Story highlights Hugh Hewitt: How can Bernie Sanders give Hillary Clinton absolution for the risks she took by having a private email server?

Hewitt says Clinton's appearance before the House committee investigating Benghazi won't be so easy

Hugh Hewitt is a lawyer, law professor, author and host of a nationally syndicated radio show. He served in the Reagan administration in posts, including assistant counsel in the White House and special assistant to two attorneys general. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.

(CNN) Where was Bernie Sanders when the GOP needed him to declare in a highly public way to Richard Nixon that the country "was sick of hearing about your damn tapes"?

And did every irony-meter in America break after Hillary Clinton blasted Edward Snowden for "allowing information to fall into the wrong hands," and condemning Eric Holder for sending no one to jail following the banking panic of 2008?

Hugh Hewitt

The first great Democratic debate of the 2016 race had many moments, but perhaps not for the casual viewer who had to be mystified how four old white guys ended up arrayed around Clinton, from "block of granite" Lincoln Chafee on one end to an impressive if somewhat ominous looking and sounding guy on the other end who complained as if automatically about every question's timing and who made a vague reference to killing somebody. (If the curious got on Google, they'd have discovered that former Sen. James Webb of Virginia is the recipient of a Navy Cross for valor, among other decorations.)

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CNN's Anderson Cooper opened the proceedings with a fastball aimed at Clinton's head -- "Will you say anything to get elected?" -- and stayed with questions as lively as Cooper and team could make them. But the collective weight of all those years of Clinton's controversies and flip-flops -- plus former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's speaking style that drained energy out of the auditorium -- made it slow going for all.

As the debate began, my company, Salem Media Group, announced that I'd be back as a panelist for the CNN-Salem GOP debates in December and March, and I am looking forward to those events, as the first one was high energy and filled with drama. I have nothing to do with any of the remaining Democratic debates and feel for the moderators and panelists who are facing the broadcast equivalent of presiding over a parole hearing.

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