Call a Lawyer and Sioux Me  Dear Weekend Joltarians, We offer our apologies to the great Betty Hutton, cast as Miss Oakley (seen here with another great actor, J. Carrol Naish, doing his best Sitting Bull). Maybe they were reading Ms. Hutton's DNA results confirming that she too was 1/1024th Native American, à la Senator Warren, whose ballyhooed results — which are silent as to whether some ancient grandpappy may have been a Cherokee or Arapaho or Seminole (or, more likely, Hekawi)– rightly came in for a swift conservative comeuppance. David French had something to say about the media's heap-big forked-tongue fawning over the release of the Senator's DNA data, which shows she fails to meet the federal criteria to apply for a casino license. I'll jump the line and give you a smattering of The Media Fell for Elizabeth Warren's Spin here: In fact, at the far end of the range — if her Native American ancestor is ten generations removed — then she is only 1/1024 Native American. By that measure, "white" Americans are also commonly black, and black American are also commonly white. It turns out that at least some mixing is routine in American racial groups. In 2014, the New York Times reported on the results of a massive DNA study and found that "European-Americans had genomes that were on average 98.6 percent European, .19 percent African, and .18 Native American." Black Americans were "73.2 percent African. European genes accounted for 24 percent of their DNA, while .8 percent came from Native Americans." In other words, Elizabeth Warren isn't a Cherokee. She's a relatively normal White American — a person with some bit of mixing somewhere in their distant past. How distant? If you move to the older end of the generation range, her Native American ancestor could predate the founding of the country. She had no business holding herself out as Native American in faculty directories, in a book, or in her personal narrative.
Your Humble Correspondent had a duty overflow this week past — there was the big NR Institute Buckley gala in Chicago — so this edition of The Weekend Jolt is truncated, unlike the usual avalanche of important links surrounded by tomfoolery. So let's get to the links without further . . . Wait! There is ado: We encourage every Tom, Dick, and Annie, before you get your gun, to get those cabin reservations on the National Review 2018 Buckley Legacy Conservative Cruise (sailing from Ft. Lauderdale on Holland America Line's gorgeous Oosterdam, December 1-8). In the past two weeks, another 10 savvy and snazzy staterooms have been booked — there's still one available for you (all-inclusive prices start at only $1,999 a person). Go to www.nrcruise.com to learn all about our speakers, the itinerary, available cabins (from insides to suites), and NR's acclaimed, exclusive, all-inclusive program. And now, without further ado . . . Editorials 1. Montana democrat Jon Tester (no documented relation to Fester Bester) is a liberal masquerading back home as a conservative. He ain't. As for whether he should be re-elected this November, we say, nope. From the editorial: Though he's running with a slight lead over his Republican opponent, Matt Rosendale, Tester's support has softened in recent weeks. Tester has never won a majority in a Senate race, and this one, like the prior two, looks increasingly like a toss-up. The New York Times ran a column last week absurdly characterizing Rosendale as a "merciless" "bootlicker" — perhaps the surest sign yet of Tester's vulnerability. In short, his sheen may be coming off as Montanans, galvanized by his vote against Brett Kavanaugh, rebel against the man who on most matters is a down-the-line Democrat. The senior senator from Montana votes like he's representing Minnesota or Oregon. Tester is clearly wary of being attacked on the gun issue, as his campaign recently told voters that he'd made a living "shooting hundreds of cows and hogs." His legislative record on gun rights is generally acceptable, but his reliable opposition to conservative judges effectively endangers the Second Amendment. Tester voted against Neil Gorsuch's confirmation, came out against Brett Kavanaugh on a flimsy rationale, and, unlike some of his fellow red-state Democrats facing reelection, has consistently voted against conservative nominees to the federal bench.
2. We have argued how “E-Verify” is central to sensible immigration reform. We double down on the principle. From the editorial’s summation: Should the GOP gain ground next month, a serious immigration reform may again be on the table. At that point, the GOP will need to be united — and will need a clear command from voters to address illegal immigration in an effective way. Vocally supporting E-Verify now can provide candidates that mandate, and may help them win their races to begin with as well.
