 Republican members of the Electoral College are considering voting against Donald Trump …

Trump's national security adviser shared secrets without permission, files show  —  A secret U.S. military investigation in 2010 determined that Michael T. Flynn, the retired Army general tapped to serve as national security adviser in the Trump White House, “inappropriately shared” …

IBM unveils plan to hire 25,000 in US on eve of Trump meeting  —  12k  —  US technology giant IBM said Tuesday it would hire 25,000 people in the country over the next four years, a day before President-elect Donald Trump meets with tech industry leaders.  —  About 6,000 of those hirings …

Alan Thicke — Dead at 69  —  EXCLUSIVE  —  5:50 AM — Robin Thicke posted on Instagram about his father's passing.  —  TV icon Alan Thicke has died ... TMZ has learned.  —  We're told Alan had a heart attack while he was playing hockey with his 19-year-old son, Carter.

Don Trump Jr. involved in INTERIOR search — WAYNE BERMAN up for TRADE REP — TRUMP'S TECH SUMMIT — SPOTTED AT DAVID RUBENSTEIN'S PARTY — B'DAY: Kirsten Powers  —  DRIVING THE DAY  —  BULLETIN — “BEIRUT (AP) - Syrian activists say aircraft have resumed bombing raids over eastern Aleppo, further threatening cease-fire deal.”

Divisions deepen inside Trump Tower  —  Donald Trump's White House-in-waiting is already being roiled by divisions, with the conservative outsiders who helped power his historic victory colliding with a Republican Party establishment muscling its way in.  —  Insiders paint a picture …

Disgrace under pressure  —  A month after the surprise election of Donald Trump in November (surprising to noone more than to Trump and Clinton), the losers are still working through the stages of anguish in ways that seem strange to many observers but of which they appear oddly proud.

POLITICO survey: Ellison no lock for DNC chair  —  Lingering tensions from the presidential primary are driving the race for Democratic National Committee chairman, impeding early favorite Keith Ellison's bid to consolidate support behind his candidacy and raising fears that the party …

Algorithms are making us small-minded  —  Your life is mapped out for you but, not in the way that you think.  How predictive algorithms narrow your perspective - and ultimately your choices.  —  We live in a world of curation.  The internet — aided by algorithms that predict what we search …

The Humbling Of Mitt Romney, By Donald J. Trump  —  “Mitt Romney is somebody I had respect for,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid says.  “I have none anymore.”  —  Washington bureau chief for The Huffington Post  —  When Barack Obama first decided that Hillary Clinton would make an able secretary …

Ex-CIA chief says Trump risks blame for an attack if he skips briefings  —  Former CIA director Leon Panetta said on Wednesday that President-elect Donald Trump risked being blamed after any potential attack on the United States if he refused to receive more regular intelligence briefings.

Huma vs. the “Night Stalkers”  —  After a stunning election loss, the knives appear to be out in Clintonworld.  —  “Maybe I'm just pissed off, but I really don't give a s**t about what happens to Huma to be honest with you,” one close adviser to Hillary Clinton told me recently.

Agency Has Ruled Trump Will Be In Violation of Washington Hotel Lease, Democrats Say  —  The agency that manages federal government real estate has determined that President-elect Donald Trump will be in violation of the lease on the Washington, D.C., hotel bearing his name the moment he is sworn …

The Defense of Liberty Can't Do Without Identity Politics  —  In his post introducing the Niskanen Center's project to revitalize liberalism, Will Wilkinson called for both restating old liberal truths and for updating them for our own era, in light of what we have learned, echoing F.A. Hayek's articulating of his own task in his era.

Pageant Silences Beauty Queen, a Critic of China, at U.S. Contest  —  After the Chinese authorities blocked the Canadian beauty queen Anastasia Lin from attending the 65th annual Miss World pageant in China last year, the event's British organizers offered her a consolation prize, of sorts …

Why do California's whites vote so differently than whites elsewhere?  —  My tribe, Caucasoid Californicus, is dwindling.  Over the last quarter century, California's non-Latino white population has plunged by 2 million as Latinos and Asians burgeoned.  In 1990, nearly six in 10 Californians were white …

Trump selects Zinke as interior secretary  —  President-elect Donald Trump has offered the interior secretary position to Montana's freshman Rep. Ryan Zinke, an ex-Navy Seal commander, according to two transition officials and someone familiar with the offer.