RUTHFULLY YOURS

To listen to conventional wisdom, Hillary Clinton practically cannot lose the presidential election. The various forecasting services, from FiveThirtyEight to CNN to Predictwise, give the Democrat about a 70% chance of winning the White House in November. Few commentators are betting on Donald Trump. Yet the available evidence shows that the race is steadily trending toward Mr. Trump, whose victory remains quite possible.

Consider the polling trends. In a four-way race including Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Mrs. Clinton’s lead is now only 2.4 points in the Real Clear Politics average. That’s down significantly from a month ago. In early August, following the Democratic Convention, Mrs. Clinton was up by six points in the YouGov/Economist survey, and eight points in the ABC/Washington Post poll.

When third parties are excluded, Mrs. Clinton does a bit better against Mr. Trump: She leads by 3.3 points in the Real Clear Politics average. Yet that figure has been cut by more than half in a month. In addition, the head-to-head matchup loses relevance each day that public dissatisfaction with the two major-party nominees does not subside. Mr. Johnson, the Libertarian, has held steady for months at about 7% support in the polling average, and the Green Party’s Ms. Stein has stuck at about 3%.

The latest surveys look even more ominous for Mrs. Clinton. Virtually all of those taken in the past week show Mr. Trump ahead, tied, or trailing but within the margin of error. The new CNN/ORC poll, out Tuesday, puts Mr. Trump up by two. Rasmussen’s release last Thursday showed 40% for Mr. Trump and 39% for Mrs. Clinton. The Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll out Friday had the same figures. The L.A. Times/USC tracking survey shows a statistical tie. The latest Investors Business Daily/TIPP survey has Mrs. Clinton up by one, but the margin of error is 3.4 points.

What accounts for this tightening? On the most straightforward level, it seems that Mrs. Clinton is coming down from the bounce she received after the successful Democratic convention. But something else has changed as well. In the latest ABC/Washington Post poll, published at the end of August, her image hit a career low: 56% of Americans viewed her unfavorably and only 41% favorably. This is a significant slide from even early August, when the same poll had Mrs. Clinton at 52% unfavorable and 46% favorable.

ITT Technical Institute folded on cue Tuesday after the Obama Administration issued a regulatory death warrant last month. ITT investors must be wishing they had ponied up for political protection like Laureate International Universities, the for-profit college that paid Bill Clinton $17.6 million to serve as its “honorary chancellor.”

ITT’s decision to close all of its 130 some campuses—stranding 40,000 students and 8,000 employees—comes after the Education Department barred new enrollees from tapping federal aid, delayed loan reimbursements and raised its collateral by $153 million. ITT had a mere $78 million on hand at the end of June and no way of meeting the Administration’s cash demand.

ITT’s execution follows the usual pattern: A pack of regulators attack from all angles—i.e., the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, Securities and Exchange Commission, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and state Attorneys General—and try to run their target out of business before it can raise a legal defense. None of their charges have been proven in court.

Department officials claim they are merely trying to protect students and taxpayers even though the SEC and CFPB allegations involve ITT’s private loan program. Many ITT students won’t be able to transfer to other schools, and the college’s closure means that nearly $500 million in student debt could be wiped out. ITT has put up only $90 million in collateral to cover discharged loans. Taxpayers would be on the hook for the rest.

Although Education Secretary John King claimed that ITT could have stayed in business by taking “corrective action,” liberals appear to have plotted the company’s assassination long ago. Rohit Chopra worked at the CFPB and the Center for American Progress before signing on as a special adviser to Mr. King in January. In June 2015 Mr. Chopra warned ITT shareholders that the department “can revoke eligibility for federal student aid with minimal notice” and that “ITT may be forced to post even more collateral to maintain eligibility. . . . Unless ITT makes improvements to management culture, the board of directors, and executive compensation, it may be unable to survive over the long term.”

Immediately after the department imposed its lethal sanctions on ITT, Mr. Chopra departed for the Hillary Clinton campaign. Maybe he’ll be tasked to answer questions about the Clintons’ lucrative ties to Laureate.

According to the results of a public records request by Judicial Watch, Bill Clinton was paid $17.6 million to serve as Laureate’s “honorary chancellor” between 2010 and 2015. Laureate has also donated between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation. The company’s founder Doug Becker contributed $2,700 to Mrs. Clinton’s current presidential campaign. CONTINUE AT SITE

(JNS.org) A group of 90 U.S. military generals, including the only Holocaust survivor to become an American general, signed an open letter supporting Donald J. Trump for president on Tuesday.