A Dozen Gotta-Read Gems Mined from the Clacking Typewriters of National Review's Ace Writers 1. "Sleazy" Bob Menendez, the incumbent Senate Democrat in New Jersey, is in the fight for his Senate life, now in a dead heat against GOP challenger Bob Hugin. From Michelle Malkin's new column: And in my favorite mendacious Menendez-engineered scheme, which I dubbed the 36DD visa program, Menendez and his staff pressured the State Department to expedite the foreign-tourist and student-visa approval processes for a bevy of buxom foreign beauties. As I previously reported, one of them, Brazilian actress and porn pinup star Juliana Lopes Leite (a.k.a. "Girlfriend 1"), had her F-1 student-visa application moved to the top of the pile in 2008 after Menendez and his staff intervened as a favor to model-lovin' Melgen. Another 36DD visa beneficiary, Rosiell Polanco-Suera, testified that her rejected visa application (along with her sister's) received reconsideration and instant approval after Melgen promised to "fix it" by reaching out to Menendez.
2. Jim Geraghty has a smart analysis on voter turnout and cautions those expecting that voting booths will be swamped not to get their hopes up. 3. More from Big Jim, this time on "The Beatification of Beto O'Rourke," the media darling. From the piece: The national media desperately want a Democrat who can win statewide races in the South and someday end up on a presidential ticket. That yearning drove the brief and otherwise unremarkable career of disgraced former senator John Edwards of North Carolina. Democratic statewide winners exist here and there, such as North Carolina governor Roy Cooper and Louisiana governor Jon Bel Edwards. Doug Jones won his Senate race in Alabama, though it helps to run against Roy Moore. Reporters from the national media desperately want to discover the Southern Democrat with national potential — Bill Clinton 2.0 — and write the first glossy profile piece of a future president, a lengthy, detailed piece that basically doubles as a future book proposal. Lots of political reporters aspire to be the next David Maraniss and write the next First in His Class and spend the latter half of their careers as quasi-historian experts about a particular president. In every cycle, at least one Democrat gets the glossy "here's the Democrat who can win in the South" treatment. Harold Ford Jr. in Tennessee, Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky, Michelle Nunn and Jon Ossoff in Georgia. Stephen Colbert's sister, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, got a lot of hype in her special House election bid against Mark Sanford in South Carolina.
4. More on BetoMania: Texas local Heather Wilhelm also scores the panting media. From her piece: Anyway, back to the matter at hand. I'd like to further discuss the debate between O'Rourke and Ted Cruz, and also actual policy issues, and also perhaps the fact that many people in politics seem to be slowly going insane. But first, can we talk about how embarrassing Betomania is? Friends, I am deeply concerned for our culture. When you look at a middle-aged establishment politician as an icon of "rock star" cool, you're doing something wrong. "Skateboarding Beto O'Rourke Shreds Whataburger Parking Lot," read an actual recent headline on the website of the Dallas Morning News. This all sounds really rad and sick and gnarly and whatever until you actually watch the video, which features O'Rourke gently coasting around the parking lot, soccer-dad style, looking precariously close to biting the dust when he gives a bystander a high five. Don't get mad: I'm not judging! I would do exactly the same thing, except I'd probably actually fall! But no wide-eyed journalist would write a headline claiming that I "shredded" anything, nor credulously act like I belonged on the cover of Thrasher magazine.
