Here's the complaint Bernie Sanders' campaign filed in federal court against the DNC for suspending its access to public voter data. The case was quickly resolved. What the ruckus was about:

The suit came shortly after campaign manager Jeff Weaver acknowledged at a Washington news conference that Sanders staffers had improperly reviewed information gathered by rival Hillary Clinton earlier in the week. But he accused the DNC of over­reacting to the breach by suspending the Sanders campaign’s ability to access the computer system containing information about Democratic-leaning voters, including data the campaign has gathered about its own supporters.

The Dems will debate tonight in New Hampshire. What should Hillary say about Sanders' data breach and the DNC's response?

Has Donald Trump come completely unglued? He's calling for a total ban on Muslims entering the U.S. He wants the ban to last:

until the nation’s leaders can “figure out what is going on” after the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, California

He's so ignorant. But maybe he just shot himself in the foot. Having already alienated Black, Latino and female voters, he's just added Muslim voters to the list of votes he'll never get in a general election, should Republicans be foolish enough to nominate him.

While there may not be enough Muslim voters in New York and California to make a difference, according to a report on the 2012 election, there are enough of them in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Virginia, Florida and Ohio to have an impact.

Well, for you guys, I have somewhere to go.

Debate Open Thread.

Update (TL): I'm watching. The theme is terrorism.

Hillary looks great. She sounds so much more experienced on foreign affairs than Sanders and O'Malley. Hillary says we can support the countries fighting ISIS, but it's not our fight. I agree. O'Malley is much more hawkish, on both war and intelligence. Sanders doesn't come off anywhere near as sure of himself as he does on economic topics. I wouldn't trust either O'Malley or Sanders to be chief Executive.

Yet another Republican debate tonight in Milwaukee. At least they are down to 8 candidates for the main event.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee — were bumped from the main stage to the undercard, after they failed to reach a threshold of 2.5 percent in national polls.

That leaves eight candidates left in the main event: billionaire Donald Trump, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), former Florida governor Jeb Bush, former tech executive Carly Fiorina, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.).

Jeb has some catching up to do. And Ben Carson still appears to be ahead of Trump. [More...]

Josh Gerstein:

The U.S. intelligence community has retreated from claims that two emails in Hillary Clinton’s private account contained top secret information, a source familiar with the situation told POLITICO. The determination came from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s office and concluded that the two emails did not include highly classified intelligence secrets. Concerns about the emails' classification helped trigger an on-going FBI inquiry into Clinton's private email set-up.

Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III made the claim that two of the emails contained top secret information, the State Department publicly stated its disagreement and asked Clapper’s office to referee the dispute. Now, that disagreement has been resolved in State’s favor, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A top expert in classification procedures called the development" an astonishing turn of events."

So it turns out the IC doesn't agree with the IC IG. Charles McCullough it turns out, is a hack.

Told you so.

Boulder, CO will host tonight's Republican debate.

Trump is slipping, Carson is gaining, and Jeb Bush still has no momentum.

Here are the issues the debate will focus on.

Tonight is the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Iowa. There are 100 days left before the Iowa caucuses.

Hillary is on now. You can watch here. She is all fired up.

"Republicans say I'm playing the gender card. Well if talking about equal pay, paid, family leave, affordable child care and women's health is playing the gender card, deal me in."

Joe Biden announced he will not run for President.

He made the right decision.

I wonder what job Hillary will give him if she's elected.

Just say no, Joe. (more here.)

Joe Biden has been the nation's #1 crime-warrior and police supporter for his entire career, authoring or shepherding through Congress almost every bad crime bill of the last 25 years.

He will be 76 years old when he takes office, should he be elected, meaning in all probability, he'd be a one term president, putting the Democrats at greater risk in 2020. He's also politically tone-deaf, which is why his prior campaigns never took off.

I wouldn't vote for Joe Biden any more than I'd vote for Rudy Giuliani. He's tried twice before. If anyone should understand "three strikes you're out", it's Biden. He should retire and write his memoirs.

On October 7, 2015, Trey Gowdy sent a public letter to Rep Elijah Cummings that made the false accusation that:

In addition to Sidney Blumenthal's business interests, Secretary Clinton also apparently received classified infonnation from Blumenthal-information she should have known was classified at the time she received it. In one email, Blumenthal writes "Tyler spoke to a colleague currently at CIA, who told him the agency had been dependent for intelligence from [redacted due to sources and methods] ." This information, the name of a human source, is some of the most protected information in our intelligence community, the release of which could jeopardize not only national security but also human lives. Armed with that information, Secretary Clinton forwarded the email to a colleague-debunking her claim that she never sent any classified information from her private email address.49 There may be other instances as well where Secretary Clinton passed on classified information she received from Sidney Blumenthal. [My emphasis]

Yesterday, the CIA confirmed that Gowdy lied:

[A]ccording to committee correspondence reviewed by Newsweek, the CIA did tell the [Benghazi] panel on Saturday that it had reviewed 127 emails between Clinton and her close friend and outside adviser, Sidney Blumenthal, and none of it was deemed classified. “The CIA reviewed the material in question and informed State that it required no redactions,” the agency informed Susan Sachsman Grooms, staff director and general counsel for the panel’s Democrats, on October 17. [My emphasis]

This is a scandal and a disgrace.

After much bluster and obfuscation, Rep Trey Gowdy admits he altered the documents that he used to make false claims against Hillary Clinton in a response to a letter from Rep Elijah Cummings. The key parts:

[M]y understanding is the CIA advised the Committee in a very brief email late Saturday night that it had reviewed the material in question and asked for no material to be redacted [. . . ]

Our Committee has access to career civil servants, former federal prosecutors, former intelligence experts as well as military experts who are uniquely well suited to gauge intelligence information and how it should be handled. Although the Executive Branch is ultimately responsible for classification, we remain concerned with the naming of sources and methods and will continue to protect that information now and going forward where it is readily apparent to us. As such, we will continue to redact certain information to protect sensitive information regardless of how others treat that information [...] [My emphasis.]

Gowdy admits that he decided to make this improper redaction. That he attempts to obfuscate the point by stating the "Executive" branch, AFTER Gowdy appointed himself as arbiter of classification, asked for the redaction on PRIVACY grounds, something Cummings himself stated in his letter, does not obviate the fact that Gowdy purposefully altered a document in order to falsely accuse Clinton of wrongdoing.

It is a scandal. Will anyone in the Media care?

Gowdy fabricated redactions on to Clinton's email to make it look like she'd outed a spy. http://t.co/zxY5v90ya2 pic.twitter.com/QV6AAHhb26

— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) October 18, 2015

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland), the ranking member of the eGhazi committee,, makes a startling charge against Rep. Trey Gowdy, the Chairman of the eGazi committee: