OBSTRUCTION: Leaks suggest FBI agents felt DOJ blocked their Clinton investigations.

FBI agents felt as though the Justice Department tried to block them from investigating multiple allegations of wrongdoing and corruption against Hillary Clinton over the past year.

More than a dozen current and former agents have spoken anonymously to multiple media outlets over the past week, including to the Washington Examiner.

FBI field agents have complained of tensions between the bureau and the Justice Department when it came time to consider more aggressive moves, such as issuing subpoenas.

Some investigators felt as though the Justice Department attempted to stymie a year-long probe into the Clinton Foundation, CNN reported Wednesday.

Well, that’s the pattern.

DAN MARKEL UPDATE: The Dan Markel Case: More Details About His Marriage To Wendi Adelson (And About Wendi’s Mother, Donna Adelson).

HEY, LET’S INSINUATE THAT TRUMP’S VOTERS ARE CRYPTO-NAZIS, AND THEN WONDER WHY THEY LOATHE THE PUNDITS! Who Goes Trump?

HE GOT US OUT OF IRAQ: Army to Deploy 1,700 Paratroopers to Iraq.

For a short while, anyway.

HEY, WHEN SHE’S RIGHT, SHE’S RIGHT: Susan Sarandon: ‘DNC is completely corrupt.’

IS THERE NOTHING IT CAN’T DO? CBS: Global warming explains why “Winters May Be Getting Colder In The Northeast.”

As recently as 2014, CBS’s Charlie Rose was pondering the end of snow and winter sports. But for once, Walter Cronkite, Rose’s equally enviro-crisis-obsessed predecessor at CBS may have been right after all:

Global warming? Global cooling? Then as now, both “crises” can no doubt be solved by “a benevolent world dictatorship of the enlightened elite, and mass transfer of wealth from rich nations to poor nations,” as the late Steven Den Beste quipped in his grand unified theory of left-wing causes.

CLAIM: Democratic Insiders Say Clinton’s ground game will sink Trump.

It’s 2016; anything can happen.

THE VATICAN SEEMS TO HAVE A LOT OF ILLUSIONS LATELY: The Vatican’s Illusions About Chinese Communism: Cardinal Joseph Zen says that the Holy See misunderstands how repressive China is.

Cardinal Joseph Zen, the most senior Chinese cleric in the Catholic Church, believes the Vatican is fast approaching a tragic mistake in China.

Within days church leaders could conclude a landmark agreement with the Chinese government after 65 years of acrimony and persecution. Pope Francis isn’t known to have signed off, and before he does Cardinal Zen prays to be heard.

The former bishop of Hong Kong speaks with passion that belies his age (84) and recent hospitalization for a lung virus. As we meet at the church complex where he has lived since 2009—and where he first moved as a novitiate from Shanghai in 1948—he warns of “surrender”: that Chinese leaders are demanding it and Vatican officials appear willing to give it “in the hopes of achieving an agreement.”

Proponents say the deal would help millions of “underground” Catholics and open the world’s most populous country for evangelization. Cardinal Zen says it would sacrifice church principles, abandon the faithful, undermine evangelization and invite further repression.

The deal concerns who gets to select Catholic bishops in China—as vital a power as there is. Beijing has claimed it since the 1950s, when Mao Zedong banished Vatican officials and established the state-run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association in their place. That organ now oversees the “official church” of some 70 bishops and five million adherents who answer to Beijing and toe its line. The underground church, by contrast, follows the pope, for which its 30 bishops and estimated seven million adherents face harassment, imprisonment and worse.

To promote unity the Vatican has lately accepted most Beijing-backed bishops. But it has always held that the state-run Patriotic Association is “incompatible with Catholic doctrine,” as Pope Benedict XVI wrote in 2007, adding: “The authority of the Pope to appoint bishops is given to the church by its founder Jesus Christ. It is not the property of the Pope, neither can the Pope give it to others.”

Yet now the Vatican seems willing to give it to Beijing, which is what Cardinal Zen calls “absolutely unacceptable.”

Sigh.

QUESTION ASKED: Has the US prepared for the day after a Mosul victory?

The US on Thursday reported that Iraqi troops, backed by US airpower and Special Forces, had stormed toward Mosul with unexpected speed. While that success is welcome, it is intensifying concerns that the US and its partners have not adequately prepared for the biggest challenge yet to come: finding a way to keep the peace in the city after two years of ISIS domination.

The battle is expected to lead to a major refugee exodus, a possible ISIS insurgency should fighters opt to blend in with the local population rather than flee or fight to the death, and power struggles among Mosul’s diverse ethnic, tribal and religious groups.

Some Western diplomats have privately voiced to CNN concern that not enough planning had been done in the run-up to the assault, even when it wasn’t ahead of schedule.