The letter, which includes four four-star and 14 three-star flag officers, was organized by Major Gen. Sidney Shachnow and Rear Admiral Charles Williams. The two major issues that spurred the letter are opposition to the temperament accusation and national security.
“The beating that Trump is taking [by Hillary Clinton’s campaign] that he doesn’t have the temperament to be the commander-in-chief is erroneous,” Williams told JNS.org. “We wanted to get this out right now.”

Shachnow, a 40-year Army veteran who served as a Green Beret, was Commanding General of the U.S. Army Special Forces Command Airborne at Ft. Bragg. He’s the recipient of the Distinguished Service Medal. Williams served as Commanding Officer of five organizations throughout his career and received the Legion of Merit.

Williams’ colleagues, who have advised Trump privately, say the billionaire businessman listens 90 percent of the time and asks questions 10 percent. “He grasps the concept then moves onto the next issue, which is what a CEO and leader does,” Williams said.

For many in the military community, national security is the biggest concern and in conversations with numerous peers, Williams said many were willing, and continue to be willing, to sign their names to the open letter supporting Trump.

“If you don’t have national security, you don’t have anything,” Williams said. “These guys have spent their lives in national security, the military is an extension of the State Department. They’ve been on the front lines. When you look at the world and what’s gone wrong, Hillary Clinton didn’t make the world any better. More of the same is not the answer.”

So far, Williams contacted 170 out of over 3,000 living retired admirals and generals. While 90 people have agreed to sign onto the letter so far, Williams said others told him they will vote for Trump but didn’t want to sign a public statement. Few expressed criticism of the letter, he said.

The group may do a second announcement after reaching out to more in the military community, Williams added. Tuesday’s letter is ahead of the Sept. 7 event where Clinton and Trump will appear in a first-ever “Commander-in-Chief Forum,” hosted by the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America in New York City. It will feature questions from NBC News and an audience made up of mostly military veterans and active service members.

For months, I have been arguing that Hillary Clinton should be impeached. It is all well and good to prosecute a former government official for any crimes she has committed. Indeed, the Constitution expressly provides for criminal prosecution in addition to impeachment. Nevertheless, for the Framers — and, if we had common sense, for us — the imperative was to deprive a corrupt person of any further opportunity to abuse government power. Whether the official should also be convicted and sent to prison was not unimportant but, in the greater scheme of things, decidedly secondary.

Interestingly, the main pushback I received upon positing this argument was not that Mrs. Clinton is undeserving of impeachment. That, of course, is a measure of the seriousness of her high crimes and misdemeanors: the e-mail scandal; the reckless mishandling of classified information that has surely exposed our national-defense secrets to hostile powers; the mass destruction of thousands of government records after Congress asked for them; the obstruction of government investigations; the serial lies to Congress and the public; the shocking failure to provide security for Americans stationed in Benghazi and the failure to attempt to rescue them during a terrorist siege; the lies to the American people and to the families of murdered American officials about the cause of the attack; the trumping up of a prosecution against the video producer scapegoated for the Benghazi attack; the Clinton Foundation corruption involving the sale of influence for donations, the favors done for shady benefactors at the expense of national security, and the use of the State Department as an arm of the Clinton pay-to-play enterprise.

No, the main objection to impeachment is the claim that, because the former secretary of state does not currently hold public office, there is nothing from which to remove her. Hence, as a non-incumbent who merely seeks the nation’s highest office — after proving herself manifestly unfit in a subordinate office — she is said to be immune from impeachment. How could she be impeached from the presidency, the question is posed, if she is not president? How could she be removed from an office she does not hold based on offenses not committed while wielding presidential power?

These questions and the non-incumbency theory behind them fundamentally misconstrue the constitutional remedy of impeachment, which is not limited to removal from power but includes disqualification from future office. Moreover, their premise is wrong: The proceeding against Clinton would not be a presidential impeachment; it would be an impeachment based on her abuses of power as secretary of state, which would have the constitutional effect of disqualifying her for the presidency.

The Constitution does not limit impeachment to incumbent officials. Article I endows the House of Representatives with the “sole Power of Impeachment” — i.e., the power to file articles of impeachment. It further empowers the Senate with “the sole Power to try all Impeachments.” Significantly, in prescribing the standard for conviction in the Senate, Article I, Section 3 states that “no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two-thirds of the Members present” (emphasis added).

It literally is impossible to write quickly enough to stay abreast of the scandals engulfing Hillary Rodham Clinton.

After a delightful visit with my family and friends in southern California, I sat down at Los Angeles International Airport late Thursday night to await my flight back to New York City. I planned to write a recap of just last week’s news regarding Hillary’s e-mails, the Clinton Foundation, and several of President Obama’s policies that Clinton backs.

