In conservative circles, it turns out that one of the hottest debate topics from Tuesday night was the fight between Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio over immigration. Rubio, of course, is famous for championing a comprehensive immigration bill in 2013 that included a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Cruz voted against it. But he also said this:

CRUZ: You know, there was a time for choosing, as Reagan put it. Where there was a battle over amnesty and some chose, like Senator Rubio to stand with Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer and support a massive amnesty plan. Others chose to stand with Jeff Sessions and Steve King and the American people and secure the border.

….RUBIO: As far as Ted’s record, I’m always puzzled by his attack on this issue. Ted, you support legalizing people who are in this country illegally.

….CRUZ: Look, I understand Marco wants to raise confusion, it is not accurate what he just said that I supported legalization. Indeed, I led the fight against his legalization and amnesty.

….RUBIO: Did Ted Cruz fight to support legalizing people that are in this country illegally?

….BASH: Senator Cruz, can you answer that question please?

….CRUZ : I have never supported legalization, and I do not intend to support legalization. Let me tell you how you do this, what you do is you enforce the law.

But this isn’t true. Cruz did support legalization. As Jim Geraghty points out, Cruz offered an amendment to Rubio’s legislation that would have legalized millions of immigrants. Here is Cruz explaining it at Princeton in 2013:

It’s worth thinking for a moment about how that would operate. That’s an amendment to the underlying bill. The underlying bill from the Gang of Eight provides for legal status for those who are here illegally. It provides for them getting a temporary visa initially, and ultimately being able to get a green card, as a legal permanent resident. The amendment I introduced would not change any of that, which would mean the 11 million who are here illegally would all come out of the shadows and be legalized under the Gang of Eight’s bill. It would simply provide that there are consequences for having come illegally, for not having followed the legal rules, for not having waited in line, and those consequences are that those individuals are not eligible for citizenship.

Cruz would have denied citizenship to anyone here illegally, but he explicitly supported a path to legal residence. Cruz now likes to pretend that he merely meant his amendment as a poison pill, something that would make the entire bill unacceptable to Democrats. But that’s not what he said at the time. Here’s Geraghty:

Asked directly, Cruz had every opportunity to state that he didn’t intend for his amendment to be adopted or for the Gang of Eight bill to pass at all and in fact replied the opposite. At no point did he describe his amendment as a poison bill or procedural maneuver to derail the bill. He had every chance to say he opposed a legal status for illegal immigrants and didn’t do so. At this point, there is no reason to believe that in 2013, Ted Cruz opposed a path to legalization (not citizenship) for illegal immigrants.

Byron York confirms that Cruz told him the same thing during an interview in May of 2013. In other words, Cruz may have gotten the better of Rubio during the debate by lying with a straight face on national TV, but he also may have set himself up for trouble down the line since his record on this point is pretty clear. Liberals haven’t paid a lot of attention to this bit of byplay, but conservatives have. And it’s not likely to end here.

Today, FBI director James Comey said the San Bernardino shooters never talked openly about violent jihadism on social media: “So far, in this investigation we have found no evidence of posting on social media by either of them at that period in time and thereafter reflecting their commitment to jihad or to martyrdom. I’ve seen some reporting on that, and that’s a garble.”

So where did this notion come from, anyway? The answer is a New York Times story on Sunday headlined “U.S. Visa Process Missed San Bernardino Wife’s Zealotry on Social Media.” It told us that Tashfeen Malik “talked openly” on social media about jihad and that, “Had the authorities found the posts years ago, they might have kept her out of the country.” The story was written by Matt Apuzzo, Michael Schmidt, and Julia Preston.

Do those names sound familiar? They should. The first two were also the authors of July’s epic fail claiming that Hillary Clinton was the target of a criminal referral over the mishandling of classified information in her private email system. In the end, virtually everything about the story turned out to be wrong. Clinton was not a target. The referral was not criminal. And as the story itself noted, the emails in question had most likely not been classified at the time Clinton saw them.

