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Ruth King

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Michael Copeman President Hillary’s First Year

By on November 3rd, 2016

Our resident soothsayer has examined the entrails of the US presidential campaign, now in its final days, and laid out his prophecies. While some might seem highly unlikely, there can be no doubt the Clinton Foundation’s coffers will swell mightily.
Barring the FBI’s various and ongoing investigations, the US seems likely to elect its first female President next week. What do deplorable basket-case right-wingers have to look forward to, should Republican contender Donald Trump’s last-minute firming in the polls prove stillborn? Let’s peer into the crystal ball.

January’s inaugural speech will begin with the sound of tinkling as the glass ceiling finally shatters and disintegrates, showering the assembled glitterati with extra sparkle. Ms Clinton will likely say she will strive to be a President for all Americans, especially transgender Islamists and anyone else who contributes generously to the Clinton Foundation.

By February she will be back in her snowy hometown of Chicago to lay a foundation stone for the city’s new desalination plant, which the Windy City doesn’t actually need as it is located on the shores of Lake Michigan. But that doesn’t mean much in Cook County, where public works projects and budgets have always been regarded as the treasury of the connected. Why, even grandmas get in on the act!

In March, Hillary hits Laredo, on the Mexican border, to open her fast-track, solar-powered mass immigration travelator, installed across the Rio Grande to safely bring in ten of thousands of new Americans per hour. “As racist imperialists stole Texas in the first place, the day has come never again to vex a Mex.” The new arrivals will be added to the electoral rolls without delay, especially in congressional districts now occupied by Republicans.

In early April, she will personally greet walkers in the Million Grandma March in Washington. Hubby Bill will welcome many of the assembled grannies with warm and enthusiastic hugs — mostly, but not exclusively, of the non-staining variety.

Come May, Hillary will be in Nevada to pull the plug on the no-longer-mighty mighty Hoover Dam. As she presses the button to demolish the dam wall, Hillary asks “Who are we to stop this mighty river from doing as Gaia intended?” Later that day, in order to re-assure Las Vegas residents that their city will still light the night with its neon incandesence now that the hydro power is no more, she opens the nation’s first urine-powered turbine.

In June, Hillary visits US troops as they leave Germany to make way for the new Islamist peace-keeping force. “Ich bin eine halal Frankfurter!” she says to thunderous applause. Mysteriously large sums, denominated in Gulf State petro dollars, pour into the Clinton Foundation’s coffers. The only down note comes when she regrets daughter Chelsea will be unable to attend New Year’s revelries at Cologne Station, but nevertheless wishes all participants the very best for that celebration of multicultural enrichment.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Cops and Islamists A federal judge makes it harder for the NYPD to deal with terror.

By on November 3rd, 2016

“With this ruling, Judge Haight contributes to the slander of one of the world’s most professional police forces and encourages anti-cop activists to escalate their demands—all while making it more difficult to keep New Yorkers safe from attack.”

This week a federal judge fed the myth of a New York City police department bent on violating the rights of innocent Muslims by unlawfully spying on them.

Senior District Judge Charles Haight did so in an extraordinary ruling rejecting a settlement that Mayor Bill de Blasio had reached with liberal activists and Muslim groups. Though the settlement was good enough for the progressives, somehow it wasn’t for Judge Haight. He’s ordered them to return with an agreement that would give the court and a civilian appointee more authority over how police operate.

Never mind that the judge’s decision is mostly based on a politicized inspector general’s report that never found evidence of the widespread spying on innocent Muslims that was alleged. Or that most of the “violations” in this same report had to do with timetables and deadlines, not spying. The judge nonetheless ruled the cops were guilty of “near-systemic violations” of the so-called Handschu guidelines—which date from a 1985 settlement approved by Judge Haight in a class-action suit originally involving the Black Panthers and Communists.

