Dear Weekend Jolter,
Not one month since the 25th anniversary of 9/11, extremists are sending ghastly reminders that the threat of terrorism never really fades.
In the case of the miraculously averted disaster on a pilot-hijacked FlyDubai flight en route to Israel, the attempted attack showed that even methods thought to have fallen out of fashion are not entirely retired. “Fanatics are fanatics, and they remain willing to entertain ideas that we non-fanatics wouldn’t consider in ten thousand years,” Charlie Cooke observed. This week, we learned that the Omani fanatic involved aimed to crash the jet into Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport or another building, in the style of 9/11.
That near-hit was one of several plots attempted or uncovered in recent weeks pointing to a possible renewed wave of Islamist terrorist violence. Noah Rothman documents them, while noting that an Iran connection (whether direct or indirect) should not be ignored:
This week, the U.S. rushed its B-1 bomber fleet out of England’s RAF Fairford air base just one week after police broke up an allegedly Iran-linked cell as it engaged in suspicious activity around the facility. British police have now made seven arrests in connection with that plot, which London now belatedly acknowledges had links back to Tehran. Several media outlets have now reported that the warplanes were evacuated from the U.K. on a contingency basis because intelligence indicated that a “multifaceted Iranian plot to target the aircraft and kill personnel at RAF Fairford, including American pilots,” was afoot, per the Wall Street Journal. The plot may have involved a “complex drone attack ordered by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”
NR’s editorial adds that while it’s unlikely the Iranians could have pulled it off, “the fact that the Islamic Republic could plausibly execute any such operation is sufficiently alarming. If British soil isn’t safe for America’s most complex and sensitive weapons platforms, that could have a profound impact on America’s deployment posture in Europe.”
The RAF Fairford incident follows numerous other foreign and domestic plots — some discovered in time, some carried out — hatched after the onset of the Iran war. Authorities late last month also arrested and charged a man suspected of plotting to attack the Texas State Capitol. According to the Justice Department and court documents, the suspect expressed “his anger toward the American [Israel] Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)” and allegedly said “these people have to be exterminated.”
Perhaps none of these incidents count as an October surprise in a conventional American political sense. But as Noah observes, the tempo of incidents has been quickening: “At the very least, we can deduce that the Islamist terrorist threat is as elevated as it has been since the immediate aftermath of the October 7 massacre.” With that increased tempo comes increased likelihood that someone, somewhere, will succeed, with consequences unknown.
Jim Geraghty, meanwhile, is keeping an eye on other global trouble spots as the midterm election nears. The strange illness and death of a Russian worker at a plague research institute, for one, is giving him — us — pandemic flashbacks:
So far, it appears we’ve learned nothing from the experience of Covid-19. Here we are, six years later, with another autocratic regime, another pathogen research facility in the middle of a crowded city with a busy international airport, another paranoid, bureaucratic culture where the incentive is to sweep problems under the rug instead of risk punishment for reporting them, and another case where the autocratic government insists everything is fine.
The lab in question reportedly was doing “high-risk research” and using “shoddy biosafety measures.” Put it this way: We should hope that the name Irkutsk does not soon become as universally recognizable as Wuhan.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
Put out the fire: France Needs to Restore Order
The Jones Act has got to go: Time to Scrap the Jones Act for Good
Congress has a chance to do something productive, and should take it: A Golden Opportunity for Permitting Reform
ARTICLES
Dan McLaughlin: Justice Alito Speaks Out on Media Harassment and Why the Rules Still Matter
Dan McLaughlin: Justice Alito on Sports Gambling, ‘Nutty’ Law Reviews, and a Judge’s Fighting Spirit
James M. Patterson: The End of MAGA — and What Comes Next
Jeremy Rozansky: The Supreme Court Asked the Question Boulder Can’t Answer
Noelle Mering: The False Comfort of Going ‘No Contact’
Joseph Loconte: Marco Rubio’s Earnest, Flawed Defense of the West
Fred Bauer: The Civic Stakes of the Maine Senate Race
Jeff Blehar: Kansas Senate Race Upgraded to ‘Tornado Watch’
Wilfred Reilly: What Happens When the Demand for Racism Exceeds the Supply
Audrey Wansink: Cornell Pulled the Fire Alarm — Now Somebody Has to Find the Fire
Noah Rothman: The Cult of Trump Is Trump’s Worst Enemy
Kathryn Jean Lopez: Addicted to Violence Chic
Ryan J. Owens: If Justices Want to Protect the Supreme Court’s Legitimacy, They Should Stop Trashing Their Colleagues
Shabbos Kestenbaum: The War at Home, Three Years After October 7
Charles C. W. Cooke: Tucker Carlson Is Now a World War II Revisionist
CAPITAL MATTERS
Ryan Young & Avery Schreck, on the problem with the inequality debate: America’s Misplaced Income Priorities
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Brian Allen visits and reviews the newly built, immersive TR library in North Dakota, an “indoor-outdoor” experience: Bully, as Teddy Would Say: About Time for Roosevelt’s Presidential Library
We’ve got two takes on the Chris Hansen flick:
Armond White: Not Ready for Primetime
Raleigh Adams: Primetime and the Taste of Televised Justice
Charlie Cooke is happy to hear from Paul McCartney: The Rubber Soul Remix Is All About the Bass
THE EXCERPTS THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’
Dan McLaughlin sat down this week with Justice Samuel Alito for a wide-ranging conversation about baseball, faith, originalism, and the current security climate for the Court. Here’s a bit of part 1 of that interview (part 2 is here; Dan’s review of Alito’s book is here):
NR: The New York Times had a piece just last week about the chief justice’s vacation home. Pictures of where he stays. In this climate, with all of the threats that have been escalating against the justices and the judiciary generally, is that responsible journalism?