Assuming Comey is telling the truth, that’s two strikes. Schmidt and Apuzzo either have some bad sources somewhere, or else they have one really bad source somewhere. And coincidentally or not, their source(s) have provided them with two dramatic but untrue scoops that make prominent Democrats look either corrupt or incompetent. For the time being, Schmidt and Apuzzo should be considered on probation. That’s at least one big mistake too many.

UPDATE: The New York Times has asked for a correction to my characterization of the July 23 Schmidt/Apuzzo piece about Hillary Clinton’s email. “Our story never said that a probe or investigation had been opened,” their representative writes. That is correct. It said there had been a request for a criminal investigation.

Also: “The story does not say that the emails had been classified at the time Clinton saw them.” True enough. My apologies for implying otherwise. I have corrected the text of the post.

Carly Fiorina said this last night:

One of the things I would immediately do, in addition to defeating them here at home, is bring back the warrior class—Petraeus, McChrystal, Mattis, Keane, Flynn. Every single one of these generals I know. Every one was retired early because they told President Obama things that he didn’t want to hear.

In real time, I mentioned that David Petraeus wasn’t “retired early” because he told Obama something he didn’t want to hear. He resigned after it was discovered that he was having an affair. And how about Jack Keane? Here’s what he said on Fox Business:

STUART VARNEY: Did you in fact, general, give advice to President Obama, which he didn’t want to hear and didn’t take?

JACK KEANE: No, I have never spoken to the president. That’s not accurate, and I never served this administration. I served the previous administration.

McChrystal, of course, famously resigned after he and his aides trashed a bunch of civilian officials in the pages of Rolling Stone.

Remarkably, though, Mattis and Flynn really did have disagreements with the White House. So Fiorina was 40 percent right. That kind of dedication to accuracy explains a lot about her tenure at Hewlett-Packard, I guess.

And as long as we’re on the subject of explicit lies, how about Donald Trump doubling down on his claim that he “strongly” opposed the Iraq War? Why is it that none of the other candidates have ever called him on that? Are they really that afraid of him?

Congress has been trying to pass CISA for a while now. CISA is the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, and it’s designed to make it easier for private companies to share information with law enforcement about hacks and cyber attacks. It passed the Senate a couple of months ago, but there’s been some pushback in the House, so it’s been in limbo for a while.

I figure that all you really need to know about CISA is this: Dianne Feinstein is for it and Ron Wyden is against it. That would be enough for me to oppose it sight unseen. Still, what’s the problem? Well, the text of the bill seems to have a loophole: it would allow companies to share just about anything with law enforcement, including requests for surveillance of individuals. The fact that this could be fixed pretty easily but hasn’t been, invites obvious suspicions.

And it gets worse. CISA has now been tossed into the year-end budget bill, which means it’s going to get passed for sure. And it’s been “improved”:

The latest version of the bill appended to the omnibus legislation…creates the ability for the president to set up “portals” for agencies like the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, so that companies hand information directly to law enforcement and intelligence agencies instead of to the Department of Homeland Security. And it also changes when information shared for cybersecurity reasons can be used for law enforcement investigations. The earlier bill had only allowed that backchannel use of the data for law enforcement in cases of “imminent threats,” while the new bill requires just a “specific threat,” potentially allowing the search of the data for any specific terms regardless of timeliness.

So not only hasn’t this loophole been fixed, it’s been explicitly widened. There are other problems with this new and improved CISA too. Marcy Wheeler is reading the bill right now and posting about other changes as she comes across them. But no matter. As Wyden says, it may be a “surveillance bill by another name,” but it’s a surveillance bill that’s going to land on the president’s desk in a few days. And he’ll sign it.