Lost in this legal fog is the truth that the program at issue was never about Muslim “surveillance.” This was about the police gathering intelligence that would help them identify places and neighborhoods where a terrorist might seek a job, a meal or a place to crash. Such information would have come in handy if, say, the Tsarnaev brothers, after bombing the 2013 Boston Marathon, had made their way to New York City to bomb Times Square as they’d planned.

It speaks to the real agenda that one of the activist demands included in the earlier settlement was that the NYPD would purge from its website a 2007 report called “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat.” The activists claimed the report was being used to justify discriminatory surveillance on Muslims. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Secret Recordings Fueled FBI Feud in Clinton Probe Agents thought they had enough material to merit aggressively pursuing investigation into Clinton Foundation By Devlin Barrett and Christopher M. Matthews

By on November 3rd, 2016

Secret recordings of a suspect talking about the Clinton Foundation fueled an internal battle between FBI agents who wanted to pursue the case and corruption prosecutors who viewed the statements as worthless hearsay, people familiar with the matter said.

Agents, using informants and recordings from unrelated corruption investigations, thought they had found enough material to merit aggressively pursuing the investigation into the foundation that started in summer 2015 based on claims made in a book by a conservative author called “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,” these people said.

The account of the case and resulting dispute comes from interviews with officials at multiple agencies.
Starting in February and continuing today, investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and public-corruption prosecutors became increasingly frustrated with each other, as often happens within and between departments. At the center of the tension stood the U.S. attorney for Brooklyn, Robert Capers, who some at the FBI came to view as exacerbating the problems by telling each side what it wanted to hear, these people said. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Capers declined to comment.

The roots of the dispute lie in a disagreement over the strength of the case, these people said, which broadly centered on whether Clinton Foundation contributors received favorable treatment from the State Department under Hillary Clinton.

Senior officials in the Justice Department and the FBI didn’t think much of the evidence, while investigators believed they had promising leads their bosses wouldn’t let them pursue, they said.

These details on the probe are emerging amid the continuing furor surrounding FBI Director James Comey’s disclosure to Congress that new emails had emerged that could be relevant to a separate, previously closed FBI investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement while she was secretary of state.

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama took the unusual step of criticizing the FBI when asked about Mr. Comey’s disclosure of the emails. CONTINUE AT SITE

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

ZOA Op-Ed: A Troubling Silence about Anti-Semitism at the University of Michigan Susan B. Tuchman, Esq. and Morton A. Klein

By on November 3rd, 2016

For many Jewish students at the University of Michigan, their celebration of the Jewish New Year was unjustly marred by feelings of pain and ostracism. On Rosh Hashanah, a campus group called “Students Allied for Freedom and Equality” (SAFE) erected a so-called “apartheid” wall and mock Israeli checkpoints on the Diag, in the center of the campus. As one Jewish student described it, the wall falsely depicted Israel as an apartheid state, and falsely painted the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces as vicious murderers.

Many Jewish students expressed how hurt, offended and marginalized they felt by SAFE’s actions. SAFE unapologetically justified them, claiming that the group’s goal was “to start the conversation about the oppression of Palestinians under occupation.” If that were true, then SAFE would have scheduled its anti-Israel demonstration on a day when Jewish students could be part of the conversation. Instead, as SAFE undoubtedly knew, many Jewish students were observing the holiday, either on campus or elsewhere, and were thus denied the opportunity to stand up for their Jewish homeland in dialogue with others in the campus community.

Over 1100 students signed a petition urging University President Mark Schlissel to speak out. In addition, four national organizations, including the Simon Weisenthal Center and StandWithUS, co-signed the Zionist Organization of America’s (ZOA) letter to President Schlissel, urging him to issue a statement condemning SAFE for erecting its “apartheid” wall and mock checkpoints on a Jewish holy day. While SAFE had the legal right to hold its demonstration on Rosh Hashanah, it was important for President Schlissel to acknowledge that SAFE’s actions had hurt members of the Jewish community and made them feel excluded.
Students, parents, donors, alumni, the regents, and members of the community should be asking President Schlissel why he seemingly takes the feelings and concerns of Jewish students less seriously than the concerns of other students who have felt hurt and marginalized on campus.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Israel Concerned over Rising Russian Military Role in the Region Asharq Al-Awsat see note by Janet Levy

