By C. Boyden Gray and Elise Passamani

In the wake of FBI Director James Comey’s decision to reopen the Hillary Clinton email probe, there has been an explosion of Clinton and media criticism alleging that the investigation could influence the outcome of the election. And at a rally in Florida on Saturday, Secretary Clinton emphatically charged that Comey’s action was “unprecedented.”

Contrary to her claim, she herself contributed to an even bigger influence on an election: the October surprise four days before Election Day in 1992 that helped then-Gov. Bill Clinton defeat then-President George H.W. Bush. This event was the last-minute indictment of Caspar Weinberger, which the Clintons and the press turned into an indictment of Bush. (The prosecutor himself later claimed credit for having affected the outcome of the election.)

As the 1992 race drew to a close, the polls tightened dramatically, and, in spite of the presence of third-party spoiler Ross Perot, it looked as though Bush would pull it off and win reelection.

Then things started to get strange. Out of the blue, Bill Clinton spent a full day early in the last week of the campaign aggressively accusing George Bush of being a liar. This marked a dramatic shift in the tone of his campaigning. The New York Times took note and described how a stump speech Clinton gave in Louisville, Ky., “marked the climax of a day devoted to the Clinton campaign’s most concentrated effort to date to turn against Mr. Bush the issue of trust that the Republicans had used against Mr. Clinton.”

In Louisville, Clinton said, “Every time Bush talks about trust, it makes chills run up and down my spine.” He also added, “The very idea that the word ‘trust’ could come out of Mr. Bush’s mouth, after what he’s done to this country and the way he’s trampled on the truth, is a travesty of the American political system.” At a different rally, in Houston, Clinton told his supporters, “There’s just no such thing as truth when it comes to him.” And Clinton claimed on NBC’s Today show, “he has gotten away with the most flagrant distortions of the truth in this campaign that I have ever seen.” These attacks seemingly came out of nowhere.

For evidence, Clinton quoted editorials from the New York Times, Sacramento Bee, Portland Oregonian, and Minneapolis Star-Tribune that argued that Bush couldn’t be trusted. Essentially, the New York Times reported that Bill Clinton reported that the New York Times reported that Bush was a liar. That evening on Larry King Live, King asked Clinton directly, “Are you calling the president a liar?” to which Clinton replied, “I’m reading what these newspapers said.” Per his own admission, Clinton and the newspapers were working in tandem.

Given that Bush was known for his sterling character and Clinton was known as “Slick Willie,” it was a bold move for Clinton to do this. The media tried to give a rational explanation for Clinton’s accusations. They claimed that his feelings had been hurt by mean Bush political ads. The Times explained, “Mr. Clinton, …read more

Via:: American Conservative

By Patrick J. Buchanan

After posting Friday’s column, “A Presidency from Hell,” about the investigations a President Hillary Clinton would face, by afternoon it was clear I had understated the gravity of the situation.

Networks exploded with news that FBI Director James Comey had informed Congress he was reopening the investigation into Clinton’s email scandal, which he had said in July had been concluded.

“Bombshell” declared Carl Bernstein. The stock market tumbled. “October surprise!” came the cry.

The only explanation, it seemed, was that the FBI had uncovered new information that could lead to a possible indictment of the former secretary of state, who by then could be the president of the United States.

By Sunday, we knew the source of the eruption.

Huma Abedin, Clinton’s top aide, sent thousands of emails to the private laptop she shared with husband Anthony Weiner, a.k.a. Carlos Danger, who is under FBI investigation for allegedly sexting with a 15-year-old girl.

The Weiner-Abedin laptop contains 650,000 emails.

The FBI has not yet reviewed Abedin’s emails, and they could turn out to be duplicates of those the FBI has already seen, benign, or not relevant to the investigation of Clinton.

But it does appear that Abedin misled the FBI when she told them all communications devices containing State Department work product were turned over to State when she departed in 2013.

Clinton, understandably, was stunned and outraged by Comey’s letter. For it casts a cloud of suspicion over her candidacy by raising the possibility that the FBI director could reverse his decision of July, and recommend her prosecution.

By Monday, October 31, new problems had arisen, some potentially crippling or possibly lethal to a Clinton presidency.

Reporters have unearthed a near-mutiny inside the FBI over the decision to shut down the investigation of the Clinton email scandal and Comey’s recommendation of no prosecution.