5. Dan McLaughlin, with a treatise that could win him a Nobel Prize in Mathematics (yeah, I know — there isn't one), analyzes how the Senate elections will break. We won't give away the total punchline, but the complacent have nothing about which they should be complacent. Here is a slice of Dan's calculating: Not a national blue or red wave, no. Outside of deep-blue Delaware and deep-red Utah, no race has shifted more than four points into the Democratic column, and only North Dakota and Tennessee have banked further than that into the Republican column. Overall, six races have shifted at least two points bluer, and one of those is the lightly polled, many-undecided Indiana race; six have shifted at least two points redder, but that includes the opponents of Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand enjoying the proverbial "dead cat bounce" without any real chance to win (similar to why Romney's opponent has surged into the high 20s). But while this is overall an optimistic picture for the GOP, unless and until we see more polls showing that Florida, Indiana, Montana, West Virginia, or Missouri are enjoying movement to the Republicans, it's not just hard to generalize about a positive trend in the Senate; it's also hard to be too confident that the movement we have seen in the past month will continue. And of course, the polls could just be off a handful of points in either direction, affecting our perception of any number of close races. The most interesting races of this cycle are the ones with "survivor" candidates — men and women who have shown, in some cases repeatedly, the ability to win tough races in which they were expected to be vulnerable. Examples this year include Democratic senators Joe Manchin, Heidi Heitkamp, Claire McCaskill, and Jon Tester, Republican senator Dean Heller, Democratic challenger Phil Bredesen, and, over in the governor's races, Scott Walker. There are also many such races in the House. But maybe the most compelling race this year is the Florida Senate race, with both Senator Bill Nelson and Governor Rick Scott having outlived many predictions of their demise (in 2014, Scott's critics were gloating that he had lost as late as the early returns on Election Night), but both having customarily won with the national wind at their backs (Scott in 2014 and 2010, Nelson in 2012 and 2006).
6. Indiana Wants Me: Margot Cleveland watched last week's debate between Dem incumbent Joe Donnelly and his polished GOP challenger, Mike Braun. Donnelly, allegedly pro-life, tried to channel the 2012 abortion card. Here's how the piece begins: A genuinely pro-life person would not cast a fellow pro-lifer as an extremist. And he most certainly wouldn't do so using a sound bite perfected by abortion activists. Yet that is exactly what embattled Democratic Indiana senator Joe Donnelly did last week in a debate with Republican challenger Mike Braun. When Donnelly squared off against Braun in the first of two planned debates, with the two neck-and-neck in the polls, he placed political expedience over his professed pro-life values. Donnelly attempted to reset the abortion trap with which he ensnared his Republican opponent of six years ago, Richard Mourdock.
7. One More Fauxcahontas dig: Ben Shapiro says the Massachusetts Democrat wasichu is a fraud. From his piece: After all, she could rest on the fact that the Boston Globe reported just six weeks ago that Warren's Native American status wasn't a factor in her hiring at Harvard Law School. Why couldn't Warren just say — as, in fact, she claims in the pages of the Globe — that she claimed Native American ancestry because she believed the stories she was told by her female relatives, and that those claims may have turned out to be false but had no impact in any case on her career development? Because claiming minority status did and does have value to Warren. Her Native American ancestry claims may not have been a factor in her hiring at Harvard Law, but the University of Pennsylvania listed Warren's 1994 teaching award in its Minority Equity Report. Harvard Law listed her as Native American in the university's annual affirmative-action report; administrators listed her as such from 1995 to 2004. It took real action from Warren herself to be listed as Native American at the institutions at which she worked. Minority status adds luster to a résumé in academia. And in politics. Warren knows that without her claims of Native American ancestry, she's merely another successful white woman in an era in which the base of her party has dismissed white women as part of the privileged class. Claiming connection with a historically disadvantaged minority is politically useful to Warren — even if that connection is gossamer-thin. By the intersectional logic of the Left, ancestry is destiny, and those of minority ancestry are bound together by a common fate.