By on November 3rd, 2016

From e-pal Janet Levy :”Russia’s growing military presence in the Middle East coupled with its long-standing support for the Arab-Palestinians at the U.N. has Israeli leaders deeply troubled. Recently, Russia added ground troops, aircraft, missiles and drones to its arsenal in the region and will soon deliver the S-300 and S-400 missile systems to Egypt, Syria and Iran. To make matters worse, they have threatened to target any entity that threatens Russian or Syrian forces. Also disturbing is the fact that Russian leadership had the temerity to characterize Israel’s response to the UNESCO resolution denying any Jewish and Christian ties to the Temple Mount as “emotional and unjustified.” (Christians take note: Your holy sites are in jeopardy. Not supporting Jews and Israel is suicidal).It appears that the Jewish State has jumped from the “frying pan to the fire.”

“Tel Aviv- Israeli-Russian relations have witnessed tension because of the

growing Russian military existence in Syria and the Mediterranean and the
continuous Russian support for the Palestinian cause at the United Nations.

Political sources in Tel Aviv said that PM Benjamin Netanyahu has conveyed
his concerns to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The subject was also
tackled during a meeting held between Russian and Israeli officials at the
Israeli Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.

Sources said that Netanyahu talked with Putin ten days ago, and requested
him to renew the conditions of the military coordination between them and to
refrain from supporting anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish resolutions at the U.N.

They said that Amir Eshel, the commander of the Israeli Air Force, also
visited Moscow to discuss military issues.

During their meetings, Israeli officials revealed their main political
concern, which is the possibility of voting on the Israeli-Palestinian issue
at the United Nations. According to a senior Israeli official, Tel Aviv has
declared that it opposes any intervention in the peace talks especially from
the Security Council.

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Atlantic Council Blames the West’s “Islamophobia”: Andrew Harrod

By on November 3rd, 2016

The Atlantic Council, founded in 1961 to encourage civic engagement in transatlantic security, is now blaming the West for “Islamophobia,” along with notorious Islam apologists like Karen Armstrong.

“What we want to do today is debunk myths,” stated Atlantic Council President Frederick Kempeat the Washington, DC, organization’s October 20 event “Islamophobia: Overcoming Myths and Engaging in a Better Conversation.” Yet the panelists merely offered hackneyed arguments diverting attention from current Islamist threats, casting disrepute on an Atlantic Council once founded to stimulate civic engagement in transatlantic security.

Vuslat Doðan Sabancý, publisher of the leading Turkish newspaper Hürriyet, dismissed any legitimate concerns about Islamic doctrine by stating that “Islamophobia…stems from phobia, which is a fear of the unknown.” British religion writer and notorious Islam apologist Karen Armstrong similarly spoke of a “phobia, an irrational fear, it is not based on reason, it is based on a gut feeling.” Blurring distinctions between critiquing a belief system like Islam and ethnic prejudice, Kempe discussed the “line between security concerns and racism.”

For Sabancý, the “answer is very simple. Let’s get rid of the phobia…let’s get to know each other,” yet her appeal for intercultural dialogue contained limits evoking “Islamophobia’s” totalitarian nature. “Freedom of speech is the backbone of democracy, but it should not be exercised at the cost of attacking one’s dignity, it should not be exercised at the cost of attacking one’s faith either, because dignity is also a human right,” she stated. This rather unusual position for a publisher paralleled Dr. Mehmet Aydin, former head of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet). He warned that when “saying nasty things about the prophet” Muhammad of Islam, “you have to be very careful…we have to respect the values of other cultures.”

The panelists exhibited no such concern for European security measures amidst millions of Muslim refugees overwhelming Europe with various economic and terrorism worries. “This is going to take its place in history as the most disgraceful human act,” Sabancý stated with reference to Europe’s new zeal for border barriers. “It doesn’t seem long ago, does it, when we were cheering because the Berlin wall was being torn down,” Armstrong contrasted.