I’m not sure why, but for some reason I got curious last night about whether movie theaters had to pay more to show Star Wars than they do for other movies. The answer is yes:

Theaters are under extra pressure now because Disney is demanding a giant box-office slice: “well north of 60 percent” of each ticket, B. Riley & Co. media analyst Eric Wold estimated, compared to an average of about 53 percent for all films since 2008….Disney is also requiring theaters keep the movie playing on large screens for four weeks at a minimum, longer than studios generally demand, Wold said. And because Disney owns some of the world’s most powerful film franchises — including the superheroes and animated universes of Marvel and Pixar — no theater wants to face the consequences of scuttling the premiere.

Over the next couple of weeks, I suspect I’m going to be asking again and again a question that’s been on my mind for a long time: how did Disney manage to buy the Star Wars franchise for only $4 billion? Surely it’s worth 20x earnings, and surely it delivers more than $200 million in profit per year. Right? What am I missing here?

According to AP reporter Erica Werner, Sen. Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is “looking into possibility Cruz released classified info during last night’s debate.” Exciting! So what was it that Cruz said? Here’s a replay:

CRUZ: Well, you know, I would note that Marco knows what he’s saying isn’t true…What he knows is that the old program covered 20 percent to 30 percent of phone numbers to search for terrorists. The new program covers nearly 100 percent. That gives us greater ability to stop acts of terrorism, and he knows that that’s the case.

Is this classified info? Inquiring minds can’t wait to find out.

UPDATE: Hmmm. Marcy Wheeler says, “Story here is NOT that Cruz leaked classified info. Burr let Rubio leak classified info, but now wants to go after Cruz for rebutting.” The plot thickens…

I’ve done my best not to pay too much attention to the San Bernardino shooters. They weren’t part of ISIS, or recruited by ISIS, or associated in any way with organized terrorism. They were apparently inspired by ISIS, but mass killers are inspired by lots of things. There’s just nothing very unusual here. The plain truth is that although this case is an immense tragedy, it really isn’t that interesting.

Still, there’s the question of how they stayed under the radar so long. Why were they allowed in the country? Did the Department of Homeland Security or anyone else check out Syed Farook’s new wife? I lost interest in this, too, when Tashfeen Malik’s famous social-media dedication to jihad turned out to be little more than a few private Facebook messages written in Urdu. It’s hardly surprising that was missed. But now it appears there was even less to miss:

I guess we’ll have to wait to see how this plays out, but from where I sit it sure looks like there’s a lot less here than meets the eye. There was no plot by ISIS. There was no gigantic breakdown in security. There’s no special reason to suddenly decide that all our lives are in danger from terrorism. There was just a pair of troubled youngsters who were inspired by the wrong people and went on a killing spree. Add them to the ever-growing list.

Paul Ryan has made old school horsetrading cool again:

Congressional leaders on Tuesday night reached agreement on a year-end spending and tax deal that would prevent a government shutdown and extend a series of tax breaks that benefit businesses and individuals, according to lawmakers.

….The tax break package would cost about $650 billion and extend around 50 credits for businesses and individuals while also delaying until 2017 a tax on medical device manufacturers.

The approximately $1.1 trillion appropriations package would fund the government for the remainder of fiscal 2016 and contains a two-year delay of the Affordable Care Act’s so-called Cadillac Tax on expensive employer-sponsored health care plans as well as a delay of a tax on health insurance plan purchases.

The spending bill also would lift the 40-year ban on crude oil exports. In exchange for allowing this provision, Democrats secured the extension of tax breaks for wind and solar energy producers for five years.

So Republicans get a bunch of tax breaks and an end to the ban on oil exports. I don’t know why either Republicans or Democrats care one way or the other about the oil export ban, but apparently they do. In return, Democrats get a delay of the Cadillac Tax and some tax breaks for solar and wind.

Fabulous. I think the general idea is to wrap this baby up so that everyone has the energy for a full-on gang war over the White House next year. Once that’s settled, then….I dunno, nothing, probably. Whoever wins, the other side will probably continue acting the same way they are now. But at least we’ve cleared the decks and everyone will be able to go home for Christmas. These days, that counts as a win.

Here is Hugh Hewitt asking Donald Trump about America’s nuclear triad—missiles, subs, and bombers:

HEWITT: What’s your priority among our nuclear triad?

