"In the sadistic era of fraudulent Hope and Change, inspectors general inside the federal government have been kicked, neutered, and starved of the authority and information they need to do their jobs.

"It's transparently clear: President Obama loathes and fears independent watchdogs.

"Accountability is an empty talking point without whistleblower protection and investigative autonomy. That is why Capitol Hill must do everything in its power to stop the White House war on the public's ombudsmen. Federal inspectors general across dozens of agencies are begging lawmakers to grant them access to public records, as guaranteed by the 1978 Inspector General Act.

"The call for help comes as Obama-administration obstructionists and cover-up operatives impede and downplay several key investigations into government corruption and malfeasance."

"Since at least 1950, all but two public mass shootings in America have taken place where general citizens are banned from carrying guns. In Europe, there have been no exceptions. Every mass public shooting -- and there have been plenty of mass shooting in Europe -- has occurred in a gun-free zone. In addition, they have had three of the six worst K-12 school shootings, and Europe experienced by far the worst mass public shooting perpetrated by a single individual (Norway in 2011, which from the shooting alone left 67 people dead and 110 wounded). ...

"Bill Landes of the University of Chicago and I gathered data on mass public shootings from 1977 to 1999. We studied 13 different types of gun-control laws as well as the impact of law enforcement, but the only law that had a statistically significant impact on mass public shootings was the passage of right-to-carry laws. Right-to-carry laws reduced both the frequency and the severity of mass public shootings; and to the extent to which mass shootings still occurred, they took place in those tiny areas in the states where permitted concealed handguns were not allowed."

"As he approaches the end of his career in elected office, Barack Obama is in a truly precarious position: He is going to exit the White House having accomplished almost nothing substantive on the policy front -- his health-care program is not going to survive, Gitmo is not going to be closed, we are not leaving Afghanistan, and he is sending troops into Iraq -- and outside of his perch at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, his party is in ruins: In Congress and the states, the Democrats are in their weakest position in modern political history. If the Democrats do not win the presidency in 2016, there are going to be some very uncomfortable questions about what exactly Obama & Co. accomplished, and at what price.

"What to do? Throw Herself to the wolves, of course."

"So Clinton swept the pundit class, lost the focus groups to Sanders and may have kept Joe Biden out of the pool.

"But she tried out answers on her national security-compromising server and her litany of half-truths or worse (Kevin McCarthy! Kevin McCarthy! Kevin McCarthy!) that will not serve to help her at all come October 22 when she appears for hours and hours before the House Select Committee on Benghazi to answer focused, precise questions from the lawyers, including experienced prosecutors, who make up the GOP side of the committee such as Trey Gowdy, Susan Brooks, Mike Pompeo and Peter Roskam.

"Committee Democrats may try and throw themselves on the fire for Clinton as Sanders did, but it won't stop a patient prosecutor. ...

"Sanders is not the boss of the committee, the Congress, the FBI, future debate panelists or participants or even voters. Clinton did a happy dance Tuesday night. It won't last."

"If you watched Tuesday's Democratic debates, you probably noticed a whole lot of yelling. Indeed, the event, sponsored by CNN, was a veritable white-knuckle ride of hollering, with most of it coming from just one guy -- a guy who looked like he just received a nasty shock trying to jump-start his DeLorean in a shed filled with half-baked inventions and sad, peeling posters celebrating the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. This guy also specialized, I should add, in occasional, disgusted harrumphs.

"I'm talking, of course, about Bernie Sanders, who may not have won the debate, but who certainly set the tone. It was amazing to behold: In a country where just 26 percent of voters describe themselves as 'liberal,' the Democratic Party has apparently gone full-bore, hair-on-fire Oberlin dorm room progressive.

"Sanders' poll numbers with Democratic voters -- which hover around 25 percent, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average -- are astounding, given the fact that he aims to haphazardly micromanage our country back to the economic Stone Age."

"Hillary Clinton won. She won because she's a strong debater. She won because Bernie Sanders is not. She won because the first Democratic presidential debate focused on liberal policies and not her email scandal or character.

"The embattled front-runner won herself a news cycle or two, because she stretched the truth and played to a friendly audience. It won't always be so."

"Drama over Tuesday night's Democratic debate has disinterred an important question from liberals: Why is the party establishment so scared of having voters see their presidential candidates on TV?

"... the Democrats have limited the number of their debates to just six, compared to the Republicans' eleven. Even worse, they've scheduled them for time slots when few other than hardcore supporters will watch. They'll be like those Potemkin debates in the Senate that you see on C-SPAN, in which a senator is on screen proclaiming rhetorically as though to a crowd, when everyone knows that the chamber is empty and he or she is doing it just for TV.

"Except in this case, the TV audience won't be there either. Tuesday's debate will be the most accessible of the lot even though it is scheduled to begin during Game Four of a drama-filled Mets-Dodgers National League Division Series. The next debate is scheduled for a College Football Saturday night in November. The third is scheduled for the Saturday before Christmas. The fourth takes place during a three-day weekend in January."

"The Republicans have decided to have a little bit of authentic democracy within their party, and polite Washington is flipping out. ...

"The House is about to find out whether the more energetic conservatives long dissatisfied with the leadership of John Boehner can effectively put forward one of their own for the top House job -- and, if they do, Congress and the country are about to find out what that means. As a way of settling a genuine political dispute, this could hardly be improved upon.

"Washington retreats to its fainting couch. A passionate fight over ideas, over how we govern and to what ends? Angels and ministers of grace defend us!"

"Kevin McCarthy unexpectedly withdrew from the House speaker's race on Thursday, a casualty of a fractured Republican conference. The Californian didn't do much to inspire confidence last week when he suggested that the House Benghazi committee had been designed to attack Hillary Clinton.

"One pity of the McCarthy comments is that they tainted the committee's work with politics. The bigger pity is that they are dead wrong. South Carolina Republican Trey Gowdy is 18 months into the committee that the House purpose-built to investigate the 2012 terrorist assault in Libya that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. His Benghazi investigation has been a model of seriousness, professionalism and discreetness. ...

"Keeping the Benghazi committee on the straight and narrow hasn't been fun. Democrats work with Mr. Gowdy in private but then berate his committee in public. Conservative activists and talk-radio hosts blast him for depriving them of the drama they crave -- for not running a get-Hillary committee. The State Department blocks him. And now his own side has made his job that much harder.

"Don't expect Mr. Gowdy to give up. He has run his committee with one goal in mind: finding answers for the families of four dead Americans. Mrs. Clinton flatters herself if she thinks it's all about her."

"The Constitution's Framers, knowing that executive officers might not monitor themselves, provided the impeachment recourse to bolster the separation of powers. Federal officials can be impeached for dereliction of duty (as in [IRS Commissioner] Koskinen's failure to disclose the disappearance of e-mails germane to a congressional investigation); for failure to comply (as in Koskinen's noncompliance with a preservation order pertaining to an investigation); and for breach of trust (as in Koskinen's refusal to testify accurately and keep promises made to Congress). ...

"Even if, as Koskinen says, he did not intentionally mislead Congress, he did not subsequently do his legal duty to correct the record in a timely manner. Even if he has not committed a crime such as perjury, he has a duty higher than merely avoiding criminality.

"If the House votes to impeach, the Senate trial won't produce a two-thirds majority needed for conviction: Democrats aren't ingrates. It would, however, test the mainstream media's ability to continue ignoring this five-year-old scandal, and would demonstrate to dissatisfied Republican voters that control of Congress can have gratifying consequences."