Yesterday afternoon I was performing my weekly ritual of fast forwarding through the recorded Sunday talk shows and cherry picking the interesting stuff. But I did not get very far. At the beginning of Face the Nation, CBS’ Bill Plant blandly asked President Obama, “When did you first learn Hillary Clinton used an e-mail system outside the US government for official business while she was secretary of state?”   Before the president could respond, I turned to my dear wife and exclaimed, “Here it comes! Here it comes.” I knew exactly what the President was going to say before his lips started moving. And then out it popped, “The same time everyone else learned about it, through news reports.”

Seriously? Seriously!  No one on your staff gave you a heads up? No memo indicating something to the effect, “Mr. President there is a story that is going to break on tonight’s news and I think it would be good if we could brief you before this explodes.” I’m trying to envision how things work at the White House. The President sits in the oval office in front of a bank of hi-def TVs watching the cable news broadcasts. When something of interest pops up he phones Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, “Hey Denis, you’re not gonna believe what just broke on CNN. Can you look into this for me?”

If I were president when this story surfaced, here is a short list questions I would expect my Chief of Staff to answer:

1. Which knucklehead in my administration knew about this and or authorized it?
2. Does that knucklehead still work for this administration?
3. Why didn’t anyone notice that every frig’n email to and from Hillary was addressed @clintonemail.com and not @state.gov?
4. Is the person who should have noticed still working for this administration?
5. Why didn’t I notice that every frig’n email to and from Hillary was addressed @clintonemail.com and not @state.gov?
6. Given the NSA is monitoring everyone’s e-mail, did anyone there notice that Clinton was exclusively using a personal e-mail account?
   1. If the answer to the above question is NO, then is there anyone in my administration monitoring our systems to know if sensitive confidential and classified information is being distributed to non-secure personal systems?
      1. If the answer to the above is NO…, uh…, urh… OMG!!!
7. Given the NSA is monitoring everyone’s e-mail, can we just get the missing e-mails directly from them?
8. Did anyone bother to investigate further when it was discovered in 2013 that Romanian hacker ‘Guccifer’ had gained access to Clinton’s private e-mails?
9. Heck, did anyone here even know her e-mails were compromised in 2013?
10. Can we arrange for ‘Guccifer’ to work for the NSA?  I think they are looking for folks with that skill set.
11. Which of my e-mails are going to get released and embarrass the crap out of me?

But what really derailed this Sunday routine was when Bill Plant asked the President to square this episode with the oft-repeated claim that this is the most open administration in history.   The presidents assertion “Its true” rang hollow.  With all due respect Mr. President, just say’n it doesn’t make it so.

The recent death of a beloved Downton Abbey character Isis, the yellow Labrador Retriever, is now getting closer scrutiny. In this season’s closing episodes the faithful pooch succumbed to cancer.  Despite Hugh Bonniville’s claims that the dog’s demise was completely unrelated to the violent extremist group ISIS, sources close to 10 Downing Street are hinting that there are indeed sinister forces involved.

There are two theories being actively investigated by Britain’s Security Service, MI5. Some within the Conservative government believe that there was a significant misunderstanding after David Cameron’s visit to the United States last year. Cameron met with President Obama and then made personal phone calls to congressional leaders forcefully arguing for action against ISIS. He publicly claimed that ISIS was a death cult and privately advocated for a stronger NATO response. However it appears that Congressman Aaron Schock (R-IL), currently involved in another controversy related to office redecorating, apparently misunderstood Cameron and confused ISIS the terror group with Isis the Downton Abbey Labrador Retriever. Schock contacted members of the CIA’s Covert Operations Division (COD) and  advocated secretly for action.

Now MI5 is investigating to see if any CIA activity in the UK can be linked to the dog’s demise. Some CIA covert agents were reported to have spent time at Highclere Castle around the time the final scenes were being filmed. The agents posing as a couple on vacation insisted in sworn depositions that they are long time fans of the mini-series and would never do anything to harm Isis or any other dog. MI5 is also looking into the possibility the Americans farmed out the contract killing to Russian agents. The Russians have a long history of disappearing political opponents to Validmir Putin’s regime. It is possible the Americans used the Russian’s operational capabilities in an attempt to distance themselves and provide some plausible deniability.

MI5 is now investigating if any CIA activity in the UK is linked to Downton Abbey’s Isis demise.

Another theory being actively pursued is that the White House directly instructed the CIA to dispatch Isis. In 2012 it was revealed that the Obama administration returned a bust of Winston Churchill to the British. The episode left a deep scar on US-British relations. Some within Cameron’s government believe that Obama’s long standing dislike of Colonial Britain has only deepened in the last 6 years. And those same sources have information that the success of Downton Abbey in the United States was so troubling to Obama that he was desperate for a way undermine the show. Recently leaked e-mails from former secretary of state Hillary Clinton indicate that as early as 2012 the administration was looking for ways to attack the Downton pets. The illness of Pharoh, another of Lord Grantham’s pets, is also being investigated. Some within MI5 believe this may have been an earlier failed assassination attempt by the Americans.

In an unrelated story, Kensington Palace announced Thursday that Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, would visit Ealing Studios in West London. The studios house the sets for the downstairs staff of Downton. Mrs. Patmore’s (Lesley Nicol) kitchen and Mr. Carson’s (Jim Carter) office are all there. Kate won’t be visiting Highclere Castle in Hampshire, which is where the upstairs family films their scenes.

