IT’S “UNCOLLEGIAL” TO DISAGREE WITH YOUR COLLEAGUES: Professor who tweeted against PC culture out at NYU.

Cost of attending NYU: $70,000 per year.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Once the hope candidate, Obama in his final days faces a hopeless electorate.

CONSIDER THE SOURCE: Former Attorney General Holder and Other Former DOJ Officials Pen Letter Criticizing Comey.

AT PROMINENT DEMOCRATIC LAW FIRM, “Bonuses” Are Linked To Donations.

Jon Tester didn’t come all the way from Montana for the scrambled eggs and bacon. The US senator, virtually unknown in Boston, was in a conference room at the Thornton Law Firm that June morning to cash in at one of the most reliable stops on the Democratic fund-raising circuit, a law firm that pours millions into the coffers of the party and its politicians.

Tester, a massive, jovial man who raises livestock on his family farm, was more compelling than many of the other breakfast guests, all of them political candidates the firm hoped would defend the interests of trial attorneys. But the drill was basically the same. The personal injury lawyers listened politely for a few minutes, then returned to their offices. And Tester walked away with $26,400 in checks.

But a striking thing happened the day Tester visited in 2010. Partner David C. Strouss received a payment from the firm labeled as a “bonus” that exactly equaled his $2,400 contribution to Tester’s campaign, the maximum allowed. A few days later, partner Garrett Bradley — until recently the House assistant majority leader on Beacon Hill — got a bonus, too, exactly matching his $2,400 gift to Tester.

This pattern of payments — contributions offset by bonus payments — was commonplace at Thornton, according to a review of law firm records by the Spotlight Team and the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based nonprofit that tracks campaign finance data.

From 2010 through 2014, Strouss and Bradley, along with founding partner Michael Thornton and his wife, donated nearly $1.6 million to Democratic Party fund-raising committees and a parade of politicians — from Senate minority leader Harry Reid of Nevada to Hawaii gubernatorial candidate David Ige to Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Over the same span, the lawyers received $1.4 million listed as “bonuses” in Thornton Law Firm records; more than 280 of the contributions precisely matched bonuses that were paid within 10 days. That payback system, which involved other partners as well, helped make Thornton the 11th-ranked law firm nationally for political contributions in 2014.

Just another money laundry. They seem to have a lot of them.

Plus: “Reimbursing donors is ‘among the most serious campaign violations, in the view of both the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice,’ said Daniel Petalas, an attorney who served as acting general counsel of the FEC until September.” I’m sure that Loretta Lynch will be right on this.

JOHN PODHORETZ: I Have a Theory About Comey…

The theory is simple: Comey was indeed covering his posterior, but in this case, he was doing so because, if anything came out of the Weiner investigation, he would fry. When called upon to explain himself, he would have to acknowledge he knew the Obama Justice Department dragged its feet and did nothing about it while the husband of someone who owed a Clinton intimate a huge debt of gratitude was running things, and behaving in a manner that can be best described as almost astoundingly cavalier.

Read the whole thing.

TAKE NO PRISONERS: Clinton campaign wages new war against James Comey.

Imagine an incoming President being sworn in, already at “war,” per CNN, with the chief of the nation’s premier investigative agency.

HEH: “Nothing is funnier than the press reacting to an October Surprise that didn’t come from them.”

CIVIL WAR AT THE FBI? FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe.

New details show that senior law-enforcement officials repeatedly voiced skepticism of the strength of the evidence in a bureau investigation of the Clinton Foundation, sought to condense what was at times a sprawling cross-country effort, and, according to some people familiar with the matter, told agents to limit their pursuit of the case. The probe of the foundation began more than a year ago to determine whether financial crimes or influence peddling occurred related to the charity.

Some investigators grew frustrated, viewing FBI leadership as uninterested in probing the charity, these people said. Others involved disagreed sharply, defending FBI bosses and saying Mr. McCabe in particular was caught between an increasingly acrimonious fight for control between the Justice Department and FBI agents pursuing the Clinton Foundation case.

It isn’t unusual for field agents to favor a more aggressive approach than supervisors and prosecutors think is merited. But the internal debates about the Clinton Foundation show the high stakes when such disagreements occur surrounding someone who is running for president.

After 25 years and umpteen Clinton scandals, it’s difficult to believe — yet again — that this one might be their undoing. But it sure feels that way.

TENNESSEE STATE SENATOR FRANK NICELEY: “I took a drive through my district today and up through rural SE Kentucky. Leaves were gorgeous. Also, 56 Trump signs. 2 Hillary.”

SHOULD, BUT WON’T: John Kass: Democrats should ask Clinton to step aside.

