Well this is a good sign: "McMaster is increasingly asserting himself over the flow of national security information in the White House. He has become a rising and blunt force who has made clear to several top officials and the president that he does not want the NSC to have any political elements."

That would certainly be a change. Perhaps we can have hope that he's issued directives ending the practice of distributing transcripts of the calls and emails of senior opposition political figures to senior security officials to include naming those figures.

And before you go off telling me that it was just "incidental" surveillance caught by chance, please get real. We all know that political figures in the security establishment can always find some sort of facially legitimate reason to spy anyone involved in international politics and business - which is what senior national political and business figures do for a living. The fact that even Obama's DNI Clapper swore under oath that there was no evidence showing any improper contact or collaboration by the Trump team with Russia or any foreign power means there was certainly no legitimate reason to "unmask" the names of the US citizens who they already knew were senior Trump folks. But they did so anyway.

I may be a charter-Never Trumper, but I know Nixonian dirty tricks and spying when I see it