Andrew McCabe, No. 2 at the FBI, has come under anonymous fire from inside the bureau as one of those most reluctant to pursue aggressively any investigations of the Clintons.

McCabe’s wife, in a 2015 state senate race in Virginia, received $475,000 in PAC contributions from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime friend and major fundraiser for Bill and Hillary Clinton.

After the Senate race that McCabe’s wife lost, he was promoted from No. 3 at the FBI to No. 2, where he has far more influence over decisions to investigate and recommend prosecution.

Justice Department higher-ups under Attorney General Loretta Lynch apparently disagreed with Comey notifying Congress, and the nation, to new developments in the email scandal. Yet Comey had given his word to Congress that he would do so.

In the Southern District of New York, which has jurisdiction over the Weiner sexting investigation, FBI agents have reportedly been blocked from opening an investigation into charges of corruption in the Clinton Foundation.

This follows revelations that corporate chiefs and foreign rulers and regimes, hit up for contributions to the Clinton Foundation, were then urged by an ex-Clinton aide to provide six-figure speaking fees for Bill Clinton.

This follows reports the Clinton Foundation took contributions for victims of natural disasters, and awarded …read more

Via:: American Conservative

By William Bennett Iit’s time for all sides to unite to defeat the Democrats, at the top, middle and bottom of the ballot. …read more

Via:: Fox Opines

By Daniel Larison

Joe Biden is reportedly being considered for Secretary of State in a Clinton administration:

Joe Biden is at the top of the internal short list Hillary Clinton’s transition team is preparing for her pick to be secretary of state, a source familiar with the planning tells POLITICO.

If Biden is on such a list, I doubt he is at the top of it, and my guess is that he wouldn’t be the nominee in any case. There are other likely choices, including Victoria Nuland, that would be a better fit with Clinton and would be even more likely to share her foreign policy priorities. Kelley Vlahos reported earlier this year on Nuland’s record:

Where will Victoria Nuland be after January? Nuland is one of Hillary Clinton’s protégés at the State Department, and she is also greatly admired by hardline Republicans. This suggests she would be easily approved by Congress as secretary of state or maybe even national-security adviser—which in turn suggests that her foreign-policy views deserve a closer look.

If Nuland can be considered a Clinton protege, Biden is more of a rival. During the first Obama term, Biden and Clinton were frequently on opposing sides of internal foreign policy debates, and in his 2015 announcement that he wouldn’t run for president Biden offered what I took to be a rebuke of Clinton’s more aggressive foreign policy positioning:

We have to accept the fact that we can’t solve all of the world’s problems. We can’t solve many of them alone.

The argument that we just have to do something when bad people do bad things isn’t good enough. It’s not a good enough reason for American intervention and to put our sons and daughters’ lives on the line, put them at risk.

Probably their most significant disagreement was over intervention in Libya: Clinton was a major supporter, and Biden saw no compelling reason for the U.S. to intervene. Biden has a fairly hawkish record over the last twenty years, but even he couldn’t see why the U.S. should get involved there. As recently as June, he was publicly claiming vindication for opposing an intervention that Clinton touts as “smart power at its best.” I don’t see why she would want Biden as her Secretary of State, and I definitely don’t see why he would want to serve in her administration.

…read more

Via:: American Conservative

By Gregg Jarrett The disclosure by FBI Director James Comey that new evidence has been discovered in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails… has hit the presidential election like a political tsunami. …read more

Via:: Fox Opines

By Daniel Larison

Both major party candidates claim to favor creating safe zones in Syria. John Ford describes some of the many problems with this idea:

Matters are further complicated by how rebel forces would react to the creation of safe zones. Areas of Syria protected from the Assad regime by western military forces would attract rebel groups, who would seek to use these areas as shelter from the fighting or to establish bases from which they could launch attacks without fear of reprisal. If rebel groups gather in the safe zones it would only increase the risk that Assad would try to launch attacks into safe zones. This would increase the need for U.S. military forces to protect safe zones – a commitment that could require 30 thousand ground troops according to some estimates.

None of this would necessarily be insurmountable were it not for the presence of Russian military forces in Syria.