JUSTICE ALITO: No, I don’t think so. It’s harassment, and people who don’t like our decisions, don’t like his votes, hold him responsible for what the Court does as a whole, have plenty of other ways to register their disagreement, and they have the perfect right to do that. They can protest down here all they like, but I think I think it’s bad for our society to make it unpleasant, not to mention dangerous, for judges and other high-ranking public officials to feel insecure in their homes.
I mean, we could. I don’t want us to become like some countries where all of the high-ranking officials and police officers, judges, as I understand it, have to live in armed compounds.
NR: That also deters people with families from going into [the judiciary].
JUSTICE ALITO: Well, it does. Yeah, it does. Now he doesn’t have young children, and neither do I. But Justice Barrett does, and the atmosphere is very bad for someone in that position. The Court provides security for us, and the executive branch can provide security for cabinet officers and so forth. But they don’t provide security for children in that. To some, to a parent, that’s more important, really, than their own personal security.
NR: Has this climate made it harder to maintain collegiality on the Court?
JUSTICE ALITO: Yes. The rhetoric, in our opinions, as you can see, the rhetoric and questioning in court. Of course, that is not directed at us. But the rhetoric in general, the rhetoric and the opinions and the dissenting opinions and the dissenting bench statements, sometimes even in speeches that justices give, has escalated, and in a few instances, I think, has gone over the line.
Fred Bauer observes what’s truly on the line in Maine’s Senate race:
Susan Collins has proven the consummate political survivor. For close to a decade, she has been the only Republican elected to federal office from New England. When some analysts were writing her political obituary in 2020, she surged to a 9-point reelection victory. Today, most polls find her in a razor-close race for reelection to a sixth U.S. Senate term against former Maine State Senate President Troy Jackson. As in her 2020 reelection race, there are distinctive visions of governance on the line.
While he is a former Republican, Jackson has now become a rather standard-issue member of the progressive left. Rather than compromise, he supports heightening political conflict. . . .
Collins is an increasingly rare bird in the Capitol aviary: Neither a loner nor a part of some ideological blob, she is an independent voice who is nevertheless still a member of a political coalition. Collins’s career offers a potent counterexample to the trend of smaller but purer political parties. Maine has voted for the Democratic presidential nominee in every election since 1992, yet she has continually racked up wins by significant margins. Collins’s maverick moderation may play especially well in Maine, which has a proud independent streak, but it might also offer a broader political lesson. Voters do, in fact, respond to a candidate’s record. The party that adopts more of a “big tent” strategy could expand its reach.
There are deeper civic stakes here, too. No small part of our political dysfunction is downstream of a broader constitutional abdication. Political polarization, judicial rulings, and a sheer lack of ambition have risked transforming Congress into a performative appendage of an executive dynamo. While the president invokes his “pen and phone,” members of Congress are tempted to settle for the echo chambers of cable news and social media. That hollowing out of Congress — where members are either fawning attendants to or spittle-flecked foes of the president — has made serving in those marble halls a much more boring business. But it has also worsened our politics. A quadrennial election for an absolute executive is simply not flexible enough to govern a nation as heterogeneous as ours. The executive speaks with one voice, but the legislature is a vehicle for bringing many voices together. The piecemeal nature of legislating may frustrate ideologues, but it also tempers political conflict.
However, the legislature can fulfill those duties only if individual members of Congress see themselves as political actors with agency — if they are willing to craft deals across the aisle or dissent from their own party.
ICYMI, Noelle Mering wrote last weekend about the disturbing trend of people cutting off relationships (which she documents in her new book). The piece is here:
It’s often called going “no contact” — discarding family and friends over political or ideological disagreements. Though in some ways those hot button topics have receded or been replaced, many people, like citizens in a war-torn city, are still navigating a lingering obstacle course of rubble long after the bombs stopped dropping. With approximately 68 million Americans estranged from a family member, such ruptures are now quite common and affect friendships and families alike. Estrangement is nothing new, and sometimes, it is entirely warranted. But something has changed in both its justification and its direction — not to mention the frequency at which it now occurs.
At the heart of that change is a profound shift in our concept of family. Traditionally, the family was understood as a natural and pre-political institution, befitting the human condition. We come into the world in existential poverty, radically dependent upon particular people. Our need calls forth their care, and those relationships make claims upon us. Family unity doesn’t depend upon agreement or perfection. The inevitable friction of living in intimacy with imperfect people helps us grow in our capacity to love.
But if family is understood instead (as many progressive academics have long held) as a social construct nested in power differentials, family friction begins to look like oppression. Family bonds become brittle and conditional under the weight of such a reduced and suspicious rendering.
Into that vacuum enters the political tribe, which tends to become inflated and inflamed as the familial tribe weakens. Once a populace has effectively transferred their identity and loyalty to the political tribe, they will inevitably judge their most intimate relationships according to its exacting demands.
In families now, that judgment tends to be at the instigation of the young toward the old. This is a reversal of the old archetype (sometimes warranted, sometimes not) that long populated our movies and moral imagination of the authoritarian father cutting off a wayward son or daughter over morally transgressive behavior. The newer direction of ideological estrangement inverts these roles, with the adult child in the authoritarian role cutting off a parent over politically transgressive beliefs.
CODA
We’ll close out today with some vintage Bonamassa, from that time he covered even vintag-ier Jeff Beck/Rod Stewart. In the words of Stanley Ipkiss, smokin’.
Have a good one, and thanks for reading.