From the left: The Annoying Mayor Pete

“Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign has spent the past few weeks subtly or overtly attacking every major fellow Democratic candidate” except Joe Biden, notes the Daily Beast’s Hanna Trudo, and it’s “begun to anger fellow party members.” The strategy, a “high-risk one for Buttigieg,” seems intended to let the candidate to seize the “mild-mannered moderate candidate” lane once Biden falls on his own. A staffer says the goal is only to “draw policy contrasts” between Buttigieg and his “more progressive rivals,” but rival campaigns feel the mayor is “taking veiled swipes to make up for a polling downturn.” Notably, his camp has been slamming not just top-tier rivals Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren, but even also-rans such as Cory Booker and even Beto O’Rourke.

Deep state watch: IG Admission Raises New Questions

The office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General has admitted to altering “forms and policies governing whistleblower complaints” right as it grappled with the Trump-Ukraine filing, reports the Federalist’s Sean Davis. The forms had “clearly stated in unambiguous language that firsthand evidence was required in order for ‘urgent concern’ whistleblower complaints to be deemed credible,” but the ICIG decided that standard was “incorrect” — crucial in moving to act on this latest anti-Trump complaint based “primarily on hearsay rather than firsthand evidence.” When exactly did the policy change? The ICIG claims it was “in response to press inquiries” about the anti-Trump complaint sometime in August. The specific date is “essential” to determining whether the ICIG changed its policies simply in order to “justify forwarding to Congress” the anti-Trump complaint.

From the right: Democrats’ Regime Suicide

House Democrats’ partisan and hopeless move to launch a Trump impeachment inquiry sets up 2020 as a “regime-change moment, for reasons that go far beyond Trump,” argues Daniel McCarthy at the Spectator USA. Unlike the 1974 move to impeach Richard Nixon or the 1998 Clinton impeachment, which both “reaffirmed the stability of the American regime,” a Trump impeachment would radically upset that order. Trump, “a completely unconventional Republican,” campaigned against the system; his enemies “are not just the left” but “an absolutely illegitimate and malevolent regime” that he was elected to rebel against. Insiders, watch out: If even 40 percent of the country supports Trump through impeachment, “that will show that 40 percent is anti-regime” — and “revolutions are made with less.”

Religion beat: Happy Retirement to Archbishop Chaput

Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles Chaput retired last month at age 75, marking an “exemplary career,” cheers George Weigel in First Things. Chaput, a Capuchin friar, “lives simply, teaches thoughtfully, hears confessions regularly, celebrates the sacraments reverently, and is . . . a spectacularly good boss” — all reasons why “serious young Catholic professionals have cued up to work with and for him wherever he has been assigned.” The most prominent Native American in the Catholic hierarchy is courageous, preaching “the truth about the dignity of human life and what makes for genuine beatitude,” and he has “embodied the compassion and empathy” that Christians must show all.

Foreign desk: A Way Forward on Hong Kong?

“There seems to be no resolution in sight” to the demands of Hong Kong’s protesters, sighs Chris Patten at Project Syndicate. The violent crackdown in response to demonstrations against Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s pro-Beijing policies has deepened Hong Kongers’ hate for the “brutal communism that led many of them to flee to the city as refugees.” Lam should “establish a commission of enquiry to examine the reasons behind the demonstrations”; if she doesn’t, “Hong Kong’s most respected citizens” should do it themselves. That “would be difficult, and it might not work,” but “taking such a step would surely be better than letting things continue from one violent weekend to the next.”

— Compiled by Karl Salzmann