I jotted down a simple outline, to which I since have added a few details:

1. Gilbert Chagoury: The Lebanese/Nigerian businessman gave $1 million to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation and pledged $1 billion more. The foundation’s Doug Band contacted Hillary’s top aide, Huma Abedin, to arrange a meeting for Chagoury with the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon. The Los Angeles Times now reports that Chagoury “was pulled off a private jet in Teterboro, N.J., and questioned for four hours because he was on the Department of Homeland Security’s no-fly list. He was subsequently removed from the list and categorized as a ‘selectee,’ meaning he can fly but receives extra scrutiny.” Why? A “Homeland Security document shows agents citing unspecified suspicions of links to terrorism, which can include financing extremist organizations.” He later was denied entry visas because “the U.S. put Chagoury in its database used to screen travelers for possible links to terrorism.”

2. Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, which Hillary Clinton supports, reportedly includes secret side agreements that permit the ayatollahs to cheat on how much enriched uranium they can produce and how many radiation “hot rooms” they can operate. Codifying Tehran’s violations of this agreement made it easier for Obama to end sanctions, unfreeze Iran’s assets, and surge billions of dollars into the hands of Earth’s biggest state sponsor of radical Islamic terrorism.

All Never Trump conservatives maintain that their decision to never vote for Donald Trump is guided by their principles. I have no doubt that this is true.

But some of them — though by no means all — seem to imply, or at least may think, that conservatives who vote for Trump have abandoned their principles. Indeed, the charge of compromising on principle is explicitly leveled at Republican politicians and members of the Republican “establishment” who support Trump.

I cannot speak for all conservatives who are voting for Trump, but I can speak for many in making this assertion:

We have the same principles as the Never Trumpers — especially those of us who strongly opposed nominating Trump; that’s why we opposed him, after all. So almost everything that prevents Never Trumpers from voting for Trump also troubled us about the candidate. (I should note that some are less troubled today.)

So where do we differ?

We differ on this: We hold that defeating Hillary Clinton, the Democrats, and the Left is also a principle. And that it is the greater principle.

Obviously, the Never Trumpers do not believe that. On the contrary, some of the most thoughtful Never Trumpers repeatedly tell us that the nation can survive four years of Hillary Clinton–Democrat rule. And then, they say, conservatism will have cleansed itself and be able to take back the nation after four calamitous years of a Hillary Clinton presidency — whereas if Trump wins, he will be the de facto face of conservatism, and then conservatism will have been dealt a potentially fatal setback.

This argument assumes that America can survive another four years of Democratic rule.

So, it really depends on what “survive” means. If it means that there will be a country called the United States of America after another four years of a Democratic presidency and a left-wing Supreme Court for quite possibly another four decades (as well as dozens of lifetime appointments to the equally important lower federal courts), the country will surely survive.

But I do not believe that the country will surely survive as the country it was founded to be. In that regard we are at the most perilous tipping point of American history.

It is true that the country’s survival was threatened in the 1860s, and only a terrible civil war kept it whole. But, with the colossal and awful exception of slavery, neither side challenged the founding principles of America.

Donald Trump demonstrated true chutzpah in accepting an invitation from Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to meet with him.

On August 31, 2016 Trump met Peña Nieto just hours before addressing an enthusiastic crowd of supporters in Arizona where he laid out his ten-point plan to address the immigration crisis that impacts so many of the challenges and threats that America faces today.

It was politically courageous for Trump to meet with the Mexican President. After nearly eight years of the feckless Obama administration, his demonstration of strength and focus at that meeting was refreshing.

Peña Nieto has compared Trump to Hitler and Mussolini, and Trump has, for the past year, made it clear that he opposed the policies of the Mexican government that have resulted in so many criminals, gangs and narcotics flowing from Mexico into the United States.

The meeting was a gamble but it paid off. As President John F. Kennedy said during his inaugural address,

“So let us begin anew–remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”

While President Kennedy was referencing the ongoing tensions with the former Soviet Union and our relationship with Mexico is hardly as adversarial as was our relationship with the USSR, Mexico is separated from the United States by the longest border that divides the First World from the Third World, thus creating huge economic pressures on that border.

Mexico is an important trade partner of the United States. However, a huge component of that trade is illegal and involves illegal aliens, narcotics, weapons and money flowing across the border in violation of our laws.

The Clinton Presidential Center sits near Interstate 30. It is located at 1200 President Clinton Ave in Little Rock, Arkansas. A mere 1,200 miles from the posh digs of the Clintons in Chappaqua, New York.

Little Rock advertises a “Billgrimage” to visit Bill Clinton’s roots in Little Rock, but the Clintons have gotten what they wanted out of Arkansas and Little Rock. And the Clinton Presidential Center.