TRUMP: Well, first of all, I think we need somebody absolutely that we can trust, who is totally responsible, who really knows what he or she is doing. That is so powerful and so important. And one of the things that I’m frankly most proud of is that in 2003, 2004, I was totally against going into Iraq because you’re going to destabilize the Middle East. I called it. I called it very strongly. And it was very important.

But we have to be extremely vigilant and extremely careful when it comes to nuclear. Nuclear changes the whole ball game. Frankly, I would have said get out of Syria; get out—if we didn’t have the power of weaponry today. The power is so massive that we can’t just leave areas that 50 years ago or 75 years ago we wouldn’t care. It was hand-to-hand combat.

The biggest problem this world has today is not President Obama with global warming, which is inconceivable, this is what he’s saying. The biggest problem we have is nuclear—nuclear proliferation and having some maniac, having some madman go out and get a nuclear weapon. That’s in my opinion, that is the single biggest problem that our country faces right now.

HEWITT: Of the three legs of the triad, though, do you have a priority? I want to go to Senator Rubio after that and ask him.

TRUMP: I think—I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to me.

I seriously want to hear anyone on the right side of the aisle defend Trump as a potential commander-in-chief after hearing this. Any conservative who still wants this guy as president has forfeited their last smidgen of credibility as anything more than a crude partisan hack.

This debate was a mess. I seriously wonder whether ordinary viewers were able to follow much of it at all. It left me with the impression of a bunch of super macho monks angrily arguing about angels on the head of a pin. The candidates went down a rabbit hole early on and never really came up for air.

My strongest impression is that Ben Carson was terrible. He really needed to show that he wasn’t a complete nitwit on national security, and he failed spectacularly. He was obviously out of his depth and had no clue how to answer even the simplest questions. He literally froze when Wolf Blitzer asked him his view of the USA Freedom Act. It was almost painful to watch. Later on he burbled about not being able to fix the Middle East, sending Syrian refugees back to Syria with a few defensive weapons, and then became completely incoherent when asked about North Korea. Carson did so badly that I think his campaign is over.

Donald Trump took a step backward to his persona from the first debate: lots of mugging for the camera and no apparent policy knowledge at all. He doubled down on killing the families of terrorists; he answered three or four different questions by saying he opposed the invasion of Iraq; and then produced one of the night’s most fatuous lines: “I think for me, nuclear, the power, the devastation, is very important to me.” That’s his position on the nuclear triad? It’s hard to believe this isn’t going to hurt him in the polls, but this is not a normal world we live in these days. I’d say he’s going to lose a few points, but I won’t pretend to be confident about that.

Jeb Bush tried manfully to needle Trump, but the poor guy just can’t pull it off. All Trump had to do was make a face at him. As for substance, he was one of the most reasonable guys on the stage, but he seems incapable of stating his views in any kind of memorable way. He did nothing to help himself tonight.

Marco Rubio did his usual thing: he produced tight little canned responses to every question. I don’t like this approach, but I suppose it sounds coherent and forceful to some people. He did OK, and might pick up a few points. However, I would like to hear more about whether he thinks Ted Cruz exposed national secrets on live TV.

Ted Cruz probably did well, though he struggled with several questions. Does he really think we can carpet bomb only “the bad guys” and no one else? Does he really think arming the Kurds is the key to defeating ISIS? They aren’t going to fight ISIS anywhere outside Kurdistan. But I doubt this kind of stuff does him much harm. His tedious manhood fight with Wolf Blitzer over being allowed to speak when it wasn’t his turn didn’t make him look especially presidential, but maybe that doesn’t matter either. My sense is that he came out about even tonight.

Chris Christie said nothing except that he’s tough. Carly Fiorina just spouted her usual one-liners. John Kasich desperately wants people to pay attention to him and just can’t pull it off. And Rand Paul, bless his heart, didn’t try to out-macho everyone. But he also probably didn’t appeal to anyone either.

It’s hard to know how to react to this stuff. Kasich apparently wants a full-on re-invasion of Iraq. Trump wants to kill terrorist families. Cruz wants to carpet bomb ISIS but has no idea what that actually means. Rubio thinks our Middle Eastern allies will all magically provide lots of ground troops just as soon as the lily-livered Obama is out of office. Carson is just plain scary in his lack of knowledge of anything. The only thing they all agree on is that America needs a testosterone injection. It’s pretty depressing to watch.

But maybe I can cheer you up. Earlier today I told you that the latest issue of Mother Jones features a scarily-near-life-size picture of me, suitable for putting on your refrigerator if you buy a copy of the magazine. Did you think I was joking? I wasn’t, and I have photographic proof on the right. But I tell you what: If enough of you make a donation to MoJo tonight, I think I can convince them never to do this again. Deal?

Full debate transcript here.

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Here we are for the….what is this? The fifth Republican debate? They fly by so fast! It seems like just yesterday that Carly Fiorina was a toddler in the undercard debate, but now look at her. Proudly up on the main stage and polling at 2.2 percent.

11:06 – And that’s a wrap.

11:04 – Trump: Our health care system is going to implode in 2017.

11:02 – Jeb mentions his “detailed plans” yet again. He probably ought to cool it on that.

10:55 – Commercial break! Then closing statements. While we wait with bated breath, how about making a donation to the hardworking bloggers here at Mother Jones? Just click here.

10:54 – Trump says he won’t run as an independent. At least, it seems like he said it. You never know with Trump.

10:52 – Trump and Rubio are now mugging together.

10:51 – Rubio wants to upgrade everything.

10:48 – Hugh Hewitt asks Trump what he’d upgrade first: missiles, subs, or bombers. Trump’s stream of consciousness reply is on a whole new level. Hugh asks again. Trump: “I think for me, nuclear, the power, the devastation, is very important to me.” OMG.

10:47 – Jeb continues the mindless China bashing. This is everyone’s favorite sport every four years.

10:46 – Christie wants us to dig up Chinese corruption and then tell the Chinese people about it. How? Leaflets?

10:44 – Carson is now literally babbling about national security. I can’t watch. It’s too embarrassing.

10:42 – What would Fiorina do about North Korea? Answer: we have to beat up on China. This will convince them to help us get rid of Kim Jong-un. What?

10:38 – Commercial break! And I’m working hard here, folks. How about a donation? Show us that you get it.

10:35 – Hmmm. I wonder what Chris Christie’s job used to be? I wish he’d let us know.

10:31 – Carson: We should settle Syrian refugees in…northwest Syria. All we need is a few weapons to defend it. But why do we send Kurdish arms through Baghdad? Does Carson really not know? This is almost painful to watch.

10:26 – FFS, will everyone stop griping about not getting called on?

10:20 – Bush once again needles Trump for getting his information from “the shows.” Sadly, he can’t really pull it off. It does seem to get under Trump’s skin, though.

10:18 – Trump has been mugging for the camera all night. Much like the first debate.

10:12 – Carly trying to sound tough. They’re all trying to sound tough. They’re the toughest toughs of all time. They’re all tougher than anyone else on the stage. I wonder if even conservatives get weary of this endless bluster?

10:09 – The overall impression of this debate is total chaos, despite the fact that everyone on stage except Rand Paul has pretty much the same foreign policy.

10:07 – Wolf desperately trying to shut up Ted Cruz. Finally succeeds. Cruz looks like an idiot.

10:05 – I’m losing the plot here. Who’s in favor of what these days?

10:03 – Carson: Middle East has been in turmoil for thousands of years. We’re not going to fix it. Huh? Does he even listen to his own words?

10:02 – Now it’s $3 trillion.

10:01 – Trump: We’ve spent $4 trillion trying to topple dictators. Now the Middle East is a mess. Not totally clear what he means by this, but he’s certainly opened himself up for attack.