8. Centrist politicos in Europe still don't get it. Michael Brendan Dougherty discusses the failures of the anti-populists. From his piece: Emmanuel Macron has mostly tried the strategy of co-opting populist issues, and his victory over Marine Le Pen in the 2017 election — with two-thirds of the vote — was celebrated as the comeback of liberal technocracy. Instead of just defending the EU's economic arrangements as they were, he proposed to reform them. But on immigration he has since taken a much more anti-populist line, and as a result he has lost the enthusiasm of half of his supporters. He now has an approval rating that matches Donald Trump's at his depth. Angela Merkel tried some concessions and a little authoritarianism. She tried to stanch the bleeding of her support by cutting a dirty deal with Turkey to stop the migration into Europe that was roiling the politics of the continent. Her government also worked with American tech companies to regulate speech on social media. The self-styled defenders of the "liberal world order" put all their chips on her leadership. And her party crashed into its worst electoral showing since World War II. Her Christian Democrats are now taking in water almost as badly as her center-left coalition partner is. Even as Germany's situation somewhat stabilized this year, Bavarian elections saw the further rise of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) on the right and the Greens on the left. The election is the latest in a long line of results that show the center-left dying thanks to the increasing inability of cosmopolitan voters who are upwardly mobile in an era of globalization to share a coalition with traditional working-class voters who feel economically and culturally threatened by the same.
9. Peter Spiliakos spanks the brats in this excellent analysis of tantrum-loving elite white liberals, who feel entitled, à la Calvinball, to make up the rules as they go along. The legendary comic strip Calvin and Hobbes had a game called "Calvinball." The rules were nonsensical to the outsider and the players made up them as they went along, to gain tactical advantage. But the point was that the players were alternating in changing the rules. In many elite institutions, elite white liberals are used to playing a spoiled-brat version of Calvinball in which only they get to make up the rules. Sometimes the rule is believe the accusers (when the targets are fraternities or Republican nominees). Sometimes — like with Keith Ellison — the rule is pictures or it didn't happen (sorry, Al Franken). Sometimes colleges need safe spaces, and sometimes armed left-wing militias are an understandable but overenthusiastic response to peaceful, democratic critics. The key is the relationship of (mostly white, affluent, privileged) activists to authority. They might be students, junior staffers at media companies, or television producers, but they all know that they are part of the in-group and that authority is looking for a pretext to apply the rules in a partisan manner against the out-group. They know that authority is corrupt, and that rules and procedures will be manipulated or ignored to harass the opposition. These expectations of special treatment don't just disappear when these people leave their institutional playpens.
10. Hitting the same theme, Victor Davis Hanson exposes "The Origins of Progressive Agony." From his piece: Progressives soon woke up to the reality that without power they were unable to stop Trump, and so they embraced any desperate means necessary to trap the ogre. The effort proved as frenzied as it was impotent: boycotting the inauguration, suing over state voting machines, using the courts to stymie Trump appointments and executive orders, appealing to the emoluments clause and the 25th Amendment of the Constitution, and winking and nodding at the assassination chic of celebrities and politicos such as Johnny Depp, Peter Fonda, Kathy Griffith, Madonna, Robert de Niro, Snoop Dogg, and a host of others. The many methods to subvert Trump's presidency or fantasize about his gory death were as varied as the number of faux-accusers who would come out of the woodwork to smear Brett Kavanaugh. And the result was eerily the same: the more the impotent frenzy, the more it discredited its source Blacks Lives Matter, Antifa, and #MeToo were all in a sense weaponized to do what elections had not. Finally, in exasperation, Democrats have begun demonizing the Electoral College itself, which has gone from the legal basis of Obama's treasured "blue wall" to a relic of old, white male Founders who supposedly favored rural hicks over the better people of the cities. Progressives now damn the idea of a nine-person Supreme Court and mysteriously praise the discredited, hare-brained scheme of FDR to pack the court with progressive toady judges. They bitterly lament the unfairness that a Wyoming or Montana might have as many senators per state as California or New York, though they had no such complaint in 2009 when they had a Senate supermajority — a margin they won in part because a tiny progressive state such as Rhode Island had the same number of senators as odious conservative Texas. How could it be that a picture-perfect system that had empowered Barack Obama now gave the country Donald Trump? How unfair of the deplorable Founders to have bequeathed that ball and chain to the better people of 2016!
