"There will be four more debates -- one a month -- before the Iowa caucuses, then three debates in February. Until then, the only thing we know for sure is that the race will be determined by how the candidates conduct themselves. That would be true in any political year; it's triply true in this unusually volatile era, when many of the usual rules don't apply. The candidates -- and all the rest of us -- should buckle our seat belts. We're in for quite a ride."

"WASHINGTON -- A group of intelligence analysts have provided investigators with documents they say show that senior military officers manipulated the conclusions of reports on the war against the Islamic State, according to several government officials, as lawmakers from both parties voiced growing anger that they may have received a distorted picture about the military campaign's progress.

"The Pentagon's inspector general, who is examining the claims, is focusing on senior intelligence officials who supervise dozens of military and civilian analysts at United States Central Command, or Centcom, which oversees American military operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. ...

"The New York Times reported last month that the investigation had begun, but the scope of the inquiry and the focus of the allegations were unclear. The officials now say that the analysts at the center of the investigation allege that their superiors within Centcom's intelligence operation changed conclusions about a number of topics, including the readiness of Iraqi security forces and the success of the bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria."

"It's been 11 years since the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates in the heat of a presidential campaign, but this time the stakes are much higher -- both for the Fed and for the two parties' hopes of taking the White House.

"The last occasion was the summer of 2004, in the closing months of a race that focused more on the tremors of 9/11 and what George W. Bush or John Kerry planned to do in the Middle East. The economy was steadier than it is today, and the Fed's increase of 0.25 percentage points in borrowing costs -- up from around 1 percent -- had little effect on the broader economy.

"But now the Fed's decision on approving its first rate hike in nine years, which could come as soon as a meeting Thursday, has fraught but uncertain consequences for the 2016 election. Some analysts worry that increasing the Fed's main borrowing rate, which has been near zero since 2008, will unsettle a still-uneven U.S. economy. And the conventional wisdom is that any economic clouds would aid the GOP and hurt Democrats like Hillary Clinton."

"For labor unions, the Obama era has been bittersweet. Imagine a man slowly dying in the hospital, who nonetheless exerts immense power over government and receives one enormous gift after another from the president of the United States, and you start to get the picture.

"President Obama's latest giveaway to the unions came as part of the Labor Department's $175 million grant program for 'providing more Americans with affordable access to education and job training opportunities to help grow the middle class.' As the Washington Examiner's Sean Higgins reported Thursday, union training programs will get $25.5 million of that cash -- more than 14 percent, or a share roughly twice as large as union representation in the private sector.

"This gift comes as no surprise. Nor is it by any means the biggest nor the first such favor Obama has provided his political allies in organized labor. Unions may be a weak and dying segment of the electorate, but they nonetheless command large sums of money and wield the muscle power that keeps Democratic candidates strong."

"Fourteen years ago, the United States suffered a shockingly successful surprise attack by a little known Islamic extremist group based 7,000 miles away in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Since then, a U.S. invasion chased al-Qaeda out of its haven, and targeted strikes eventually eliminated most of its senior leaders, including Osama bin Laden in 2011. The danger from the group that killed nearly 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001, has waned.

"Its influence lives on, however, through offshoot extremist groups that have eclipsed al-Qaeda -- none more so than the Islamic State, the lightning spread of which through Syria and Iraq has been marked by medieval barbarity, adapted to the Internet age. ...

"If there's one lesson the nation should have learned from that awful day 14 years ago, it's that the United States cannot afford to ignore a rabidly anti-American terrorist group that has established a haven in a faraway place."

"There's a bigger story hidden inside the New York Times report that 'a special intelligence review of two emails that Hillary Rodham Clinton received as secretary of state on her personal account -- including one about North Korea's nuclear weapons program -- ... contained highly classified information when Mrs. Clinton received them, senior intelligence officials said.' The review was undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which presumably originated the material. They concluded that the material had originally been given the U.S. government's highest secrecy classification. Even if one of Clinton's aides stripped the markings (a felony), Secretary Clinton surely knew satellite intelligence and North Korean nuclear deployments are the U.S. government's most highly classified information.

"The media correctly saw the news as political trouble for Hillary, but they missed two other crucial elements of the story. Somebody high up in the intelligence community leaked that story. And Hillary faces far more than political trouble. She's being fitted for an orange jumpsuit. ...

"The intelligence services remember how seriously the Department of Justice dealt with former CIA directors John Deutsch and David Petraeus, who mishandled documents. They will demand equal treatment here. They will keep the heat on by leaking to the press. The Times story shows the faucet is already open. ...

"If Hillary's political troubles keep piling up, she won't make it to the general election. If her legal troubles keep piling up, she's going to wish the next president was Gerald Ford."

"In the matter of his Iran deal, President Obama and his team have spent two months working relentlessly to secure 41 percent -- and now they're claiming an enormous victory even though by any other standards what they've achieved is nothing but a feat of unconstitutional trickery. ...

"To call this a scandal doesn't even begin to do justice to what it is. It really does suggest we are fast turning into a banana republic, whose leaders feel free to spit on a Constitution whose central purpose is to restrain the ambitions of strongmen and their shameful toadies."

"Violent criminals are getting the upper hand as the 'Ferguson effect' takes hold in cities across the country. Less-aggressive policing has emboldened the bad guys, leading to a nationwide spike in murder.

"New data show murder rates have shot up across major cities as police morale plummets. Surveys show police feel 'under siege' by race-baiting politicians and activists, as well as increasingly hostile suspects, and are second-guessing themselves as they respond to crimes. ...

"Cop-bashing doesn't make anybody safer, least of all inner-city residents caught in the crossfire."

"If you're unlucky, you've heard some speeches this weekend about all the great things the Teamsters and the IBEW and the UAW have done for the American worker, and all the things they want to do. Don't believe a word of it. You want to do the American worker a favor, then get rid of the interference -- the taxes, the regulations, and, yes, the dopey antiquated union rules -- that stand between the worker and the factory door. American workers are among the most creative and productive people who have ever lived, and it wasn't a corrupt Jimmy Hoffa protection racket that made them great. They aren't weaklings, and they don't need protection -- not from you, not from Donald Trump, not from Bernie Sanders, and not from James P. Hoffa. All they need is a chance to use the talents and the strength God gave them."

"I doubt a Biden-Warren ticket will happen, but it remains the only threat to Clinton outside of some Justice Department prosecutor showing the same zeal in going after Hillary Clinton as the administration did in going after David Petraeus.

"Otherwise the Democrats remain lashed to Clinton. Their only hope is that the Republicans self-destruct in a blaze of intraparty warfare. Something for which they are showing an impressive talent."