If you believe the email mix-up excuse, you're a fool. They delayed the release because the Presidential debate started at 9pm the night the release was due. If they did the release on time, stories about the release would have been mixed in with the debate stories and gotten a huge audience. By doing the release right after the debate instead, they get a more limited audience and also changed the topic from the debate.
The timing would be pretty close, too, but if the release had happened properly the Trump campaign might have been able to review it before the debate and unleash some devastating attacks during the debate.
I'd rather have Trump, the classic "ugly American" who is quintessentially American, wealthy but unpolished, sincere but undiplomatic... than a corrupt elitist like Hillary. And that's before we begin to discuss whether Hillary is even capable of filling the role of President for 4 years. She can't even manage a diplomatic trip to Mexico during her campaign, and she's afraid to take questions from the press before any stupid blunders she makes as President.
I'll post my notes here. I probably won't try to liveblog it. So far, the pre-game show is that moderators will try to "fact-check" the candidates, which is media-speak for trying to help Clinton like Candy Crowley helped Obama with Benghazi. It turned out that Crowley was wrong, and Obama was wrong, and Romney was right. So my advice is to ignore any instant fact-checks as presumptively biased. Look it up yourself.
Overall conclusion: Hillary scored a few points, but Trump won solidly. There was some substance but less than I would have liked. More details below the fold.
UPDATE: Patterico points out that Hillary had a bit of a neurological event. I missed this because I wasn't watching the video feed when it happened. I had a suspicion it might have because the "WHOO! OKAY!" line reminded me of the "iced chai" comment; it looks to me like she felt something coming and couldn't entirely suppress it so she tried to mask it.
Watch and judge for yourself.
If the best medical support teams can't get her to function on stage for 90 minutes without a malfunction, maybe her warranty has expired and she needs to be replaced with the latest model.
UPDATE: Total of 9 people wounded now. The police say the attacker is dead at the scene, and was a "disgruntled lawyer". That means they know who he was and are choosing not to release his name. The police found "numerous weapons" at the scene and the bomb squad is checking the attacker's car.
I'm betting this is one of those cases where "There are no obvious indications of terrorism" even though it's obviously terrorism.
Scott is right as far as this paragraph goes. Insulting people and calling them tyrants rarely results in improved relations with the tyrants, whether they actually are tyrants or not.
The President under whom she served as Secretary of State had a famous open-mic moment where he told Putin that he would have "more flexibility after the election." That is, after he didn't have to face the American people again, he could betray them. And under that same President, Clinton herself famously botched a gag gift of a "reset" button to Putin, presenting him with a red button that actually translated as "overcharge" (and may have been pilfered from a hotel pool in a remarkably Clintonian moment).
As far as ties to Russia go, Clinton is living in a glass house and operating a catapult.
Prescription drug databases are available to police without warrants
I don't think anyone would be surprised that such records would be available with a warrant, but without a warrant surprised me. I suppose it shouldn't have, since we've had the War On Drugs shaping public policy ever since the puritans gave up on Prohibition, but it did. After all, something as innocuous as your video rental history is specifically protected under federal law and requires a warrant to access. Your prescription drug history is far more personal and revealing, yet it's available to police just for the asking?
Part of this is that Hillary is such a horrible candidate. Obama is horrible in many ways, of course, but those are mostly policy. He did very well at campaigning. Hillary, on the other hand, hates campaigning and prefers to give speeches for corrupt pay-to-play deals.
But there's more to it than that. For all the ink spilled about Trump's supposed hatred of hispanics, that's not what he says about it. He's not calling hispanics rapists, criminals, or horrible people. He's saying that people who cross the border illegally are often rapists, criminals, and horrible people, but there are a lot of hispanics who are here legally, and even those that are here illegally can differentiate between drug dealers and rapists and those who are just trying to make a living.
UPDATE: Mental health questions, but in modern society, the only way to get committed for mental health issues is generally violent and threatening behavior. So, we have a man who is from Turkey, probably Muslim by assumption, with a history of violence, prohibited from owning guns (by the deferred prosecution and drug use), who used a "hunting type" rifle rather than an assault weapon, and still killed 5 people. Authorities are saying no indications of terrorism, which just means he didn't ask permission from a terrorist organization first.
It's probably too early to class this as Islamic Terrorism, but there are lots of indicators.
