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.

AND THAT I DO NOT FORGIVE: Death Of Former Putin Aide In D.C. Now Ruled To Be An Accident.

GIVE ‘EM A ‘TASTE OF BLOOD’: Federal Report Exposed Robert Creamer’s Thuggery LONG BEFORE Obama Joined With Him in 1980s.

OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: It’s the penultimate edition of Wargaming the Electoral College, and the Land of 10,000 Hanging Chads.

MARY KATHARINE HAM: My Defective Obamacare Health Insurance Product Just Blew Up.

Last year, the letter said my Bronze plan, purchased on the marketplace formed by the, ahem, Affordable Care Act, would increase by almost 60 percent.

This year, my premium is going up 96 percent. Ninety-six percent. My monthly payment, which was the amount of a decent car payment, is now the size of a moderate mortgage. The president refers to these for thousands of citizens as “a few bugs” when to us it feels like a flameout.

For this astronomical payment, I get a plan with an astronomical deductible that my healthy family of three will likely never hit except in the most catastrophic of circumstances.

Let’s rewind to my pre-Obamacare health care situation. Throughout my life and career, I have had both employer-based coverage and significant periods during which I bought private insurance with high deductibles and low premiums. During the run-up to Obamacare, President Obama referred to these plans as “junk” plans, but my family and I received perfectly good care and service through them. We were responsible, healthy citizens consuming a small amount of health care, paying out of pocket for most of it, and making sure we weren’t deadbeats should something catastrophic come to pass. Our health insurance was a rational and responsible purchase.

The State does not desire rational or responsible citizens, comrade.

JAYVEE: ISIS ‘executes’ 232 near Mosul, takes thousands as human shields, UN says.

RESET: Lithuania issues manual on what to do if Russia invades.

It is the third time the Lithuanian government has distributed a handbook of this type to its citizens since the Russian annexation of Crimea.

The last one, published in December 2015, was entitled “Prepare to survive emergencies and war: a cheerful take on serious recommendations.”

It included cartoons of a family with a cat and noted that “while no country is immune to adversities of any nature” it is important not to panic if there is an emergency.

There is nothing cheerful about the latest edition, which details how Lithuanians should spy and inform on the enemy if Russia succeeds in occupying part of the country.

There are also detailed images of Russian-made tanks, grenades, mines and guns and instructions on how to recognize different types. Further instructions cover first aid and surviving in the wild.
There will be 30,000 copies available in schools and libraries and it will also be published online.

It never hurts to be prepared.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): So it’s basically a new edition of Robert Conquest and John Manchip White’s What To Do When The Russians Come. The 1980s called! White, by the way, was a UT colleague of mine.

PAY-TO-PLAY: Clinton donor got State Department invite — and Bill got $17M.

The head of a for-profit university that donated up to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation was rewarded with an invite to a high-profile State Department dinner at the request of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Doug Becker, CEO of Laureate International University, got his senior VP, Joseph Duffey, into the meeting of world-class academics at the August 2009 dinner because Becker was someone “who Bill likes a lot” and his school was “the fastest growing college network in the world,” Clinton wrote in an e-mail to her chief of staff revealed on WikiLeaks.

“It’s a for-profit model that should be represented.”

Roughly nine months later, the university signed Bubba to a sweet deal as an “honorary chancellor,” paying him $17.6 million over five years until the contract ended in 2015 as his wife launched her presidential run.

Analysts said Duffey’s presence at the dinner likely opened doors to the school that otherwise might have remained closed.

You don’t say.

ALWAYS A BRIDESMAID, NEVER A BRIDE: Clinton eyes Biden for secretary of state.

JUSTICE: Santa Ana to pay $100,000 to pot shop at center of controversial police raid.

The city will pay a Santa Ana marijuana dispensary $100,000 to settle a federal lawsuit in connection with a controversial raid last year where police officers were caught on hidden video eating snacks and making disparaging remarks about a handicapped woman.

As part of the settlement agreement finalized earlier this month, the city of Santa Ana will also dismiss misdemeanor charges against a dozen people accused of unlawfully operating Sky High Holistic at the time of the May 26, 2015 raid.

The settlement proceeds will be divided among Marla and David James, who are volunteers at Sky High, and Dr. Bradley Idelshon, a physician whose nearby office was left without power and water during the raid and is not affiliated with the dispensary, its attorney Matthew Pappas said.

Why are Democrat-run cities such cesspits of corrupt and incompetent policing?

COMMUNIST RULE RETURNS TO COMMUNIST CHINA: Xi Jinping more powerful than ever after being named ruling party’s ‘core’

When you are “the core” of the Communist Party, you aren’t just another leader — your will is now law.

“The whole ting about being ‘the core’ is that you can get policies done,” David Zweig, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology professor, told CNN.

“The risk is that you will take power to yourself, undermine the power bases of the people beneath you. Give him greater authority to replace people who are allied with Jiang Zemin or their own networks.”

Zweig said there had already been a push to make Xi “the core” in early 2016 but it hadn’t succeeded.

“Everyone in the Politburo has their networks, even in the Standing Committee of the Politburo, so if you give all the power to one guy you give him the power to push your people out and push his people through,” he said.

Xi has been following the Augustus Caesar path to absolute power — collecting enough official titles and powers to put a legal veneer on his emerging dictatorship.

