RUTHFULLY YOURS

If the first presidential debate was a boxing match, Hillary dropped her guard and stuck out her chin at least half a dozen times, Donald threw wild haymakers that landed maybe once or twice, and the referee Lester Holt obviously had laid a six-figure bet on Hillary. Ali vs. Frazier it wasn’t.

Whether this debate makes a difference in the election is unknowable. Romney cleaned Obama’s clock during their first debate in 2012, but that mattered less than the leaked “47%” sound bite. Remember, in 2008, from September 5 to 17, McCain and Obama were virtually tied in the polls. After Lehman Brothers collapsed on September 15, McCain never again led in a poll, and Obama won by seven points. In every election, candidates are vulnerable to the sort of “event” that terrified British PM Harold Nicolson. Right now in 2016 the dice are still rolling.

More interesting to me is how this spectacle illustrates just how debased our political culture has become. First, what we call a “debate” is not a debate. Rather than two people directly confronting and challenging each other, we have a “moderator” choosing the questions and attempting to manage the answers. Holt’s obvious bias for Hillary illustrates the problem of having a moderator drawn from the media, which are clearly in one camp or another and choose questions and interventions consistent with their ideology.

Thus Holt wasted time scourging Trump with the stale “birther” issue, his tax returns, his alleged misogyny, his bankruptcies, stop-and-frisk, and his support for the Iraq war. But nary a question for Hillary on the Clinton Foundation and the evidence for a conflict of interest during her tenure as Secretary of State, nary a one on her documented lies about her email server through which she passed classified information, nary a word on her responsibility for the debacle in Benghazi and the deaths of four Americans. And how about Hillary’s “basket of deplorables,” or her accusation that whites have an “implicit bias” against blacks, or her support for the Iraq war, or her public insult of General David Petraeus when in 2007 she said his true data on the success of the surge in Iraq “required a willing suspension of disbelief”? More telling, Holt asked Trump six follow-up questions, and Hillary not a single one. And he interrupted Trump more than he did Hillary.

The point, however, is not that we need a “good” moderator rather than a bad one. Nor do I think Holt’s bias is why Trump didn’t do as well as he could have. Trump had every opportunity to pound Hillary with the issues Holt ignored, or to brush off Holt’s “gotcha” fishing. The real point is why do we have a moderator at all? There was no moderator in 1858 during the seven Lincoln-Douglas debates, the perennial epitome of good political debates. Each candidate decided on the issue to address, posed questions to his opponent, or made a claim about him. Each candidate then responded and “fact-checked” his opponent’s assertions, as Lincoln did in the first debate when he responded to Douglas’ charge that he had conspired to “abolitionize” the Democrat and Whig parties. It was up to the some ten-thousand spectators to adjudicate between which candidate was truthful or which made the better argument, not some “moderator” with a partisan axe to grind.

“Since he is Jewish, he agrees that people should not be comparing the refugees of today with the Jewish refugees escaping the Nazis. “For me it’s like two completely different subsets, apples and oranges. Some of the refugees today seem to have no allegiance to the U.S. Constitution and do not assimilate well. There should be experts trained to determine a high threat, medium threat, and low threat. Just look how this administration processed illegal immigrants who were supposed to be deported, but were granted illegal status here.”
Retired Navy SEAL Ryan Zinke is running for re-election as Montana’s sole congressman. He is in a tight race against a Democrat liberal enough to make Hillary Clinton appear like a conservative. Recently, those who served in the U.S. armed forces, like Zinke, have decided to extend their service by becoming the new leaders in Washington DC. He interviewed with American Thinker, sounding off about issues important to him and this country.

Once elected, Zinke knew he must wade through the waters once again, but this time as the first Navy SEAL to go to Congress. Having to maneuver through the Washington bureaucracy has been a lot harder than performing his duties as a SEAL. “I went to Congress to give veterans a voice and because we understand what it takes to get the job done. We are less Red or Blue, but more Red, White, and Blue. Having been overseas we understand the importance of how national security/defense are critical in keeping this country free.”

A twenty-three-year veteran, he ended his military career as a commander and trainer. This propelled him to understand what it takes to become a U.S. representative, bringing character and leadership to Washington. He told American Thinker, “When you go out on the field, when you’re in battle, then you have to operate as a team and understand you’re doing it for a higher purpose. I think we should re-establish what the higher purpose is. We were all sent here, Republican or Democrat, to represent our district and also look at what’s in the best interest of this country.”

One of the most important issues to him is the vetting of Middle Eastern refugees. He helped to sponsor the American Safe Act, which passed the House of Representatives with a bipartisan vote in November 2015. The bill’s purpose is to bolster the refugee screening process. After hearing the FBI director’s testimony he knew that it is very difficult to vet these refugees because there is no database. Having fought in Iraq he understands “In Iraq and Syria you’re looking at a country that doesn’t have indoor plumbing. And yet we think that we have a database where we can determine who is a terrorist, who is a terrorist sympathizer? And who is not and who is an innocent victim? Quite frankly, we don’t have the database because a database doesn’t exist. So I think the right path is to make sure we have a vetting process where we can identify the threat. And we need to stop and pause. Provide more transparency. And when we do have refugees, we need to ensure those refugees are not terrorists. I see it as extremely dangerous since we are still at war.”

Since he is Jewish, he agrees that people should not be comparing the refugees of today with the Jewish refugees escaping the Nazis. “For me it’s like two completely different subsets, apples and oranges. Some of the refugees today seem to have no allegiance to the U.S. Constitution and do not assimilate well. There should be experts trained to determine a high threat, medium threat, and low threat. Just look how this administration processed illegal immigrants who were supposed to be deported, but were granted illegal status here.”

