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O'Rourke uses Trump-like insults in final debate, calls Cruz 'Lyin' Ted' as polls show Cruz pulling ahead

Texas Democratic Rep. Beto O'Rourke emulated President Trump's attacks in his final, fiery debate with incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz on Tuesday night, openly calling Cruz "Lyin' Ted" and charging that he was "all talk and no action" in the Senate.
The newly aggressive strategy came as polls show that O'Rourke, despite raising a record-setting $38 million in campaign funds last quarter, is lagging significantly behind Cruz with just three weeks to go until Election Day.
O'Rourke announced Monday he would not share portions of that fundraising haul with other Democratic candidates, even as polls show that Republicans are starting to pull away in several key races as the GOP looks to expand its slim 51-49 majority in the Senate.
“Senator Cruz is not going to be honest with you," O'Rourke said during the debate Tuesday, after Cruz described O'Rourke's voting record on environmental issues.
"He’s dishonest," O'Rourke continued. "It’s why the president called him Lyin’ Ted, and it’s why the nickname stuck. Because it’s true.” (A leading fact-checker, citing police reports, has challenged the accuracy of a claim made by O'Rourke at an earlier debate that he never left the scene of a DUI incident in 1998.)
Cruz fired back, telling the 46-year-old O'Rourke his universal health care plans didn't make sense using even "elementary school math" and alluding to his declining odds at the polls.
Cruz cited studies like the one released in July by the left-leaning Mercatus Center at George Mason University, which said prominent "Medicare for all" solutions advocated by Democrats would increase government health care spending by $32.6 trillion over 10 years, and require historic tax increases.
“It’s clear Congressman O’Rourke’s pollsters have told him to come out on the attack," Cruz said. "So if he wants to insult me and call me a liar, that’s fine.”
The debate included some lighter moments, with the candidates pausing their broadsides to describe some personal anecdotes. Cruz mentioned that he tries to stay in touch with his family while he's in Washington using Facetime calls, and O'Rourke discussed nursing a seemingly hopeless blind squirrel and sneaking in jam sessions on a basement drum kit that he had ostensibly purchased for his son.
However, the tone was predominately sharp and testy. Cruz repeatedly told the debate moderator, local reporter Jason Whitely, to stop interrupting him -- most forcefully when he was condemning what he called the rise of liberal partisan incivility.
The two later sparred over Cruz's role in the 2013 shutdown of the federal government, which he largely spearheaded as a means of opposing the Affordable Care Act, known as ObamaCare.
"You want to talk about a shutdown?" Cruz asked. "With Congressman O'Rourke leading the way, [there'll be] two years of a partisan circus and a witch hunt on the president."
DEMS POISED TO MAKE HISTORIC IMPEACHMENT PUSH IF THEY RETAKE THE HOUSE, AS GOP PULLS AWAY IN SENATE POLLS
That was a reference to O'Rourke's stated support for impeaching President Trump, which top Democratic leaders have said would be premature. Cruz noted O'Rourke is “the only Democratic Senate nominee in the country who has explicitly come out for impeaching President Trump.”

"He’s dishonest. It’s why the president called him 'Lyin’ Ted,' and it’s why the nickname stuck."
— Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-Texas