11. And you thought Rome was where those cracking sounds were coming from. Turns out that there is a big-time battle going on in the Orthodox Church, with a bona fide schism happening between Russia and Constantinople. Can the communion be saved? You must read Tyler Arnold's essay, from which we share this slice: The two churches are feuding over whether a Ukrainian Orthodox Church can be autocephalous, or independently governed, without Russian Orthodox consent. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been under Russian Orthodox authority, but a Ukrainian nationalist movement birthed a new Orthodox Church, one outside Moscow's authority. That new entity, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church–Kiev Patriarchate (UOC-KP), was universally unrecognized in Orthodoxy until this month, when Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople recognized its validity independent from the Russian Orthodox Church. Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula and other recent conflicts between the two countries had led a robust nationalist movement of clergy and politicians to seek recognition of an independent Ukrainian church, sparking Bartholomew's decision. Patriarch Kirill of Moscow responded to Bartholomew's recognition by ceasing communion with Constantinople. Moscow, claiming that Bartholomew has no canonical authority to recognize an autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church, accuses him of encroaching on the authority of the Russian Orthodox Church, maintaining that it alone has jurisdiction over that region. Russia seeks to maintain influence over Ukraine, while Ukraine wants independence from the Kremlin. Western forces are hoping to chip away at some of Russia's influence. However, this feud also impacts the more than a quarter-billion Orthodox Christians worldwide and threatens the stability and unity of a church that traces its origins to Jesus Christ himself.
12. Who puts a rapist in a women's prison? Government idiots who genuflect to transgender theology, that's who. Maddie (or, as she reminds me, Maddy) Kearns continues to work this beat that exposes a true threat to our culture. From her latest piece on the alliance of strange bedfellows being forged: The Gender Recognition Act of 2004 in England and Wales, which allows a person to change his legal gender, is under review. The proposal, backed by trans activists, is to remove the legal requirements of living as the opposite sex for two years, having a medical proof of gender dysphoria, and being at least 18 years old (activists want it lowered to 16). Women's-rights groups have led the resistance to this proposal, citing concerns for safety. Indeed, this became a national conversation after Karen White, a transgender rapist, was incarcerated in a female prison despite having a penis. White subsequently raped multiple inmates, for which she has now received a life sentence. However, even now, it remains unclear where White will spend this sentence. It's not only vulnerable inmates effected by this controversy; children are, too. The UK Girl Guides (Britain's version of the Girl Scouts) made the controversial decision to allow boys who identify as girls to shower with girls, if they self-identify as girls. And some schools have already embraced similar policies. Astonishingly, the House of Commons opted not to discuss White's case despite being asked to. New evidence shows why politicians continually skirt around the issue: fear. A recent ComRes poll showed that 35 percent of male MPs said they could speak freely about transgender issues, and only 28 percent of female MPs said they could.
Lights. Cameras. Punditry. 1. Kyle Smith finds the Halloween remake right-wingy. Viva the Second Amendment! From his review: In the new film (not a reboot but a sequel that occurs 40 years after the events in the 1978 original and ignores all intervening Halloween movies), the woman, a mom named Karen, is forever grumbling about her Parris Island–style upbringing. Her mother is Laurie Strode, played once again by Jamie Lee Curtis. Laurie has excellent reason to suspect the presence of dark and evil in the world, and she taught her daughter from a young age about firearms, the fallen nature of man, the failures of the state, the blessings of rugged individualism, and the collected works of Russell Kirk. Okay, maybe not that last part, but still: Halloween is a gung-ho, gun-loving, liberal-trolling, capital-punishment-backing conservative manifesto in the format of a slasher flick. It's the kind of movie where if someone says he'd rather have dance lessons than shooting practice, he'll soon be corrected. David Gordon Green, who has made everything from somber indie dramas to episodes of HBO's Eastbound and Down, directed Halloween and also co-wrote it with Eastbound star Danny McBride (who does not appear in it) and Jeff Fradley. They hit the usual horror-movie chords — don't go in that room looking for the boogeyman, Miss Babysitter! — and generate a bog-standard level of scares. Halloween is at its best, though, when the filmmakers unobtrusively turn mordant about their characters and about the clichés of the slasher genre. One callback in particular got one of the most enthusiastic laughs I've heard at the movies lately.