Armstrong evoked ominous historical analogies of epochs in which “there have been these explosions of hatred of certain groups, just think of the Crusades,” where Crusaders “slaughtered Muslims with great joy.” This common slander (see President Barack Obama) of Crusaders as mere bloodthirsty aggressors preceded her trite Nazism invocation while discussing the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa calling for British writer Salman Rushdie’s death. At the time, she was “appalled by the way British intellectuals, the great and the good, segued away from a denunciation of the fatwa to an out and out denunciation of Islam itself. I said to myself we have learned nothing in Europe since the 1930s.”

Armstrong’s imagination somehow juxtaposed justifiable outrage in the United Kingdom and elsewhere at lethal Islamic blasphemy doctrine with the subsequent 1990s eruption of the Balkans bloodbath. “There were concentration camps again on the outskirts of Europe, this time with Muslims in them,” she stated. Apparently unaware of any Balkan wars, including the Ottoman Empire’s jihad conquests, she superficially described the prior history of a region “where Muslims, Jews, and Christians had coexisted amicably for centuries.”

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ISRAEL, POLITICS Comments turned off

JOINT STATEMENT FROM JASON DOV GREENBLATT AND DAVID FRIEDMAN, CO-CHAIRMEN OF THE ISRAEL ADVISORY COMMITTEE TO DONALD J. TRUMP

By on November 3rd, 2016

Each of these positions has been discussed with Mr. Trump and the Trump campaign, and most have been stated, in one form or another, by Mr. Trump in various interviews or speeches given by him or on his social media accounts. For those of you who are true friends of the State of Israel, and for those of you who believe that the State of Israel and the United States of America have an unbreakable friendship, we urge you to read the below….We would also like to express our gratitude to our friend, a great friend of the State of Israel, Donald J. Trump, who gave us the tremendous opportunity to serve in this capacity. May God bless the United States of America and the State of Israel.

The unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel is based upon shared values of democracy, freedom of speech, respect for minorities, cherishing life, and the opportunity for all citizens to pursue their dreams.
Israel is the state of the Jewish people, who have lived in that land for 3,500 years. The State of Israel was founded with courage and determination by great men and women against enormous odds and is an inspiration to people everywhere who value freedom and human dignity.
Israel is a staunch ally of the U.S. and a key partner in the global war against Islamic jihadism. Military cooperation and coordination between Israel and the U.S. must continue to grow.
The American people value our close friendship and alliance with Israel — culturally, religiously, and politically. While other nations have required U.S. troops to defend them, Israelis have always defended their own country by themselves and only ask for military equipment assistance and diplomatic support to do so. The U.S. does not need to nation-build in Israel or send troops to defend Israel.
The Memorandum of Understanding signed by the American and Israeli Governments is a good first step, but there is much more to be done. A Trump Administration will ensure that Israel receives maximum military, strategic and tactical cooperation from the United States, and the Memorandum of Understanding will not limit the support that we give. Further, Congress will not be limited to give support greater than that provided by the Memorandum of Understanding if it chooses to do so. Israel and the United States benefit tremendously from what each country brings to the table — the relationship is a two way street.
The U.S. should veto any United Nations votes that unfairly single out Israel and will work in international institutions and forums, including in our relations with the European Union, to oppose efforts to delegitimize Israel, impose discriminatory double standards against Israel, or to impose special labeling requirements on Israeli products or boycotts on Israeli goods.
The U.S. should cut off funds for the UN Human Rights Council, a body dominated by countries presently run by dictatorships that seem solely devoted to slandering the Jewish State. UNESCO’s attempt to disconnect the State of Israel from Jerusalem is a one-sided attempt to ignore Israel’s 3,000-year bond to its capital city, and is further evidence of the enormous anti-Israel bias of the United Nations.
The U.S. should view the effort to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) Israel as inherently anti-Semitic and take strong measures, both diplomatic and legislative, to thwart actions that are intended to limit commercial relations with Israel, or persons or entities doing business in Israeli areas, in a discriminatory manner. The BDS movement is just another attempt by the Palestinians to avoid having to commit to a peaceful co-existence with Israel. The false notion that Israel is an occupier should be rejected.
The Trump administration will ask the Justice Department to investigate coordinated attempts on college campuses to intimidate students who support Israel.