Since Russian forces are present in the country, that makes the creation of safe zones potentially even riskier than it would otherwise be. Retaliating against Syrian government forces that attack a safe zone runs the risk of killing Russian personnel with all of the dangers that come from a crisis with Russia. Even if Russian forces weren’t there, a safe zone would still require a substantial number of soldiers on the ground to protect it, and very few governments would be willing to put their soldiers in such an unenviable position and given such a thankless task. In order for safe zones to remain secure, they would have to be kept as neutral sites so that anti-regime groups couldn’t exploit the protection afforded to them to launch attacks, but the many governments that back various rebel groups would not accept that condition and would try to have it both ways. Civilians would likely still come under attack, but in the process the U.S. would also be drawn deeper into the conflict.

Clinton has said many times that she won’t send U.S. ground troops into Syria, and she has also said that she wants to establish safe zones. It is extremely unlikely that the latter can be done without also doing the former, but because Clinton has largely been given a pass on her foreign policy views and because foreign policy as been so neglected in this campaign the public has rarely heard anything about this. In order for safe zones to do what they are intended to do, the U.S. would have to risk conflict with Russia, as Ford says later:

Safe zones have a superficial appeal to western policymakers who want to protect civilians but are afraid of the consequences of deeper engagement in Syria. The appeal is illusory. True safe zones would create the risk of a wider war with Russia.

Calling for the creation of safe zones seems innocuous enough, and it also allows politicians to claim that they are in favor of “doing more” in Syria without appearing to be overly aggressive. Clinton is on record supporting this measure, but …read more

Via:: American Conservative

By Matthew Robare

Baseball is a game of inches, but it is also a game of nostalgia. When Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore opened in the 1992 season it set off a wave of retro ballpark construction in the Major Leagues. The multipurpose “cookie-cutter” parks with their huge outfields and artificial turf (so they could be used for football in the offseason), with names like Veterans Stadium and Memorial Stadium, were obsolete and out of fashion overnight. As a result, after Fenway Park (1912) and Wrigley Field (1914), the oldest ballpark in the Major Leagues is Dodger Stadium, which opened in 1962.

The retro parks are built only for baseball, on real grass, and use many of the materials and strange configurations of the old parks, such as exposed brick and jutting corners for weird bounces, like AT&T Park’s “Triples Alley”. The New York Mets’ new home, Citi Field, even recreated part of the facade of long vanished Ebbetts Field for its Jackie Robinson Rotunda.

A traditional ballpark has a personality of its own and, occasionally, its owner. When Bill Veeck owned the Cleveland Indians in the 1940s, he altered Municipal Stadium’s dimensions regularly to favor the Tribe. Braves Field in Boston was built with a huge outfield in order to increase the number of triples hit.

Baseball teams and their parks also end up reflecting their cities—after all, the reason old ballparks like Fenway have their quirks is because they were built to fit in city blocks and Boston has some strange streets. In a similar way, several writers believe that Babe Ruth was sold to the Yankees as much because he couldn’t stomach Boston’s puritanical culture as Red Sox owner Harry Frazee’s money troubles.

Baseball has also brought cities together in a way not often seen in other sports. The 1968 Detroit Tigers were credited with calming the city after the race riot in 1967 and the unrest following the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert F. Kennedy. The ’77 Yankees and 2013 Red Sox are similarly credited with bringing their cities together at difficult times. The strong emotional bond between a city and a team feed into a city’s sense of place.

Last year Rod Dreher visited Siena and wrote about how within the walls each contrade, or ward, competes with every other one in the annual Palio horse race. They all have their own hymns, yet all are set to the same tune, the same one for the whole city when competing with other cities. A similar thing happens with baseball teams—it becomes the city versus all comers instead of one faction among many. Things might be said to go from “my city” to “Our bleeping city”.

But all is not as it seems.

Baseball stadiums are expensive to build and urban property prices have always been high, especially considering the amount of parking needed to accommodate 40,000 people. As a result, teams want public financing, tax abatements, and all the other ills that crony capitalism promotes. Paid for with …read more

Via:: American Conservative

By Liz Peek Can money buy an election? Hillary Clinton better hope so. …read more

Via:: Fox Opines

By Keith Ablow Halloween is a kind way for children to confront, in fantasy, real doubts and fears we all share. It creates a waking dreamland in which the dark is populated with nothing worse than cartoon-like characters, death is a costume party with free candy, and horrible beings are just the-kids-up-the-street in disguise. …read more

Via:: Fox Opines