They’ve moved on to bigger things since.

There isn’t much to do at the Clinton Presidential Center, an awkward glass building shaped like a bus that looks like it’s about to fall into the Arkansas River, but like the equally precarious political fortunes of the Clintons, never quite does.

There are exhibits of Bill’s rise to power. And there’s a gift shop offering a copy of GQ autographed by him for a mere $350, a bronze bust of him for only $29.95 and a t-shirt with the words, “I Miss Bill.”

But how can you miss somebody who never goes away?

They might miss Bill in Little Rock, which he left behind for wealthier places where he can mingle with those who can do far more to advance his career than the locals. Instead they have to make do with Buffalo Blue Cheeseburger at Forty Two, the Clinton Presidential Center’s restaurant, which also offers catering services.

If there’s one thing you can be sure of when it comes to the Clintons, they never miss an angle.

The Clinton Presidential Center website is just a gateway to the network of Clinton Foundation sites. The white banner and menu of the Clinton Foundation is meant to lure visitors in first.

And that’s appropriate, since the Center began as a front for the Foundation.

It’s become a tradition for presidents to have their own libraries. Bill Clinton wanted to raise a modest $200 million for his glass shoebox on President Clinton Avenue. But he had to settle for $165 million.

A lot of the money came from abroad. The Saudis ponied up millions. Clinton’s former FBI director described him begging for a donation to his library from Prince Abdullah during a meeting asking the Saudis to give the FBI access to suspects in a terror attack which had killed 19 Americans.

“Bill Clinton raised the subject only to tell the crown prince that he understood the Saudi’s reluctance to cooperate, and then he hit Abdullah up for a contribution to the Clinton Presidential Library,” he wrote.

The Clintons always have their priorities.

The election of Hillary Clinton would mean final defeat for American conservativism — for at least a generation and almost certainly for much longer than that. The demographic changes certain to flow from eight more years of open borders, general amnesty, and distribution of the newly arrived statist voters to electorally vulnerable states would make the Left’s presidential victory this fall, for all practical purposes, permanent.

And that’s without considering the effect on the electorate of the increasingly intolerant and repressive educational and political environment, an environment that for eight more years would continue driving substantial segments of the populace, especially the vulnerable young, into the ever more mandatory belief systems of the Left.

But don’t worry: After Clinton’s election the elegant and witty columns of George Will, William Kristol and Jonah Goldberg, aided by the surpassing political skills of the Bush and Romney families, will save us all from both these calamities, and from all the other unnamed ones that Hillary and the Left will bring.

Uh, maybe not.

If Clinton prevails there will be no conservative (or Republican) president during the lifetime of any adult member of the feckless Republican royal families, or of Mr. Goldberg or the children of George Will or William Kristol. Their prediction that the presidency will be recovered in short order is a pipe dream. Over the medium term, twenty to twenty-five years, that recovery would approach demographic impossibility.

Despite the inarguable magnitude of the coming Clinton/Left disaster, Republican/conservative turncoats, led by these and other members of what Peggy Noonan aptly terms the “protected classes,” are working for Clinton’s election.

In unalloyed self-destructive irrationality, the support of Hillary Clinton by Never Trump commentators and Republican politicians is sui generis.

Never before in American history have intellectual and political leaders of a major party deliberately attempted to open the gates of enduring power to an enemy sworn to their eradication.

Are they moved by general snobbery, confusion caused by overwork, East Coast social pressure? I’ve stopped trying to figure it out and stopped caring.

But on a different level, on the level of their own personal careers and perceived short-term well-being, I’m absolutely certain what they think:

“We’ll do fine under Clinton and the Left. Under Obama we’ve experienced all of what Clinton will bring and we’ve flourished. Under Clinton we’ll do it again. We’ll continue speaking out, politely and carefully of course, and they won’t touch us; we won’t lose our jobs, our children won’t be expelled, there’ll be no unpleasant changes in our expensive neighborhoods or our children’s toney private schools, we’ll drink with the same refined people in our clubs and cocktail parties. Through it all, we’ll continue making an excellent living as the articulate opposition to the wretchedness the Left will be imposing on the American working and middle classes. The little people, the unprotected people, will endure the downside — low wages, high taxes, unsafe and decaying neighborhoods, destroyed public schools, and violent racial animosity. We’ll be the Left’s safe and well paid critics.”

What an appalling betrayal of the vast majority of Main Street voters who elected two Bush Presidents and made conservative intellectuals ‘cushy lives possible!

This is clear: Trump’s defeat, if it occurs, will be the work of the NeverTrumps.