I wrote a couple weeks ago that “the eventual ‘peace’ between Kurdish, Turkish, and Iraqi forces could prove uglier” than the fight for Mosul — and that was before learning that Turkish President Recep Erdoğan was talking up a map showing Turkey in possession of the Kurdish areas of Iraq and Syria — including Mosul.

AS IF THERE WEREN’T SO MANY OTHER REASONS TO VOTE FOR HIM: “Ali Wentworth would rather go down under with husband George Stephanopoulos: ‘If Trump wins, we’ll start looking at real estate in Sydney, Australia. No crime, no guns.’”

Flashback: Stephanopoulos discloses $75,000 contribution to Clinton Foundation.

NATE SILVER: Why Clinton’s Position Is Worse Than Obama’s.

If Clinton lost New Hampshire but won her other firewall states, each candidate would finish with 269 electoral votes, taking the election to the House of Representatives. Or maybe not — if Clinton also lost the 2nd Congressional District of Maine, where polls show a tight race and where the demographics are unfavorable to her, Trump would win the Electoral College 270-268, probably despite losing the popular vote.

Couldn’t Clinton win Nevada to make up for the loss of New Hampshire? Or Florida? Or North Carolina? Well … of course she could. All those states remain highly competitive. The point, as we’ve said before, is just that Clinton’s so-called firewall is not very robust. If you’re only ahead in exactly enough states to win the Electoral College, and you’d lose if any one of them gets away, that’s less of a firewall and more of a rusting, chain-link fence.

To illustrate this, let’s compare Clinton’s current position in our polls-plus forecast1 — which gives her a 65 percent chance of winning the Electoral College — to FiveThirtyEight’s final election forecast in 2012, which gave President Obama a 91 percent chance. How could the model be so much more confident in Obama’s chances than in Clinton’s, even though we projected he’d win by 2.5 percentage points nationally and she’s ahead by 2.8? Part of it is because there are far more undecided and third-party voters this year, which could lead to a last-minute swing, or a polling error, and makes the model more cautious.

The answer is much simpler than Silver lets on.

Clinton is a terrible campaigner with a terrible record as Secretary of State and with no record as a Senator. She’s only gone as far as she has because of underhanded support from the MSM and the DNC, because the GOP nominated someone with similar weaknesses, and because she inherited the Obama machine’s impressive digital tools.

Take those away and the Democrats would be looking at a Dukakis-size loss on Tuesday.

ELIMINATIONIST RHETORIC: WikiLeaks: Podesta agrees Sanders needs to be ‘ground to a pulp.’

THE END OF KEMAL’S DREAM: Murder of Women in Turkey Skyrocketing as Country Islamicizes.

ELIMINATIONIST RHETORIC: Lena Dunham Posts Video Celebrating the ‘Extinction of White Men’ on Twitter.

WHY NOT? IT IS 2016, AFTER ALL: GUMBY IS RISEN AND WALKS AMONG US.

DEVOLUTION: NATO Member Turkey Descends into Autocracy as Kurdish Lawmakers Arrested, Internet Apps Blocked.

THE HILL: Report: New emails relate to Clinton’s tenure at State. “Newly discovered emails that the FBI initially said may be “pertinent” to its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server do relate to her tenure as secretary of State, a source told CBS News Thursday. A U.S. official told CBS News that the emails are not duplicates of documents previously reviewed during the investigation into Clinton’s private email server. They were reportedly found on the computer of Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin.”

SUPER MOON, NOT SUPER STAR: Spectacular appearances, nonetheless. Bigger than Jagger. And the Geminid meteor shower.

WELL, THAT’S NICE: Woman’s car accidentally stolen, returned with gas money and note. “An officer explained that in some older model Subarus the keys can be interchangeable, which is likely how someone mistakenly drove off with the wrong vehicle.”

This would be a great Torts problem.

DAVID BERNSTEIN ON TODAY’S CLOSE ELECTION: How Does This Make You Feel About Executive Power? The problem is, I’m not convinced that our political class is capable of thinking outside the box of partisan advantage anymore.

DIAGNOSIS CONFIRMED.

Shot: ANGELO CODEVILLA DIAGNOSES THE EVER SHALLOWER ATLANTIC.

—Headline at Instapundit.com, earlier today.

Chaser: Why is Hillary Clinton so widely loved?

—Actual headline at the Atlantic earlier today. (Link safe, goes to Twitchy, which helpfully cautions, “Try not to slip in the Atlantic’s drool puddle.”)

BREAKING: HILLARY EMAILS DISCOVERED ON WEINER’S LAPTOP.

Here’s an exclusive photo of the FBI agents immediately after their discovery:

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 10 Things To Know About Being A Sperm Donor.