BYRON YORK: Clinton throws an entire deck of Woman Cards at Trump. Has she called James Comey a misogynist yet?

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DINESH D’SOUZA GOT JAIL TIME FOR MUCH LESS: Boston law firm accused of massive straw-donor scheme.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is returning thousands of dollars in donations linked to what may be one of the largest straw-donor schemes ever uncovered.

A small law firm that has given money to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Harry Reid, President Obama and many others is accused of improperly funneling millions of dollars into Democratic Party coffers. The program was exposed by the Center for Responsive Politics and the same team of Boston Globe investigative reporters featured in the movie “Spotlight.”

The Thornton Law Firm has just 10 partners, but dollar for dollar, it’s one of the nation’s biggest political donors, reports CBS News correspondent Tony Dokoupil.

But according to the firm’s own documents – leaked by a whistleblower — days or even hours after making these donations, partners received bonuses matching the amount they gave.

“Once the law firm knew that we had these records, they didn’t deny that this was the case,” said Scott Allen, Boston Globe’s Spotlight editor.

“If you give a donation and then somebody else reimburses you for that contribution, that is a clear violation of the spirit and the letter of the law at the state and federal levels,” Allen added.

Laws are for the little people. And Republicans, like D’Souza.

HER PANIC IS THE TORTURED PANIC OF A GUILTY SOUL: Comey’s one-eighty shattered Team Clinton’s mask of composure. (My latest NY Observer column.)

POLITICS AS PRACTICED BY OUR BETTERS: Sir David Attenborough: ‘Shoot’ Donald Trump and Leave Politics to the Experts.

SO CLOSE: Woman denied $43M slot machine win, offered steak dinner instead.

An unemployed mother of four thought she had hit a nearly $43 million jackpot on a slot machine, changing her life forever. Then she learned the crushing news: There would be no millions because the machine was malfunctioning. The casino offered her a steak dinner instead.

Katrina Bookman of Queens, N.Y., was playing the slots at the Resorts World Casino near La Guardia Airport in late August when the machine she was using told her, “Printing cash ticket. $42,949,672.76.”

Customers and casino personnel surrounded her as she celebrated her massive win. She was escorted from the casino floor and told to come back the next day. Bookman, who grew up in foster care, was already making plans for the money, including a barber shop for her son.

“What did I win?” Bookman asked when she returned to the casino, WABC-TV reported. “‘You didn’t win nothing,'” she says she was told.

The New York State Gaming Commission told Bookman she was not entitled to any winnings because the machine, which is only supposed to pay out a maximum win of $6,500, was malfunctioning. All the machines are labeled with a disclaimer reading, “Malfunctions void all pays and plays.” According to the gaming commission, her actual winnings were just $2.25.

What was an unemployed mother of four doing playing the slots?

ANTHONY WEINER IS IN “REHAB” FOR “SEX ADDICTION,” WHICH IS WEIRD BECAUSE HE DOESN’T SEEM TO HAVE ACTUALLY GOTTEN ANY SEX: “The man is separated from his wife. Why can’t he just get some actual real-world sex instead of the ridiculous trapped-at-home internet foolery that we’re shaming him to death over? It seems absurd to institutionalize him. Why not liberate him? What’s the more likely route out of his masturbatory hell?”

Well, “rehab” keeps him out of the news until after the election. But I suspect that his behavior was inspired by the discomfort of his marriage, and that once he’s free it’ll change. But maybe I’m wrong.

PROCUREMENT BLUES: Problems with USS Ford’s Main Turbine Generators will push delivery date into 2017.

By my math, we’re already short at least one aircraft carrier.

VOLATILE: Five days to go: The presidential race tightens – CBS/NYT poll. “In a two-way match-up (without explicitly naming third party candidates), Clinton’s margin is similar: she leads Trump by 3 points among leaned likely voters, down from an 11 point lead a couple of weeks ago. At this late date, few voters say they might change their minds.”

THINGS CERTAINLY ARE . . . VOLATILE THIS YEAR: Clinton inches ahead, with enthusiasm back on par with Trump, Post-ABC Tracking poll finds.

GOOD: Washington State Senator Stands Up For Student Due Process.

Colleges and universities seem too quick to want to expel accused students rather than assess the facts and understand that they might not be dealing with incorrigible criminals but rather students who can be saved.

Washington state Sen. Michael Baumgartner, R-Spokane, seems to understand this. At a press conference about Barber, Baumgartner criticized WSU for the lack of due process afforded to the student athlete before he was expelled.