The twitter announcement yesterday of the arrival of baby Isaiah to pop music superstar Carrie Underwood sparked a political firestorm. And late today another controversy threatened to drag Underwood further into the public spotlight.

Former Secretary of State and 2016 presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton, acknowledged this afternoon that contrary to federal guidelines she used a personal e-mail account for all correspondence during her tenure at State. The unsecure nature of the account led ultimately to its being hacking by “Guciffer”, a Romanian who is responsible for a number of high-level security breaches involving both current and former members of the United States government.

Some of the leaked e-mails indicate that Clinton had Underwood’s e-mail address and had sent e-mails to her as recently as February of this year. Already speculation is rampant as to why Clinton, former Secretary of State and Senator from New York, would be in contact with Underwood. A spokesperson responding to the emerging controversy issued a statement indicating that Hillary is a huge country music fan, has followed Carrie’s career closely since her debut on American idol and would frequently reach out to the singer with gushing admiration.

However anonymous sources within the Clinton camp have intimated that Underwood’s performance in the Sound of Music Live was so disturbing that Secretary Clinton at the time was concerned it would trigger a worldwide backlash against American interests. After unsuccessfully dissuading her from attempting to reprise Julie Andrew’s iconic roll, Clinton immediately warned her she might be the target of violent extremists. And in this case they were likely to be non-Islamic and homegrown.

Leaked e-mails show that specific instructions to heighten security were forwarded to embassies in Austria and the UK immediately following the live broadcast and to prepare for “in-country” workplace violence. The State Department even went as far as preparing talking points for Susan Rice in the event things did get out of control and they needed someone to respond on the weekly Sunday talk shows. According to these sources, State was determined to avoid any hint of US involvement and was prepared to link any attacks directly to Underwood’s performance.

Congressional oversight committees are anxious to investigate these e-mails to determine if the heightened security was indeed linked to Underwood and was truly warranted. Congressman Tray Gowdy (R-Tx) insisted, “It matters because Americans deserve to know the truth from those entrusted to lead and govern.” Gowdy indicated that some of the tweets attributed to former cast members of the original Sound of Music may have actually been from Clinton or her former staff under a pseudonym.   He expressed deep reservations that Kym Karath, who played the original Greti Von Trapp , would characterize Carrie’s performance as “painful to watch” or that “She delivered her spoken lines with all the inflection and spontaneity of an in-flight safety video.”

Carrie Underwood and husband Mike Fisher welcomed their first child, a son named Isaiah Michael Fisher, born Feb. 27. The country singer shared the news with her fans on Twitter on Tuesday.

That twitter announcement immediately sparked a firestorm of criticism.  Senior congressional Republicans were incensed, claiming that the timing of the news release was intended to distract from Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s historic speech.  Congressman Aaron Schock (R-Ill), from his Downton Abbey themed office, was quoted as saying, “This is just another example of how far the Obama administration will go to distract the American public from it’s failed policies.”  Members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have accused the NSA of succumbing to White House pressure and deliberately blocking Underwood’s twitter feed until early this morning, just before the historic speech.  Congressman Devin Nunes (R-CA) noted, “The child was born 4 days ago.  Isn’t it odd that the announcement was only released this morning?”

On the left, Democratic Sen. Barbara Mukluski (D-MD) accused Texas Senator and Tea Party leader Ted Cruz (R-TX) of trying to unfairly malign President Obama’s attempt to secure a negotiated solution to Iranian nuclear ambitions, “We could never have imagined that the Senator would stoop this low.”  She accused the junior senator from Texas of working behind the scenes to influence Underwood and her husband to name the child after a prominent Jewish biblical figure and then announce the child’s name moments before Netanyahu’s speech.  Underwood and her husband have denied any interference from the senator’s office in the child’s naming.  A spokesman for Underwood said, “We have not been in contact with Sen. Cruz’s office and deny any involvement.  We just kinda thought it would be a cool name, for a child of a country musician, ya know.”

National Security adviser Susan Rice entered the fray when she claimed that,  “This incident is, to our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, …it was spontaneous — not premeditated.”  Her reference to a spontaneous event, similar to her characterization of Middle East protests in 2012, immediately triggered a sharp response from senior republican Senator and former Vietnam POW John McCain, “She’s not qualified,” McCain said on CBS’s This Morning. “Anyone who goes on national television and attempts to characterize this as spontaneous is clearly misleading the American public.”

Attorney General Eric Holder has announced his office is opening a civil rights investigation.  When reached for comment this morning his office released the following statement, “I think that what I’m doing is right. And election-year politics, which intensifies everything, is not going to drive me off that course.”  However the justice department has yet to indicate in what manner anyone’s civil rights were violated. The announcement did get the attention of Al Sharpton who is currently en route to Nashville.  This morning at La Guardia airport when questioned Rev. Sharpton said, “The National Action Network, the group I founded, has affiliates or chapters in over 40 cities around the country.”  When pressed for more details Sharpton lashed back, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”

Meanwhile, the country crooner also dished on her pregnancy cravings, “I have been a little more vegetarian than vegan especially with traveling, so it’s a little hard to order food from hotels and stuff when you’re vegan.  Now I’m pregnant, it’s like, I can’t just order steamed broccoli. That’s not going to cut it. I’ve modified a little bit, but I think I’ve stayed pretty normal.”

Fisher and Underwood married in July 2010, and this is their first child. Congrats to the new parents!