Hillary email admin refers to deletion of emails as a cover-up
The FBI asked him about it and he said it was intended as a joke. Even if the comment was intended humorously, it was also accurate. And at this point, I feel confident that the FBI investigation, which granted immunity to five separate staffers, can also be accurately described as a joke.
The problem here is that once the FBI gave all the aides immunity, they then declined to prosecute Hillary herself. Which defeats the point of giving aides immunity in return for testimony. However, it does ensure that Congress can't threaten those aides to force them to testify. The FBI is using immunity deals to obstruct justice.
Obama used a pseudonym when communicating with Hillary's private server
So there are a couple reasons this is a big deal. The pseudonym itself is actually a minor one. People in the Obama administration using pseudonyms (in some cases to avoid FOIA requests) has been very common, but this is the first time we've had it confirmed that Obama was using one.
That's how Politico headlines the article, but they are burying the lede. There's much more significance here.
USA today suspends Instapundit's column for a month...
... and oh by the way, it's the month right before the election, don't you know. I wonder if that had anything to do with it.
Funny how Twitter can suspend people who advocate for self-defense in the course of escaping a riot, but can't seem to suspend ISIS recruiters and people who call for cop killings.
USA Today is trying to push the narrative that Trump won't do well on the gun issue, so gun rights advocates shouldn't vote for him. It's a more effective strategy than trying to get gun control advocates to vote against him, because gun control advocates are too few and not motivated enough to make up a major influence among voters. (Their political influence comes from billionaire donors and astroturf, not real support).
I think gun owners are smart enough to not be deceived by Trump's vocalized support for "stop and frisk", a somewhat controversial law enforcement policy. He's talking about police stopping people who they think might be carrying a gun and searching them. If they are carrying a gun illegally -- unlicensed carry, or a felon in possession, or likely both -- then the gun is confiscated, and the person can be arrested and charged with a crime.
The policy is controversial for good reasons. How can a police officer detect a gun AND the lack of a legal license to carry it on someone he doesn't recognize? It pretty much boils down to behavioral cues, which are subjective, and race, which is illegal. But it's a long way from "taking guns away" in the usual sense, that is, police conducting door-to-door home invasions to search and confiscate lawfully owned guns from peaceful citizens.
The best part is that Trump, as President, won't really be able to do much one way or the other about stop and frisk policies. Those are under the control of the local police, not the federal government or the president.
So while I doubt Trump will be great on gun rights, this particular statement doesn't bother me. Especially since I know Hillary would cheerfully authorize the door-to-door version.
There's a new study out from a think tank run by Hillary Clinton's campaign director claiming Trump's plan to make cuts at the Department of Education would cost a lot of teachers their jobs. As in, half a million of them.
The Department of Education doesn't employ any teachers.
Public schools are funded by the states.
Trump's plan, if enacted, would fire a bunch of useless idiots and save some money.
I think that being caught in your car on a highway surrounded by such a mob trying to get you out of your car is a deadly force threat (disparity of numbers, fires, other cars presenting hazards, etc, etc). While it's a good idea to look for ways to avoid the situation, once you're caught in it, driving your way out through the rioters if necessary seems like a horrible but legally defensible choice. (This is not legal advice. I am not a lawyer.)
It's really looking like we need a free-speech alternative to twitter.
The only thing she can really say here is that she contacted people at the State Department using their .gov address so that State's system could pick up the email from their account. Which, obviously, it did not. Worse, that's obviously not true for Huma (who also had an account on the Clinton server) and possibly her other aides. It's also not helpful with respect to anyone not at the State Department (even if they are at other government agencies, Hillary's emails are the responsibility of the State Department).
What he means is that he's going to cash in by giving a lot of speeches about climate change. It's probably a step down from the position as UN General Secretary that he was expecting, but a failed president is hard to put into that slot and it has become pretty obvious that Obama is a failed president.
Frankly I think climate change is on the way out as an issue too, but there may be enough time left for Obama to cash in. Or maybe he just couldn't find anything better.
First Presidential Forum to be moderated by Clinton Global Initiative member
It's not a debate, it's two people who appear on the same stage in front of the same audience... but not at the same time. In other words, the Hillary campaign is afraid Trump will talk over her, interrupt her, correct her lies and misleading statements, and generally act like a strong and dominant alpha male. But if Hillary is the best the feminists can offer, shouldn't she be able to handle him?
Apparently not.
Being a "notable past member" of the Clinton Global Initiative costs $20,000 in cash or in-kind favors from journalists. Per year, I think.
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