ENDLESS STRUGGLE: Syria rebels ‘in push to break Aleppo siege’

A UK-based monitoring group said the rebels had fired “hundreds” of missiles into western Aleppo, killing at least 15 civilians.

They are also reported to have targeted al-Nayrab military airport to the east.

About 275,000 people have been besieged in the east by pro-government forces for several months.

Syria and its ally Russia have recently intensified air strikes on the east.

The attacks are so far coming from rebels outside Aleppo but it is understood that rebels inside the city will join the offensive.

“All the revolutionary factions, without exception, are participating in the battle,” the military spokesman for the Fastaqim faction inside the city said, AP news agency reports.

What’s left of the Syrian Army doesn’t have the strength to take the rest of the city any time soon, and the rebels can’t move without getting pounded by Russian warplanes.

IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO CELEBRATE NATIONAL AMERICAN BEER DAY.

STUDY: The Real Reason Why Moms Are Stressed Out.

FINALLY: Tequila, dance parties and Adele — Hillary Clinton finally lets loose.

DEAR KURT: I Can’t Believe Someone With Such A Terrible Record On Women Is Running For President.

Never go “Dear Kurt” unless you’re willing to endure the hilarious truth.

THERE WAS ONE? The Final Collapse of Obama’s Syrian Policy.

WE ALL DO: Clinton faces new challenges on ObamaCare.

Both parties agree that ObamaCare has problems. Premiums are rising sharply, and the pool of enrollees is smaller and sicker than expected.
But the agreement mostly ends there. Republicans say the law should be repealed, a position echoed by their presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

Should Clinton win the White House, as polls indicate, most if not all of her ideas for changing ObamaCare would have virtually no chance of passing Congress, so long as Republicans control the House and/or Senate.

Clinton is calling for adding a public insurance option to increase competition with private carriers, but Republicans and some Democrats fiercely oppose that idea.

This idea that the public option would “increase competition” is a ruse. Introducing a government insurer legally entitled to sell at a loss would instead have the effect of driving private insurers out of the market — which of course is the point of the ruse.

IT’S REAL, AND IT ISN’T SPECTACULAR: Megyn Kelly’s Feminist Bias.

Read the whole thing, although I’m not certain Newt Gingrich came off as any better than Kelly in their heated exchange.

GANGSTER GOVERNMENT: Documents Illuminate AGs Politicized Climate Campaign Against Exxon.

The court cited public records obtained by myself and the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal) from one of Healey’s coalition partners. Since then, we have obtained many more records, affirming the court’s “concern” that this coalition is pursuing a political, not a legal agenda.

These records detail a public-private partnership with environmentalist pressure group lobbyists and contingency-fee lawyers looking to surmount the failure of the climate agenda through the proper democratic process.

Since E&E Legal began extracting and publicizing these records, Schneiderman and Healey’s erstwhile AG partners have all fled. One email shows the Delaware AG leaving the coalition in response to being informed of freedom of information requests. It seems that these AGs are aware of that details of their scheming will not play well.

Read the whole thing.

YOU DON’T SAY: Clinton Took More Conciliatory Tone With Health Care Industry in Paid Speeches.

“I know how critical the role that you play is,” Clinton told the Advanced Medical Technology Association, a medical device trade group, in a 2014 speech. She avoided a direct question about a 2.3 percent tax on medical devices that was intended to fund the Affordable Care Act but was suspended until the end of 2017 after intense industry lobbying.

That appearance, for which Clinton was paid $225,000, was one of 15 paid speeches she gave to health care industry audiences, drawing a total of $3.5 million in fees. Overall, between the end of her tenure as secretary of state in February 2013 and the start of her 2016 White House bid, Clinton was paid about $21.6 million in speaking fees, according to her federal financial disclosure forms.

The health care speeches, largely overshadowed by the political storm over Clinton’s paid presentations to big banks, provide another example of an industry with much at stake during the next administration adding to the personal wealth of the woman who is now the Democratic presidential nominee.

ObamaCare has cost American consumers untold billions, but it’s been a financial boon for influence peddlers like the Clintons.

YES. Is Modern Feminism Incompatible With Science?

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Big Oil Companies Reap Windfall From Ethanol Rules.

Companies including Chevron Corp., Royal Dutch Shell PLC, and BP PLC could reap a total of more than $1 billion this year by selling the renewable fuel credits associated with the ethanol program, according to an analysis commissioned by CVR Energy, a refinery operator controlled by billionaire Carl Icahn, a vocal critic of the rules.

For other companies, especially smaller refiners, the rules have had the opposite effect, forcing them to spend hundreds of millions to buy credits to comply.

It’s almost as though ethanol mandates were more about influencing Iowa voters and getting into bed with Big Oil than about protecting the environment.

SOCIAL JUSTICE MEDIA: Twitter to Cut 9% of Workforce as Revenue Growth Slows.

DEM POLLSTER: Clinton ‘May Be Immune To Pay To Play’

Democratic pollster and former Bill Clinton adviser Stanley Greenberg thinks Hillary Clinton may be immune to pay-to-play charges, according to a February 2016 email he sent to Clinton campaign manager John Podesta.

“She seems indifferent to the systemic corruption that makes it impossible for government to act for the middle class or address big problems, like climate or health care,” Greenberg said. “She may be immune to pay to play, but the system isn’t. She’s got to distinguish between self and country — and needs to.”

Clinton is not “indifferent” to systemic corruption. It’s the swamp she’s happy to swim in and it’s made her quite rich.