Cruz predicted "utter chaos" if O'Rourke's proposal became a reality.
"Washington would be consumed by partisan investigations. That's not civility," Cruz said, noting that he and his wife had been chased out of a Washington, D.C. restaurant recently by liberal protesters chanting, "We believe women."
WATCH: RADICAL PROTESTERS CONFRONT, HARASS CRUZ AND HIS WIFE AS THEY EAT DINNER
O'Rourke's position on impeaching the president apparently has changed during the campaign. “Impeachment, much like an indictment, shows that there is enough there for the case to proceed,” O’Rourke has said, “and at this point there is certainly enough there for the case to proceed.” However, the 46-year-old has clarified that although he would vote for impeaching Trump, he hasn't been in favor of actually initiating impeachment proceedings.
During the debate, O'Rourke pushed back, telling Cruz it was "really interesting to hear you talk about a partisan circus after your last six years in the Senate." Laughter broke out in the debate room, which had a live audience.
WAPO FACT-CHECK DISPUTES O'ROURKE'S CLAIM DURING PREVIOUS DEBATE ABOUT LEAVING DUI CRASH SCENE
The upstart Texas representative asked, "If you have such a special relationship with the president, where is the result of that? You are all talk and no action."  Cruz pointed to his role in the passage of Trump's historic tax package last year as one of his signature achievements in the Senate.
O'Rourke's language again mirrored one of the president's favored lines. In speeches, interviews, and rallies, Trump has often derided politicians as being typically "all talk and no action."
Trump, once Cruz's bitter rival during the 2016 presidential campaign, has endorsed Cruz. He is poised to become a bigger factor in the race: On Monday, Trump will hold a rally for Cruz at the 8,000-seat NRG Arena in Houston.

Liberal profs launch campaign to pack Supreme Court after Kavanaugh confirmation

Less than a month after the confirmation of Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh entrenched a 5-4 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, leading law professors are urging Democrats to expand the size of all of the nation's federal courts and pack them with liberals.
Far-left Harvard professors Mark Tushnet and Laurence Tribe are lending their support to the so-called "1.20.21 Project," which was launched by political science professor Aaron Belkin on Wednesday to counter "Republican obstruction, theft and procedural abuse" of the federal judiciary.
That rhetoric reflects the professors' apparent surprise after Democrats lost the 2016 presidential election, which they had hoped would allow the party to continue appointing liberal judges and justices. In 2016, when Hillary Clinton was leading in all major polls in her bid for the presidency, Tushnet definitively declared in a blog post that conservatives were the "losers in the culture wars."
He wrote that liberal judges who "no longer have to be worried about reversal by the Supreme Court" could be useful in marginalizing those Republican "losers," whom he compared to the defeated Japanese in World War II or the Confederacy in the Civil War.
WATCH: TUCKER SAYS DEMS' PLAN TO PACK THE COURT WOULD 'DELEGITIMIZE' THE SUPREME COURT FOREVER, LEAD TO RETALIATION
The heated language also highlights what liberals have characterized as the unfair treatment of President Obama's failed nominee to the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland. In 2016, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, refused to hold a hearing or vote on Garland, saying a lame-duck president shouldn't be able to appoint a justice in an election year. Garland didn't have enough support in the GOP-held Senate to win confirmation.
At Kavanaugh's ceremonial swearing-in ceremony earlier this month, President Trump led a standing ovation for McConnell, whom he called a "great" leader who has done an "incredible job for the American people." Under McConnell and Trump, Republicans have now confirmed 26 federal appellate judges and two Supreme Court justices. (Kavanaugh's rise to the Supreme Court creates a new vacancy on the influential D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, where he had served for 12 years.)
That fast pace of conservative judicial appointments has upended and frustrated some of the assumptions of liberal law professors like Tushnet, who wrote just two years ago: "Right now more than half of the judges sitting on the courts of appeals were appointed by Democratic presidents, and – though I wasn’t able to locate up-to-date numbers – the same appears to be true of the district courts."
Liberal academics have long floated the possibility of flooding the bench with Democrats, although the 1.20.21 Project is their most organized effort to date. For example, another far-left law professor, Indiana Unversity's Ian Samuel, wrote on Twitter as soon as then-Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement in June that Democrats should "[p]ack the courts" as urgently as they should "abolish ICE."
Still, this latest effort also underscored the intensely left-leaning politics of most of the nation's academia. During Kavanaugh's confirmation process, thousands of progressive law professors signed a letter saying Kavanaugh's temperament during Senate Judiciary Commitee hearings in September was disqualifying. Kavanaugh forcefully denied the uncorrobroated attempted rape and other sexual misconduct accusations against him.
And Tribe, who has accused President Trump of "orchestrating a massive cover-up" that is "worse" than anything done by former President Richard Nixon, is himself no stranger to partisan politics. In 2015, a piece in The New Yorker by law professor Tim Wu asked, "Did Laurence Tribe Sell Out?" The article noted that "it would ... be foolish to ignore the inherent tension in searching for truth while also working for paying clients," as Tribe does.
While there is no constitutionally fixed number of federal appellate or Supreme Court justices, the plan to pack the courts would require changes to federal law, meaning that Democrats would have to retake Congress and the presidency to see it through.
DEMS ALSO PREPPING HISTORIC TRUMP IMPEACHMENT PUSH AFTER MIDTERMS, AS FOX POLLS SHOW GOP GAINS
The proposal is not without precedent. In 1937, then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt, frustrated by the Supreme Court's objections to his New Deal policies, threatened to pack the Supreme Court -- a proposal that failed after Associate Justice Owen Roberts bowed to the White House's pressure and began supporting its initiatives.
But Tribe insisted this new plan is different. Roosevelt was unhappy with high court decisions that were blocking New Deal legislation, but the new push for a larger court stems from Republican actions, not the court's decisions, Tribe said.
"The time is overdue for a seriously considered plan of action by those of us who believe that McConnell Republicans, abetted by and abetting the Trump Movement, have prioritized the expansion of their own power over the safeguarding of American democracy and the protection of the most vulnerable among us," Tribe said.
KAVANAUGH COPING MECHANISMS: 5 WILD DEM SCHEMES TO COUNTER TRUMP'S SCOTUS WIN
Belkin, who launched the 1.20.21 Project, did not immediately respond to Fox News' request for comment.
The size of the Supreme Court varied during its first 80 years from a low of six at the time the Constitution took effect in 1789 to a high of 10 during the Civil War. The current tally of nine justices was set in an 1869 law.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Ellison loses fight to delay divorce paper release, report says