Here's an NRO Webathon Did-You-Know The are 216 reasons why you must support National Review? Truth be told, there are many more reasons, but 216 is the number Rich Lowry computed by counting the articles, editorials, and major blog posts we published on NRO in defense of Brett Kavanaugh in the face of the wild accusations leveled against him by partisan Democrats and a hellbent media. That doesn't include pieces we published in the magazine, or editorials, articles, and blog posts (hundreds more) run on NRO, from the date of President Trump's nomination of the now-Justice. Nor does any of this computing count the straight news reporting we have done on the nomination. Yeah, there are way more than 216 reasons for you to support NR. By the Way . . . . . . The Wide Wide World of NR Institute will be traveling across these United States over the next weeks and months to host Reihan as he discusses his acclaimed new book, Melting Pot or Civil War?: A Son of Immigrants Makes the Case Against Open Borders. For your convenience, you can find Salam USA Tour info here. But because we have your eyes right now, scan the following to see when the Big Brain is coming to a neighborhood near you (and check back because more dates will be added soon): - October 23, 2018 in Tampa, FL: Co-hosted by the Tampa Bay Federalist Society. RSVP Here.
- October 23, 2018 in Orlando, FL: Co-hosted by the Orlando Federalist Society. RSVP Here.
- October 29, 2018 in Baltimore, MD: Co-hosted by the Maryland Public Policy Institute. RSVP Here.
- October 30, 2018 in Washington, D.C.: Co-hosted by the GWU Young Americans for Liberty. RSVP Here.
- November 1, 2018 in Washington, D.C.: Co-hosted by the Hudson Institute. Registration opening soon.
- November 15, 2018 in Jackson, MS: Co-hosted by the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. RSVP Here.
- February 20, 2018 in Kansas City, MO: Co-hosted by the Kansas City Public Library. Registration opening soon.
Hey, do you want a book excerpt? Here's an excerpt. And do you want to see a glowing review? Here's a glowing review. But be warned: Do not stare too long at it because the relentless brightness might damage your peepers. Baseballery What will become of the sacrifice bunt if the NL adopts the DH? We're talking art here friends . . . at least Brett Josphe is, in the NRPLUS piece for your favorite website. But here, I will sneak you a slice: The sacrifice bunt, in contrast to the more awe-inspiring, tape-measure blast, is one of baseball's most understated metaphors for life. It looks simple — and it is, compared with hitting a 95-mile-per-hour fastball squarely on the barrel of the bat — but it is easily neglected and botched. Young major-leaguers today often reveal an unfamiliarity with how to bunt that would have shamed even Little Leaguers in the past and certainly should shame their coaches. The sacrifice bunt also is one of baseball's most seminal chess moves, particularly late in games when one run could make the difference between winning and losing. Before managers worried about how their pampered, overpaid stars might feel about having "the bat taken out of their hands," they regularly called for the sacrifice and traded an out for advancing a runner into scoring position. And, thanks to the wisdom of some long-forgotten baseball founding father, the sacrifice does not count against a hitter's batting average, an idealistic cap nod to the idea that life sometimes should encourage modesty to serve the team.
A Dios To those who came to the NRI Buckley Prize Dinner in Chicago on Thursday, thanks much for showing up and for loving Bill's legacy. See you next week as we recover from celebrating Saint Crispin's Day (it's on the 25th!). May he and all who dwell Up There have your back. God bless, Jack Fowler jfowler@nationalreview.com is where Nigerian lawyers can reach me about that inheritance. P.S.: Call a lawyer and sue me, sue me. What can you do me? I love you! | 
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