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Hillary and Her Enablers Have Made Their Bed, and Are Now Lying In It The only one Hillary and the Democrats can blame for this mess is Hillary herself. By Rich Lowry

By on November 2nd, 2016

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/441636/print

Before Democrats burn James Comey in effigy, they should think about how the FBI director came to have an outsized influence in the election in the first place.

It’s not something Comey sought or welcomed. A law-enforcement official who prizes his reputation, he didn’t relish becoming an object of hate for half the country or more. No, the only reason that Comey figures in the election at all is that Democrats knowingly nominated someone under FBI investigation.

Once upon a time — namely any presidential election prior to this one — this enormous political and legal vulnerability would have disqualified a candidate. Not this year, and not in the case of Hillary Clinton.

The country has clearly lowered its standards in this election, and Donald Trump’s madcap candidacy provides evidence of that almost every day. But Hillary’s nomination was itself an offense against American political norms and an incredibly reckless act. And the Democrats were supposed to be the party acting rationally.

Clinton effectively locked up the nomination in June and wasn’t cleared of criminal wrongdoing by the FBI until July. What if she had been indicted? Would Democrats have run her anyway? Would they have substituted in a 74-year-old socialist who had lost the nomination battle, or someone else who hadn’t even run? Any of these circumstances would have been unprecedented, but Democrats risked it.

They did it, in part, because they could never bring themselves to fully acknowledge the seriousness of the e-mail scandal and, relatedly, the ethical miasma around the Clinton Foundation. They considered it all another desperate trick of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

Clinton henchman David Brock demanded that the New York Times retract its initial report of Clinton’s exclusive use of a private e-mail account in March 2015. A parade of Democratic operatives pooh-poohed the whole thing, from Clinton spokesman Karen Finney (“a politically motivated series of attacks”), to James Carville (“not going to amount to a hill of beans”), to Howard Dean (“hooey”).

When they first got together on a debate stage last October, Bernie Sanders, the only man who had a chance to stop Clinton, pleased the crowd with a ringing denunciation of interest in her e-mails.

Democrats bought the just-so stories offered up by the Clinton campaign. The FBI investigation was just a “security review.” The FBI wasn’t investigating Hillary, but only her server. Anything to deflect from the seriousness of the matter.

While Democrats willfully looked the other way, they put James Comey in an impossible position. An indictment would change the course of American history. That was all on him. He ultimately blinked. But he also put on the record the recklessness of Clinton’s practices as secretary of state in an attempt to create public accountability.

Comey’s conduct is open to criticism, but there is no way to please everyone when handling an investigation with such high political stakes. His notification to Congress last weekend is another case in point. All that can be said is that if Democrats didn’t want the FBI to have any part in the election, they could have considered that before handing Hillary Clinton their nomination.

Trump may be a deeply flawed candidate, but he caught a wave of popular fervor; Hillary, with her astonishing vulnerabilities, is a production of the Democratic elites who did everything to get her over the finish line.

Just how vulnerable is she? If it weren’t for the new trove of Huma Abedin e-mails, the blockbuster news this week would come via a Wall Street Journal report that the FBI is investigating the Clinton Foundation — although Fox News reported the same thing at the beginning of the year, and Hillary, of course, dismissed it as an “unsourced and irresponsible claim that has no basis.”

The e-mail scandal and Clinton Foundation will dog Hillary until Election Day and, should she win, into her presidency. For this, she has no one to blame but herself — and her irresponsible enablers.

— Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review. He can be reached via e-mail: comments.lowry@nationalreview.com. © 2016 King Features Syndicate

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Never Trump Republicans: Spoilers or Saviors? If enough of them decide that Hillary’s corruption is too much to take, she could be finished, at last. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on November 2nd, 2016

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/441688/print

Will there be an eleventh-hour Never/Against/No Trump Reconsideration?

The question gains new relevance as a Hillary Clinton landslide, widely predicted until recently, now seems unlikely.

We are back to the razor’s edge, a likelihood of a close one- to three-point victory either way, and an even closer vote in the Electoral College. Once again, eyes focus on the Never Trump camp. It is at a crux, no doubt feeling schadenfreude that in extremis Donald Trump would beckon to them, of all people, with his “come home” campaign, while they are uneasy that his home-stretch themes, despite all the scary talk of a new exclusionary nationalism, nonetheless reflect most of the positions of their own mainstream conservatism.

The more inept Clinton, Inc. — shrill, ad hominem, and conspiratorial — becomes on the stump, oddly, the calmer Trump finally campaigns — again, prompting the question of whether enough Never or Against Trumpers will have second thoughts that might help Trump win close swing states such as North Carolina, Colorado, or Nevada. In other words, will watching the spiraling Clinton criminality and shamelessness finally drive some anti-Trump conservatives to hold their nose and vote Trump? Will enough conclude that a conservative in a swing state sitting out or voting for a symbolic candidate is a de facto sanction of an agenda that they have spent most of their lives opposing?

RELATED: The Case for Trump

Trump and Pence both have recently given impressive issues-orientated speeches. In contrast, an exasperated Hillary Clinton keeps resorting to Jimmy Carter’s 1980 tactic of demonizing the Republican nominee as dangerous, ill-tempered, and existentially reckless — without much interest in reminding supporters of the supposed benefits of her own progressive agenda. Her campaign is being reduced to unimaginative but familiar Clinton boilerplate: Trump is a bad guy, and the formerly sterling FBI director, James Comey, is now a corrupt Trump partisan. At the end, who thought that Trump would be subdued and campaigning on the issues, and the supposedly cool professional politico Clinton reduced to frenetic smears and conspiracies? Otherwise, Clinton apparently believes that, after her motor blew up this past weekend, the Democratic campaign boat can still coast to shore just ahead of a rapidly closing Trump. She could be right.

For all the talk of buffoonery versus criminality, the divide, at least in November 2016, is over issues and ostensibly could not be clearer for both conservatives and liberals.

On the Supreme Court, Obamacare, the debt, rebuilding the military, the Second Amendment, school choice, abortion, reforming the tax code, reexamining regulation, energy exploration and production, illegal immigration, sanctuary cities, and a host of other issues, the Republican ticket is the antithesis of Clinton/Kaine — and is recognized as such by nearly all progressives. Unlike the Democratic prospect, the conservative message oddly still has the chance of being empowered by both Houses of Congress and eventually a Supreme Court.

WikiLeaks, the DNC revelations, the FBI investigations, the Podesta trove, etc., all remind voters in this lowball campaign that Clinton is not a more moral and ethical candidate than Trump, whatever his flaws and shortcomings. And the world we glimpse in John Podesta e-mails is an accurate reflection of the values and interests that created and enriched the Clintons and that would continue their insidious influence in a second Clinton presidency. Remember that the Clinton remorse, such as it is, is not over graft and sabotage of the law and high office but merely over having their habitual corruption exposed. The weird case of Anthony Weiner’s e-mails completed the Clinton circle from immorality to farce, as hubris earned Nemesis — who, remember, always arrives late and in strange incarnations.