A Minnesota appeals court on Tuesday ruled against Rep. Keith Ellison and his ex-wife's attempt to delay the release of their divorce records to allow them a chance to redact 'confidential information.'
Ellison, who holds one of the top positions in the Democratic National Committee, is near the end of a tight race for Minnesota attorney general and has recently seen his lead slip after allegations of domestic abuse by a former girlfriend.
The Star Tribune reported that the divorce files will likely be unsealed on Wednesday.
Kim Ellison, his ex-wife, told reporters on Tuesday that it was her hope to keep the divorce record away from public scrutiny due to her medical records. The file reportedly touches on her depression and a multiple sclerosis diagnosis. She said there was never "any abuse of any kind in our relationship."
They were married for 25 years.
The focus on Ellison's divorce began after Karen Monahan alleged that he tried to drag her off a bed by her feet in 2016. She said she had video of the incident, which she has refused to provide.
Ellison has denied all the allegations and allowed the party to review Monahan’s allegations. The state Democratic Party hired Democratic Party-affiliated lawyer Susan Ellingstad whose draft report cleared him of wrongdoing.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune and conservative news site Alpha News sued to unseal the divorce record, arguing it's a matter of public interest as he vies for the state's top law enforcement position.
His wife accused the outlets of using their "personal tragedy for personal gain or political gain or to boost circulation."
"It’s not fair that my life's work should be reduced to the two years that I suffered a mental illness," Kim Ellison, a teacher, said.
Recent polls indicate that Ellison in a dead heat race with Doug Wardlow, the Republican opponent, according to the New York Times.
The poll also found that 40 percent surveyed voters said the domestic abuse allegations “are a factor” in whether to vote for the Democrat. Another poll shows the congressman leading by five points.
Fox News' Lukas Mikelionis and The Associated Press contributed to this report