It’s obvious the American political system is breaking down. It’s been crumbling for some time now, and the establishment elite know it and they’re properly frightened. Donald Trump, the vulgarian at their gates, is a symptom, not a cause. Hillary Clinton and husband Bill are both cause and effect.

FBI director James Comey’s announcement about the renewed Clinton email investigation is the bombshell in the presidential campaign. That he announced this so close to Election Day should tell every thinking person that what the FBI is looking at is extremely serious.

This can’t be about pervert Anthony Weiner and his reported desire for a teenage girl. But it can be about the laptop of Weiner’s wife, Clinton aide Huma Abedin, and emails between her and Hillary. It comes after the FBI investigation in which Comey concluded Clinton had lied and been “reckless” with national secrets, but said he could not recommend prosecution.

So what should the Democrats do now?

If ruling Democrats hold themselves to the high moral standards they impose on the people they govern, they would follow a simple process:

They would demand that Mrs. Clinton step down, immediately, and let her vice presidential nominee, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, stand in her place.

Democrats should say, honestly, that with a new criminal investigation going on into events around her home-brew email server from the time she was secretary of state, having Clinton anywhere near the White House is just not a good idea.

Since Oct. 7, WikiLeaks has released 35,000 emails hacked from Clinton campaign boss John Podesta. Now WikiLeaks, no longer a neutral player but an active anti-Clinton agency, plans to release another 15,000 emails.

What if she is elected? Think of a nation suffering a bad economy and continuing chaos in the Middle East, and now also facing a criminal investigation of a president. Add to that congressional investigations and a public vision of Clinton as a Nixonian figure wandering the halls, wringing her hands.

The best thing would be for Democrats to ask her to step down now. It would be the most responsible thing to do, if the nation were more important to them than power. And the American news media — fairly or not firmly identified in the public mind as Mrs. Clinton’s political action committee — should begin demanding it.

In a different America, one less fundamentally transformed, that would be imaginable. In this America, not so much.

And this is the real key:

I’ve always figured that, as secretary of state, Clinton kept her home-brew email server — from which foreign intelligence agencies could hack top secret information — so she could shield the influence peddling that helped make the Clintons several fortunes.

The Clintons weren’t skilled merchants. They weren’t traders or manufacturers. The Clintons never produced anything tangible. They had no science, patents or devices to make them millions upon millions of dollars.

All they had to sell, really, was influence. And they used our federal government to leverage it.

If a presidential election is as much about the people as it is about the candidates, then we’ll learn plenty about ourselves in the coming days, won’t we?

Yes.

POTENTIAL? John Fund: If Hillary wins, we’ll have a potential blackmail target in the White House.

But can you blackmail someone who has no shame and thinks they’re immune to consequences?

HEH:

BATTLE-SPACE PREPARATION IN NORTH CAROLINA: Do You Think Elections Are Rigged?

Money quotes:

Here in North Carolina, Civitas helped expose a strange situation in which a State Board of Elections employee, Dr. E. Lee Cooley, was teaching the public and political operatives how to commit voter fraud. It may be an understatement to say that we were alarmed to learn that at least one person in the State Board of Elections, the department that oversees all elections in North Carolina, was telling people that it was okay to commit voter fraud and actually instructing them how to do so by voting other people’s ballots.

And

Meanwhile, even as the SBE discussed the Cooley situation, another SBE employee sent instructions to all 100 counties to disregard the state law that requires signatures on voter registration forms. Veronica Degraffenreid, the SBE’s election preparation and support manager, ignored the statute that requires a signature as part of the registration process, including changes in voter registration.

VULNERABILITY AND VICTIMISM ARE VALUED BECAUSE THEY ALLOW PEOPLE TO CLAIM ABSOLUTE MORAL TRUTH: Training Tyrants at Yale.

AIN’T YOU GLAD WE PUT THE ‘SMART PEOPLE’ IN CHARGE? Obama’s transition team improperly sent confidential email in 2008.

FORMER NEW YORK FBI CHIEF JAMES KALLSTROM ON “LA COSA CLINTON”: The Clintons are a ‘crime family’: Ex-FBI big

FLORIDA MAN STRIKES AGAIN:  She thought her husband was dead. Police told her he was living with his new family in Florida.

NOW THEY TELL US: Email: Clinton ally says Bill, Hillary sometimes have ‘the worst judgement’.

BUT HEY, HILLARY WANTS TO MAKE BIDEN SECRETARY OF STATE: Report: Living conditions, government control getting worse in Afghanistan.

ELM STREET WAS INSPIRED BY REPORTS OF ASIAN MEN LITERALLY DYING FROM NIGHTMARES: How a strange man in a fedora inspired Wes Craven’s Freddy Krueger.

CMAWN: Hillary’s crimes are easily explained.

STEVEN HAYWARD: Why Hillary Can’t Govern.