For the Record: Carson meets with Senate committee, everyone stays awake

This week is starting to feel like Groundhog Day in the political world. Thursday was another day of confirmation hearings for Trump nominees, more discussion of the Trump dossier, a Russian broadcast interrupting a government TV network. Wait, maybe that last part was new. The details in today's FTR ...

For once, Ben Carson gets asked stuff

During the GOP debates, Ben Carson joked that he never got called on to answer any questions. But in a "Twilight Zone" twist, he got to spend his Thursday answering ALL the questions. The former neurosurgeon and presidential candidate spoke before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Development Committee for confirmation hearings for his possible role as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) grilled Carson over the possibility of Trump's development empire profiting off HUD programs, but Carson wouldn't commit to preventing such a thing. “If there happens to be an extraordinarily good program that��s working for millions of people and it turns out that someone that you’re targeting is going to gain $10 from it. Am I going to say ‘no,' the rest of Americans can’t have it?” Carson said.

Julian Castro, the current HUD secretary, said earlier this week he was concerned about Carson stepping into his role — but honestly, "Obama's X is concerned about Trump's nomination of Y" is more or less the theme of the past two months.

It's highly likely Carson will get the nod from the Senate. "You might just be the right guy,” said Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-North Dakota).

'And now here's Alexei with updates from the Bear Wrestling League'

Something interesting happened on C-SPAN Thursday, leaving network officials scrambling to figure out how such a thing could have happened.

While the network aired a speech by Rep. Maxine Waters on the floor of the House on Thursday, the video feed suddenly changed to the Russia Today network for about 10 minutes. To add to the weirdness, the RT broadcast featured:

• Steel drum music
• The Polish foreign minister
• References to a nonexistent country

Was it a Russian hack, or something else? C-SPAN's initial explanation: It was probably their fault. "This afternoon the online feed for C-SPAN was briefly interrupted by RT programming," the network said in a statement to USA TODAY, a version of which was also posted on Twitter. We are currently investigating and troubleshooting this occurrence. As RT is one of the networks we regularly monitor, we are operating under the assumption that it was an internal routing issue. If that changes we will certainly let you know."

We'll be first in line for the eventual movie of all this

The ex-British spy believed to be the man behind the Trump dossier has gone into hiding.

Christopher Steele, who was born with that name and therefore was required to become a spy, was identified by the Wall Street Journal as the author of the document. He left his home Wednesday once it seemed likely his name soon would be public, leaving his cats in the care of his neighbor.

Members of the intelligence community told a BBC correspondent that Steele was"extremely highly regarded" and "competent."  A Reuters report credits him with the initial intel that sparked the FIFA corruption case in 2015.

After leaving the UK's foreign intelligence agency, Steele co-founded Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd., the organization believed to have been tasked with digging up dirt on Trump during the campaign. (No Republican candidate or super PAC reported payments to Orbis, and none of the detailed claims in the dossier ever came to light during the GOP primaries.) The BBC correspondent said Steele leaked what he had found to the press, but feared reprisal from the Russian government for having done so.

Orbis representatives were tight-lipped about the whole thing ... sort of. Co-founder Christopher Burrows said he had no information on where Steele was or when he would return. As for whether Orbis created the dossier? "I'm not going to make any comment at all about the dossier, I can't possibly comment," he told the UK's Daily Telegraph — a "House of Cards" reference generally taken to be a confirmation without directly saying so.

More from the USA TODAY Network

• Goldman Sachs: We're putting the band back together! (USA TODAY OnPolitics)
• Paul Ryan scorecard: 1 for 3 on agreeing with Trump (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
• In at least one instance, Trump's going to be the lenient one on undocumented immigrants (USA TODAY)
• McCain's secret Santa gave him the Trump dossier, and McCain won't say who it was (Arizona Republic)

Australia fully equipped with cameras, internet

Just a reminder that even if you move to another hemisphere, you're still gonna get memed.