“This situation is unacceptable. It’s unacceptable to have any students expelled — not just Robert Barber, but any students — with a lack of due process,” Baumgartner said during the event. “WSU’s student conduct board is broken and it has been broken. It lacks the basic tenets of due process, and it’s different from other universities in the state, which are better, and it needs to get fixed and the people of Washington state are going to get it fixed.”

Baumgartner brought up a state bill that banned expulsions and suspensions among students in K-12. Baumgartner said this bill was passed because most of the punishments were affecting minority students. Instead of working with the students, schools were just ending their education and sending them to the streets.

“When you keep someone from getting an education, it’s a great cost to taxpayers,” Baumgartner said. “Higher education should fall on the same lines. It is tremendously costly to all of us to have people like Robert Barber not allowed to graduate from school.”

Baumgartner said that if WSU doesn’t reverse Barber’s suspension, he would hire the student athlete in his Senate office to work on constituent relations and, as a slap in the face to WSU, the overseer of financial requests from universities like WSU.

Heh.

DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE, PART DEUX:

Shot: NPR Show: Trump Ushered in ‘Rebirth’ Of ‘Nation’s Hatred.’

—NewsBusters, November 1st.

Chaser: Taxpayer-Funded Immaturity: NPR Teaches Readers ‘To Speak Tea Bag.’

—NewsBusters, January 4, 2010.

As Glenn has noted, “I’m increasingly concerned that the neutralization of the Tea Party movement — an effort by both major parties — may have convinced a lot of people that civics-book style polite political participation is for chumps.”

Incidentally, regarding that second NPR link, why are Democrat monopoly institutions such cesspits of rampant ignorance and homophobia?

HACKING PODESTA: Presenting…the Clinton IT Department!

If you get a notice from your email provider or your bank or anyone who holds sensitive information of yours saying that your account has been compromised, you leave the email, open your web browser, type in the URL of the website, and then manually open your account information. Again, let me emphasize: You never click on the link in the email!

But what makes this story so priceless isn’t that John Podesta got fooled by an fourth-rate phishing scam. After all, he’s just the guy who’s going to be running Hillary Clinton’s administration. What does he know about tech? And Podesta, to his credit, knew what he didn’t know: He emailed the Clinton IT help desk and said, Hey, is this email legit?

And the Clinton tech team’s response was: Hell yes!

No, really. Here’s what they said: One member of the team responded to Podesta by saying “The gmail one is REAL.” Another answered by saying “This is a legitimate email. John needs to change his password immediately.”

It’s like the Clinton IT department is run by 90-year-old grandmothers.

Well…

TURKS PROTEST POST-COUP PURGE: And well they should.

“We are facing a period worse than the coup,” said Tahsin Yesildere, head of a university teaching staff association. “In our country, which is being turned into a one-man regime through the emergency, all opposition resisting to this have become targets,” he told Reuters.

DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE, PART ONE:

Shot:

If you’ve been paying any attention at all to the election coverage in the nation’s largest newspapers and on cable TV, you have likely found yourself a bit exasperated at how events from the campaign trail have been covered. Much of that comes from editorial bias in story selection, but more than a little is caused by the obvious bias inherent in the “explanations” of the stories which do make it into print or on the air. But it seems that the journalists aren’t too happy either. Some of them feel constrained by the musty, dusty old rules of engagement in the news game. Keep in mind that we’re not talking about “opinion journalists” like Hannity or Maddow here, but the reporters who are supposed to be covering the stories for us with all of the who, where, when, what and how details. When it comes to politics such things can be hard to define, as politicians employ greater and greater amounts of spin in their stump speeches and debate performances.

Marc Ambinder feels their pain and brings us an opinion piece at USA Today this week in which he calls for new rules of journalism. Under these revised guidelines, reporters should feel free to correct what they perceive as errors on the part of the candidates on the fly.

—“The Left is ushering in ‘new rules of journalism’ because of Donald Trump,” Jazz Shaw, Hot Air, November 1st.

Chaser:

As I wrote last month in “The Rise of the John Birch Left:”

The original Birchers weren’t bad people, but their Cold War paranoia got the better of them. Similarly, as Charles Krauthammer famously said, “To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil,” which illustrates how a John Birch-style worldview can cause the modern leftists to take an equally cracked view of his fellow countrymen…

…Which brings us today to Marc Ambinder, who according to Wikipedia is a former White House correspondent at the National Journal, contributing editor at GQ and the Atlantic, and editor-at-large at The Week, where he blows the battle trumpet, Col. Kilgore-style: “Why Democrats should treat Republicans like their mortal enemy.”