It’s bad enough that FBI Director James Comey agreed to pass out immunity deals like candy to material witnesses and potential targets of his investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s illegal private e-mail server.

But now we learn that some of them were immunized despite lying to Comey’s investigators.

In the latest bombshell from Congress’ probe into what’s looking more and more like an FBI whitewash (or coverup) of criminal behavior by the Democratic nominee and her aides, the Denver-based tech who destroyed subpoenaed e-mails from Clinton’s server allegedly lied to FBI agents after he got an immunity deal.
That’s normally a felony. As a federal prosecutor, Comey tossed Martha Stewart in jail for it and helped convict Scooter Libby for it as well. Yet the key Clinton witness still maintained his protection from criminal prosecution.

With Comey’s blessing, Obama prosecutors cut the deal with the e-mail administrator, Paul Combetta, in 2015 in exchange for his full cooperation and honest testimony. But the House Judiciary Committee revealed Wednesday that he falsely told agents in a Feb. 18 interview that he had no knowledge that e-mails he bleached from the server were under congressional orders to be preserved as evidence.

In a second interview on May 3, Combetta admitted he, in fact, did know. But he still refused to reveal what he discussed with Clinton’s former aides and lawyer during a 2014 conference call about deleting the e-mails.

Instead of asking Attorney General Loretta Lynch to revoke his immunity deal and squeezing him, Comey let him go because he was a “low-level guy,” he testified at the House hearing. It’s yet another action by Comey that has left former prosecutors shaking their heads.

The head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation sparred repeatedly with Republican lawmakers Wednesday as they questioned the handling of the FBI’s probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was Secretary of State.

The FBI announced in July that investigators found extremely careless conduct in Mrs. Clinton’s handling of sensitive government information under the email arrangement, but also concluded that no reasonable prosecutor would have brought a case under the circumstances. Conservatives have been highly critical of the FBI for not pursuing the case more aggressively and for not recommending prosecution of Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president.

That criticism has intensified in recent days when it was revealed that the Justice Department granted partial immunity to some witnesses, including Clinton aide and attorney Cheryl Mills, to get access to data or testimony.

Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, James Comey bristled at times when lawmakers suggested his agency gave Mrs. Clinton or her people a pass on conduct that would have merited charges for low-level government employees.

“We are not on anybody’s side. This was done exactly the way you would want it to be done,’’ Mr. Comey said. Partial and limited grants of immunity were given, he said, to get a laptop from a lawyer or testimony from a technology worker who otherwise refused to talk to investigators.

“You can call us wrong, but don’t call us weasels. We are not weasels,’’ said Mr. Comey, who served as deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush.

FBI Director James Comey appears Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee. The big question is why—if he believes Hillary Clinton committed no prosecutable offense—he has given immunity deals to no fewer than five Clinton associates. A Journal editorial cites Beth Wilkinson, who represents Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, saying the immunity deals were designed to protect her clients against “classification” disputes. “This is an admission that both women knew their unsecure laptops had been holding sensitive information for more than a year,” adds the editorial board.
Donald Trump is right about the “stop and frisk” police tactic and on Monday night he was “unfairly second-guessed by a moderator who didn’t give the viewing public all the facts,” notes a separate editorial. NBC’s Lester Holt and Mrs. Clinton called the tactic unconstitutional. “They are wrong,” adds former prosecutor and New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani . “Stop and frisk is constitutional and the law of the land,” based on an 8-1 decision of the Supreme Court, Terry v. Ohio .

Speaking of Monday night’s debate, Jason Riley saw it as a clear Clinton victory and so did William Galston. But Holman Jenkins says the event helped clarify that this election “will resolve into very flawed outsider vs. very flawed insider—and will be decided by the American people in that vein.”

This column has long argued that the journalistic genre known as “fact checking” is a corruption of journalism. “The ‘fact check’ is opinion journalism or criticism, masquerading as straight news,” we wrote in 2008. “The object is not merely to report facts but to pass a judgment.”

Eight years later, we’d amend that slightly. “Fact checking” doesn’t pretend to be straight news exactly, but something more authoritative. The conceit of the “fact checker” is that he has some sort of heightened level of objectivity qualifying him to render verdicts in matters of public controversy.

Lately the “fact checkers” have been waging a campaign to portray Donald Trump as a contemporaneous supporter of the Iraq war, contrary to his assertions that he was an opponent. In Monday’s debate, Hillary Clinton pleaded for their help: “I hope the fact checkers are turning up the volume and really working hard. Donald supported the invasion of Iraq.” Moderator Lester Holt obliged, basing a question to Trump on the premise that the matter was settled: “You supported the war in Iraq before the invasion.”

Trump somewhat inarticulately rebutted the claim: “The record shows that I’m right. When I did an interview with Howard Stern, very lightly, the first time anybody’s asked me that, I said, very lightly, I don’t know, maybe, who knows.”

What Trump actually said on Sept. 11, 2002, when Stern asked him if he favored an invasion, was: “Yeah, I guess so.” That was an affirmative statement, but a highly equivocal one. Is it fair or accurate to characterize it as sufficient to establish that Trump was a “supporter”? In our opinion, no. He might well have had second thoughts immediately after getting off the air with Stern.

He certainly had second thoughts in the ensuing months, and he came to oppose the invasion long before Mrs. Clinton did. Even FactCheck.org was unable to come up with any other Trump statement supportive of the decision to go to war. By December 2003, according to the site’s timeline, Trump was observing (in an interview with Fox News Channel’s Neil Cavuto) that “a lot of people” were “questioning the whole concept of going in, in the first place.” Five years later, according to PolitiFact.com, Trump was calling for President Bush’s impeachment because, as he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “he got us into the war with lies.” CONTINUE AT SITE