From Hillary to Elizabeth, Democratic distractions hurting the party in midterms

With three weeks to go in what should be a strong midterm election for them, here's what the Democrats don't need:
Hillary Clinton justifying her husband's sexual affair with a White House intern because she was over 21.
Elizabeth Warren doing a DNA test that shows she has a minuscule fraction of Native American ancestry and getting denounced by the Cherokee Nation.
Heidi Heitkamp having to apologize for putting out a letter naming sexual assault victims without their permission.
These are, to put it mildly, all self-inflicted wounds.
The plain fact is that there's only so much media oxygen out there in an election that Donald Trump has clearly nationalized. When one of the name-brand Democrats steps in it, the media pile on, and that means the party's message is obscured — especially important with less than three weeks until the election.
Of course, some GOP candidates have screwed up as well. And Trump drew enormous criticism yesterday for tweeting, after a federal judge tossed Stormy Daniels' defamation suit against him, "Great. Now I can go after Horseface and her 3rd rate lawyer," White House wannabe Michael Avenatti.
This of course reminded Trump critics of a series of comments about women's faces, and why go there after winning the lawsuit? While it created a media storm, voters have already made up their minds about the president's penchant for personal insults. And he's got the huge megaphone, which he is using, on many other issues.
That's not true of the Democrats, who seem to lack a unified message other than Trump is awful so we should take over the House. It's always a challenge for a minority party without a national leader and in this case, a zillion people positioning themselves to run in 2020. But that underscores why these ancillary controversies are a wasted opportunity.
Clinton drew flak for her comments about Monica Lewinsky in a "CBS Sunday Morning" interview. She said, not surprisingly, that her husband should not have resigned two decades ago, when he was being impeached, and that she's only responsible for her own behavior.
But when correspondent Tony Dokoupil said Bill couldn't possibly have had a consensual relationship with Lewinsky because of the huge power imbalance, Hillary retreated to saying "she was an adult." That angered many in the #Me-Too movement and made her sound tone-deaf.
Come on. Lewinsky was a very young woman in an extramarital relationship with the most powerful man on the planet. You might think, after all this time, that Clinton would have crafted a better answer.
Warren, obviously stung by Trump's "Pocahontas" attacks, completely botched her rollout of DNA evidence purporting to show she did have a distant Native American ancestor. All you need to know is that the Cherokee Nation's secretary of state said:
"It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens, whose ancestors are well documented and whose heritage is proven. Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage."
How could she not have sounded out the group first?
The Boston Globe has issued two corrections on the story. The first one said that under the test Warren "would be 1/1024 Native American, not 1/512."
The second said that the senator had "misstated the ancestry percentage of a potential 6th to 10th-generation relative." Ouch.
I understand that Warren wanted to put the Native American controversy behind her and send a clear smoke signal that she's running for president. But while the ensuing back and forth with Trump might help her, it does nothing for her fellow Democrats who are up in November.
One of those is Heitkamp, who is running about 10 points behind Republican Kevin Cramer in the North Dakota Senate race. She made an extraordinary blunder in issuing an open letter to him that was published in several newspapers.
That letter named some sexual assault survivors who say they are not victims of assault, and others, expressing their outrage on Facebook, who say they never gave permission to be publicly identified.
The senator said in a statement: "I deeply regret this mistake and we are in the process of issuing a retraction, personally apologizing to each of the people impacted by this and taking the necessary steps to ensure this never happens again."
That was political malpractice by Heitkamp's campaign that obviously hurts her candidacy, but also achieved story-of-the-day status that drew attention from other Democrats.
None of these mistakes was dreamed up by a hostile conservative media, and have actually drawn sharp criticism from liberal pundits. Together they amount to an unintended gift to the GOP.