9:56 – Cruz manfully tries to defend teaming up with dictators as long as they’re our dictators.

9:52 – Commercial break! Why not take the time to make a donation to Mother Jones? All you have to do is click here. It only takes a few seconds.

9:51 – Carson: we have to destroy the caliphate. We have to “take their energy.” We have to cut off Raqqa. That’s his strategy?

9:48 – Um, no, Carly, Petraeus wasn’t “retired early” because he told Obama something he didn’t want to hear. You remember the real reason, don’t you?

9:47 – Rubio seems to think the only reason that Middle Eastern countries aren’t providing ground troops is because they don’t trust Obama. I hope he doesn’t actually believe that.

9:45 – Kasich appears to be proposing a massive re-invasion of Iraq.

9:44 – Now Trump doesn’t want to close down parts of the internet, he just wants to get a bunch of “smart guys” to infiltrate them. I wonder why no one has thought of that before?

9:37 – Should we kill the families of terrorists? Trump says he would be “very, very firm with families,” whatever that means.

9:35 – Cruz will destroy ISIS by “targeting the bad guys.” Okey dokey.

9:33 – Rubio says we need ground troops to defeat ISIS. This isn’t rocket science, but props to Rubio for actually saying it.

9:31 – Wolf asks Cruz again: would he carpet bomb cities? Cruz says he’d carpet bomb the places where ISIS is. This is, of course, in the cities.

9:30 – Cruz yet again seems to think the Kurds will fight outside Kurdistan if we arm them. This is pitiful.

9:28 – Trump desperately tries to tap dance around his idea of closing down parts of the internet. Eventually, he says yes, by God, he would shut down parts of the internet.

9:25 – Fiorina thinks we missed the San Bernardino shooters because we used the wrong algorithms. Also: we don’t need to force Silicon Valley companies to cooperate with NSA. We just need to ask them. Has she paid attention to anything at all over the past three years?

9:23 – Who’s right about the USA Freedom Act, Rubio or Bush? Carson looks like a deer in headlights and says Wolf should ask them. He doesn’t want to get in the middle of this. WTF? This is the new, well-briefed Carson?

9:20 – Christie just flat-out said that policy is boring. All we need is a guy who’s tough on terrorism. This legislation mumbo jumbo from the junior senators is for wimps.

9:18 – Rubio implies that NSA can’t access phone records with a warrant. But he didn’t quite come right out and say that, which means he can deny it later.

9:16 – This is great. Rubio has just implicitly accused Cruz of blabbing classified information on national TV.

9:15 – Rubio giving another one of his mini canned speeches. Do people really respond well to this?

9:13 – Cruz can’t abide the thought that he voted for a bill that Obama signed.

9:11 – So far, there’s been zero substance in this debate. Obama is horrible, ISIS must be destroyed, I’ll keep you safe, blah blah blah.

9:07 – These folks are still obsessed about whether Obama will say radical Islamic terror. Can someone please ask why they’re so fixated on this? Do they really think that saying this over and over actually makes a difference?

9:03 – Shouldn’t Obama get 30 seconds every time someone mentions him?

9:01 – Cell phones with ISIS flags on them? Have I missed something?

8:59 – Well, they’re all going to keep us safe.

8:51 – Chris Christie blaming LA school closure on Barack Obama.

8:49 – Rand Paul going after Trump and Rubio in his opening statement. OK then.

8:48 – And we’re off!

8:39 – Ben Carson has apparently been studying up on foreign policy. I so can’t wait for that. Do you think he’s figured out how to pronounce Hamas yet?

8:30 – Three minutes away from Reince Priebus! Then we get to see whatever ridiculous opening video CNN has concocted for us tonight.

8:22 – So how was the opening act? Did Lindsey Graham declare war on anyone?

8:13 – We have a few minutes while the CNN folks burble away, so why not donate some money to Mother Jones while we wait? I plan to harass you all evening about this, so you might as well do it now. Come on. What do you say?