You didn't mention that FH was the author of the thread in question. Since its something that can be done by anyone who creates their own thread in P&S, deletion of the thread clearly has nothing to do with FH's moderator powers.
LOL. When did I say any of that? I just thought it was lame that you didn't mention the fact that it was FH's own thread in question. I still do.
And here we are full circle.
What does FH deleting his own thread, as anybody can delete their own thread, have to do with his "moderator powers"?
Because regular users see this when they press the delete button on the thread OP in Politics & Society.
Regular users can not just make their thread disappear, even if it is self moderated. They could perhaps manually delete everything then leave a basically empty op, but that is not what happened, the thread is gone completely.