It is said that the election poses risks. In fact, in the sense of uncertainty, it does not, at least in the case of Hillary Clinton: There is no mystery at all. Her long record, campaign, published platform, and solidarity with Barack Obama would ensure a twelve-year era of continuing left-wing court appointees, as well as a likely single-payer rescue for the failed Obamacare, more debt incurred for entitlements, a shrinking and more politicized military, more efforts to prune the Second Amendment, no to school choice, expansion of abortion opportunities, more hidden higher taxes on the middle classes and more overt higher taxes on the upper-middle classes, more regulations on small business, more tribal divisiveness, open borders, sanctuary cities and amnesties, crony-green capitalism, and a continued war on fossil fuels. And, of course, there will be endless investigations, more ruined lives of obsequious subordinates, more attacks on prosecutors and the FBI, plea bargains, and scandals as leaks just keep leaking — and always more white lies like her recent false assertion that James Comey wrote his reinvestigation letter only to Republicans.

Clinton’s only remaining advantage is Democratic unity in comparison with the minority party’s fragmentation. Strangely, the supposedly idealist Bernie Sanders, who is the victim of deliberate Clinton-inspired sabotage and subterfuge, in a way that was not paralleled during the Republican primaries, has no compunction about rallying his base to support Hillary. In contrast, Trump’s uncouthness has turned off his rivals and their supporters, who still in large part insist that they will not support him despite the transparency of the primaries and the long-ago oath of fealty of the Republican candidates to the eventual nominee.

The election could depend on how many center-right Republican moderates and independents decide that Hillary’s left-wing visions of a 21st-century America and her innate criminality finally become too much to endure, and how many at last demand her retirement from politics.

If 300,000 to 400,00 apostates in three or four swing states feel that way over the weekend, and come home, she would be finished.

— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The Savior Generals.

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The Clinton E-mails Are Critical to the Clinton Foundation Investigation Why is Lynch rushing the search for classified e-mails but blocking the pay-to-play corruption probe? By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on November 2nd, 2016

The Wall Street Journal’s report that, for over a year, the FBI has been investigating the Clinton Foundation for potential financial crimes and influence peddling is, as Rich Lowry said Monday, a blockbuster. As I argued over the weekend, the manner in which the State Department was put in the service of the Foundation during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary is shocking. It is suggestive of a pattern of pay-to-play bribery, the monetizing of political influence, fraud, and obstruction of justice that the Justice Department should be investigating as a possible RICO conspiracy under the federal anti-racketeering laws.

The Journal’s Devlin Barrett buries the Clinton Foundation lede in the 14th paragraph of his report. Even more astonishing are his final three paragraphs:

In September, agents on the foundation case asked to see the emails contained on nongovernment laptops that had been searched as part of the Clinton email case, but that request was rejected by prosecutors at the Eastern District of New York, in Brooklyn. Those emails were given to the FBI based on grants of partial immunity and limited-use agreements, meaning agents could only use them for the purpose of investigating possible mishandling of classified information.

Some FBI agents were dissatisfied with that answer, and asked for permission to make a similar request to federal prosecutors in Manhattan, according to people familiar with the matter. [FBI Deputy Director Andrew] McCabe, these people said, told them no and added that they couldn’t “go prosecutor-shopping.”

Not long after that discussion, FBI agents informed the bureau’s leaders about the Weiner laptop, prompting Mr. Comey’s disclosure to Congress and setting off the furor that promises to consume the final days of a tumultuous campaign.

Let me unpack this.

Readers are unlikely to know that the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn is not just any United States attorney’s office. It is the office that was headed by Attorney General Loretta Lynch until President Obama elevated her to attorney general less than two years ago.

It was in the EDNY that Ms. Lynch first came to national prominence in 1999, when she was appointed U.S. attorney by President Bill Clinton — the husband of the main subject of the FBI’s investigations with whom Lynch furtively met in the back of a plane parked on an Arizona tarmac days before the announcement that Mrs. Clinton would not be indicted. Obama reappointed Lynch as the EDNY’s U.S. attorney in 2010. She was thus in charge of staffing that office for nearly six years before coming to Main Justice in Washington. That means the EDNY is full of attorneys Lynch hired and supervised.

When we learn that Clinton Foundation investigators are being denied access to patently relevant evidence by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, those are the prosecutors — Loretta Lynch’s prosecutors — we are talking about.

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