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Pompeo lands in Saudi Arabia to meet with King Salman over missing writer

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, second right in front, walks with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir after arriving in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2018. (AP)

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo landed Tuesday in Saudi Arabia to meet with King Salman over the disappearance of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi, who is believed to be dead.
Pompeo landed in Riyadh and was to speak Salman over the crisis surrounding Khashoggi and his alleged slaying. Pompeo was greeted by Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir.
Khashoggi vanished two weeks ago during a visit to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Pompeo is set to also visit the place where Khashoggi was last seen.
"The effort behind the scenes is focused on avoiding a diplomatic crisis between the two countries and has succeeded in finding a pathway to de-escalate tensions," said Ayham Kamel, the head of the Eurasia Group's Mideast and North African practice. "Riyadh will have to provide some explanation of the journalist's disappearance, but in a manner that distances the leadership from any claim that a decision was made at senior levels to assassinate the prominent journalist."
Turkish officials said they fear Khashoggi was killed and dismembered inside the consulate. Saudis have called the allegations “baseless.”
Media reports indicate that the Kingdom may acknowledge the writer was killed in the consulate.
Meanwhile, Turkish investigators were allowed to search the consulate on Monday, according to The Washington Post. But hours before the Turkish forensic team arrived, journalists photographed a cleaning crew entering the consulate, the paper reported.
The crew hauled buckets, mops and what appeared to be bottles of cleaning solution, The Post reported. Turkish investigators said they “smelled chemicals had been used,” two officials in contact with the investigators said, according to the paper.
“They are trying to make fun of us and our willingness to cooperate,” one of the officials said.
Forensics tests like spraying luminol, a chemical mixture, can expose blood left behind, said Mechthild Prinz, an associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice who previously worked at the New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
"It depends on how well they cleaned it up," Prinz told the AP. "Obviously, you don't want anybody to have a chance to clean it up, but very often people do miss blood."
President Donald Trump, after speaking with King Salman, had dispatched Pompeo on Monday to speak to the monarch of the world's top oil exporter over Khashoggi's disappearance.
“I am immediately sending our Secretary of State to meet with King!” Trump tweeted Monday.
Khashoggi had written critically about Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, son of King Salman, for The Washington Post. The prince is next in the line to the throne, and his rise to power prompted the writer’s self-imposed exile in the U.S.
Khashoggi has criticized Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, its recent diplomatic spat with Canada and its arrest of women's rights activists after the lifting of a driving ban for women—policies seen as initiatives of the crown prince.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Kimmel backs Republican running for constable in North Las Vegas

By Amy Lieu | Fox News

2-3 minutes

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Jimmy Kimmel appears in a campaign video to support his longtime friend Jimmy Vega for North Las Vegas constable.  (Jimmy Vega for North Las Vegas Constable)

Who says Jimmy Kimmel doesn't support Republicans?
Late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel announced his support for a Republican (a lifelong friend) who is running for constable in North Las Vegas.
Kimmel appeared in a campaign video endorsing Jimmy Vega, who he's known since they were 12 years old. The host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” said he was proud of Vega for running.
Vega, 51, had been in the military for 25 years, and is currently in the naval reserves, he said.
“For me it was an integrity issue, is that, you know, you work hard, not everybody is meant to be a cop, not everybody is meant to be a firefighter, not everybody is meant to be in the military. You have to go through your prospective boot camps or academies to earn it, and that’s how I feel, I feel you just have to earn everything in life,” Vega said.
Kimmel has been vocal about his criticism of President Donald Trump and many Republican policies. But Vega said it’s not about partisanship.
“It’s just doing the right thing and helping the people, and that’s what I plan to do,” he said. “This race shouldn’t be a partisan race anyway. We’re law enforcement, we don’t create law, we just enforce law.”
North Las Vegas is “saturated” with veterans, according to Vega, and he has a passion to support veterans, he said. Vega said he wants to grow the department.
“There’s a lot of things that the current constable is not doing that I intend to do,” he said.

Jimmy Kimmel and longtime friend Jimmy Vega. (Jimmy Vega for North Las Vegas Constable)

According to Nevada law, Constables are considered peace officers, according to Nevada law. Their duties include evictions and summoning juries for justices of the peace.
Kimmel and Vega chuckle throughout the video, with the comedian throwing in a few jokes, including some about the eviction part of the constable job.
They both graduated from Clark High School, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.