Ex-Clintonite: I Can’t Vote For Hillary

Longtime Bill Clinton pollster Doug Schoen, writing in The Hill, says that FBI Director James Comey’s latest e-mail disclosure makes it “very difficult, if not impossible, for me to vote for Hillary Clinton.” Not because of anything she or Huma Abedin may have done, but because “we will be facing the very real possibility of a constitutional crisis with many dimensions and deleterious consequences” if Clinton wins. An ongoing criminal investigation risks an unthinkable dilemma: “We simply cannot face a situation where the president-elect may need or want a pardon from the president to govern. Or worse yet, need to pardon herself after she takes office.”



Law professor: Don’t Blame Comey for This Mess

The FBI director is “not primarily responsible for the political mess” unleashed by the FBI’s discovery of more e-mails relevant to “an investigation we all thought was over,” writes law professor Page Pate for CNN. “Comey didn’t go looking for new information, it came to him,” says Pate, and “he had to deal with [it] the minute it was brought to his attention.” Should he have kept it secret? “Perhaps that would have been consistent with department policy in a traditional investigation, but this investigation has been anything but traditional,” Pate says, pointing out that “For him to have sat on this information to avoid a potential political controversy would have been wrong.”

From the right: Clinton’s Nixonian Coverup

John Fund at National Review sees a parallel between Hillary Clinton and Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign “trying to conceal the truth about Watergate until after voters went to the polls.” It succeeded, but then “the cover-up unraveled and the country went through two years of turmoil.” Even Watergate reporter Bob Woodward has “compared Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal to Richard Nixon’s tapes, noting the same penchant for stonewalling.” In the end, Americans “paid a stiff price for ignoring doubts about Nixon and reelecting him.” Back then, “there was enough evidence for them to be deeply concerned about how he would continue to perform in office,” and there is now “ample evidence for all of us to worry about what a return of the Clintons to the White House would mean.”

Military analyst: We’ll Need More Troops in Syria

Will the 300 US troops now on the ground in Syria be enough to oust ISIS from its self-proclaimed capital in Raqqa? That’s what American military commanders “are trying to determine,” writes Andrew Tighman at Military Times. Because the biggest problem is getting Washington’s local allies “to fight the militants, rather than each other.” He reports that “new intelligence suggests ISIS leaders in Raqqa are planning external attacks in the US and Europe,” which “will draw the US military deeper than ever into the multi-sided Syrian civil war.” Ultimately, the operation’s success may require “a “surge [of] hundreds of additional US special operations troops . . . without a public announcement.”

Critic: England NFL Team Would Kill League’s Brand

There’s growing talk of basing an NFL franchise in London, which Jazz Shaw at Hot Air calls “a horrible idea on so many levels.” Yes, games across the pond give Brits “a day out at the stadium to marvel at actual football (instead of kickball).” But “it does little for the actual teams, other than infuse them with jet lag.” A London team would “be traveling across the ocean and back for eight of their 16 games. And that means that eight of the rest of the teams will be doing the same thing over the entire regular season.” Which is why Commissioner Roger Goodell “needs to come to his senses and nip this thing in the bud.”

— Compiled by Eric Fettmann