* * * * * * *

I missed the memo though: When did Democrats stop treating Republicans like their mortal enemy?

—“You Went Full Bircher, Man. Never Go Full Bircher,” Ed Driscoll.com, December 3rd, 2014.

Meet the “new” rules of journalism — just the same as the old rules of journalism. Think of the MSM as Democrat operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

I KEEP TELLING YOU, IT’S 2016. Anything can happen.

BREXIT DENIED? British court delivers blow to E.U. exit plan, insists Parliament has a say.

The decision greatly complicates May’s stated plan to trigger Article 50 — the never-before-used mechanism for a country to leave the European Union — by the end of March at the latest.

Most members of Parliament opposed Brexit in the lead-up to Britain’s June referendum, when voters opted for an exit by a 52-to-48 margin. On the streets, however, the court decision risked setting off an angry backlash from voters who favored leaving the European Union and believed the issue was settled.

May’s lawyers argued that she had the right to begin the Brexit process without first getting Parliament’s consent. But a three-judge panel on the London-based High Court sided with a group of plaintiffs who contended that Parliament must first weigh in.

Brexit may come down to whichever way vulnerable MP’s think the wind is blowing.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Just how pure is German beer?

ROLL CALL: Hill Republicans Think Trump Will Lose, GOP Will Keep House And Senate.

CHINA AND DESERT STORM: Jim Dunnigan reviews China’s assessment of the 1991 Gulf War.

The bottom line:

China did try adding more officers selected for skills rather than loyalty but since 2010 have shifted back to the “loyalty first” model. This was necessary because of problems eliminating the corruption in the military and the realization that the military would more likely be needed to deal with an internal threat rather than an external one. It is easier to fake combat competence with new uniforms and weapons than to assure political loyalty when it is needed the most. The Chinese discovered that they had more in common with Iraq than their analysis revealed. The dictatorship that had run Iraq since the late 1950s learned to put a priority on loyalty when recruiting officers and avoid fighting an external foe.

Read the whole thing.

IT COULDN’T HAPPEN TO A NICER RELIGIOUS DICTATORSHIP: Saudi Arabia’s Bond Success Hides Its Financial Peril.

In truth, the bond sale was a rare bright spot in a series of economic and geopolitical missteps that have not only plunged Saudi Arabia into budgetary chaos but also weakened its grip on global oil markets. The Saudis are well aware of this — witness the firing this week of Finance Minister Ibrahim al-Assaf despite the triumphant bond sale his ministry oversaw.

Riyadh is facing a sandstorm of economic and social challenges. The two-year decline in crude prices has left it with huge budget deficits: $98 billion last year and a projected $87 billion in 2016. This has forced the kingdom to tap into its cash reserves, which have declined from $732 billion at the end of 2014 to $562 billion last month. Last year, the International Monetary Fund predicted that if Saudi Arabia continued its current fiscal path, it could burn through its entire foreign exchange reserves by 2020.

In effect, Riyadh will end up putting the groceries on a new high-interest credit card they were supposed to use for going to school to learn a profitable trade.

WITH DNC IN MIND, CITY BANS CARRYING OF URINE, FECES. Evergreen Headline: Complaints of syringes and feces rise dramatically in San Francisco.

San Francisco’s last Republican mayor left office in 1964.

(Classical reference in headline.)

ISLAMIC STATE COMMANDANTE VOWS NO RETREAT FROM MOSUL: So ISIS jihadis will die in Mosul.

He called on his fighters to obey their leaders, warned Iraqi Sunnis of the consequences of turning against IS and appealed to IS’s far flung outposts to stay loyal to the group – from Indonesia to West Africa. Baghdadi rarely speaks publicly, but the last time he did so – in December last year – he delivered a similar mix of defiant insistence on ultimate victory combined with implicit acknowledgment of setbacks on the ground.

CLINTON FOUNDATION INVESTIGATION UPDATE:

I said sources described an "avalanche of evidence" in case & barring obstruction they'd likely continue 2 push to try for an indictment" https://t.co/2TjzxdJod1

— Bret Baier (@BretBaier) November 2, 2016

This is, or at least ought to be an even bigger deal than the email scandal.

It just doesn’t feel possible for someone under two simultaneous FBI investigations to get elected President.