"With the news that Obamacare premiums will go up by an average of 22 percent next year, the Democrats and their media cheerleaders have engaged in Olympic-caliber hand-waving and misdirection, anything to avoid admitting the obvious: that the program is poorly designed, incompetently executed, and based on false assumptions about what actually ails the U.S. health-care system.

"The case for replacing the law entirely has never been stronger....

"The litany of lies and disappointments delivered by the Obama administration, congressional Democrats, and their media enablers is too long to repeat here, but the highlights should be familiar: 'If you like your plan, you can keep your plan' was an outright lie with malice aforethought; 'doesn't add one dime to the deficit' was, at best, wishful thinking; the promise of saving the average family $2,500 a year in insurance premiums was economic illiteracy. ...

"There were deep and serious problems with the U.S. health-care system before Obamacare. Obamacare has made those problems worse -- that much is impossible to deny. If a 22 percent hike in premiums isn't enough to get Americans interested in consumer-driven, market-based alternatives, do not despair: It is going to get worse."

"From start to finish, it is obvious that the FBI gave Clinton special treatment. The failure to empanel a grand jury and issue subpoenas, the granting of five immunity deals to her aides, and the agreement to destroy potential evidence all lead to the conclusion that Comey bent the rules to make sure Clinton was cleared.

"Rabid Clinton supporters comfort themselves by insisting that those who do not denounce Donald Trump are unpatriotic or worse. But you don't have to be a Trump supporter to fear that Clinton's election would be tantamount to approving her chronic dishonesty in public office, and would open the door to an era of corruption unprecedented in modern times.

"If that's progress, then Richard Nixon got a raw deal."

"Obamacare premiums will soar in 2017, the administration acknowledged Monday, with the price of the most popular benchmark plans jumping an average of 22 percent as the law continues to rely on older, sicker customers than its backers had envisioned.

"The number of insurers offering plans on the federally run exchange will also plummet as companies tap out, saying they can't figure out a way to make the economics work -- and raising the risk of lower competition and worse premium increases.

"Roughly one in five customers will have only a single insurer as an option next year after major players such as UnitedHealth Group and Aetna withdrew from most states and nearly all of Obamacare's co-op plans failed.

"That's particularly rough news for President Obama, who is trying to boost his legacy in his final months in office, and for Hillary Clinton, his would-be Democratic successor, who has defended the law."

"Donald Trump often describes President Obama's response to foreign threats as a 'disaster' and has vowed to restore America's military deterrence. So does Hillary Clinton. 'We need to respond to evolving threats from states like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea,' she said in August at the American Legion in Cincinnati. 'We need a military that is ready and agile so it can meet the full range of threats and operate on short notice across every domain,' she added.

"After eight years of retreat, that may prove a tall order. ...

"The next president must demonstrate that there's a new sheriff in town, starting by significantly upping military budgets. Climbing out from the hole we put ourselves in may exact a high cost, but without it, America -- and the rest of the world -- may find things sharply change for the worse."

Read entire article here.

"Iran's leaders, according to the nation's state-run press, now expect 'billions of dollars' in exchange for US hostages they're holding in Tehran's notorious Evin prison.

"Proving, yet again, the problem with ransoming hostages. ...

"Iran's hostage-taking habit is just one more mess the next president will have to clean up."

"So Debate No. 3 had one clearcut winner: Fox News' Chris Wallace. ...

"On Wednesday night, Wallace put on a clinic on how to run a debate, He focused heavily on questions of substance. He largely stayed away from the distractions. And he moved quickly and forcibly to keep the debate on track, cutting off interruptions and off-subject interjections. Not perfectly, but pretty darn well."

"Try as our Democratic friends might, there is no denying that fraudulent voting happens. Illegal immigrants and other non-citizens cast votes: Research from politics professors Jesse Richman and David Earnest finds that one in six non-citizens are registered to vote, and many of them report voting illegally. Legal U.S. voters have been found illegally voting in multiple states. Efforts to purge voter rolls of ineligible voters, e.g. dead people, have been resisted strongly by Democrats, as have efforts to see to the enforcement of laws against voting by felons. It is easily within the realm of statistical possibility that these votes have been decisive in at least two elections: Al Franken's 2008 Senate election and Barack Obama's 2008 victory in North Carolina. ...

"The fact is that we should be opposed to illegal voting even if it is only desultory and rare, even if it amounts to something less than a decisive factor in electoral outcomes. For one thing, it is wrong, malum in se, and for another, it actually does what the Democrats accuse Trump of doing: It undermines confidence in the legitimacy of U.S. elections."

"Operatives working for the Democratic National Committees sent agitators to Donald Trump rallies in an attempt to cause violence -- an effort that was supported by the Hillary Clinton campaign.

"The revelation comes from a hidden camera video released Monday by activist James O'Keefe and an email released by Wikileaks. In the video, liberal activists who say they are in contact with the Clinton campaign claim responsibility for violent events which have occurred so far this election."

"Take a deep dive into the more than 10,000 Clinton campaign emails published by WikiLeaks, and here's what you'll learn: Hillary Clinton is a careful, methodical, tightly-controlled politician. Her jokes, her tweets and even her purported ad libs are often scripted by aides. She hates to apologize, even when she admits she's done something wrong, like keeping emails on a home server. She's a progressive, but not an ideologue; she yearns for 'rational, moderate voices' on both sides. Above all, she's a pragmatist who's willing to compromise -- and to have 'both a public and a private position' if that's what it takes to make a deal.

"Fainted yet?

"'Politics is like sausage being made. It is unsavory, and it always has been that way,' she told a housing group in 2014. 'But if everybody's watching, you know, all of the backroom discussions and the deals...then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So you need both a public and a private position.'

"In other words, she's a Clinton -- a Democrat who believes in progressive goals, but who's willing to trim them, postpone them, even throw them under a bus (temporarily, anyway) when practical politics requires."

"UNESCO -- the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization -- is supposed to promote peace, but keeps doing just the opposite: This week, it moved to write Jewish (and Christian) history out of areas sacred to several religions.

"On Thursday, the agency recognized Jerusalem's Temple Mount and Western Wall as Muslim -- effectively denying any Jewish or Christian ties there.

"Yet Jews have revered the site for 2,000 years as where the holy Temple stood and where Abraham nearly sacrificed his son Isaac. It's also significant to Christians as the site of several key events in Jesus' life. ...

"Such revisionist propaganda wins cheers in benighted bastions of anti-Israel and anti-Western hostility -- and can only embolden jihadists, incite violence and worsen prospects for Arab-Israeli peace."