RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvard-penn-and-the-warren-story-1539798838

Ivy League universities spend a lot of time talking about how much they promote diversity. But numerous Ivy law faculty now insist they didn’t lift a finger to give an edge to a woman claiming to be Native American and in fact didn’t even know she was calling herself a minority. Why not? The academic history of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) doesn’t seem to square with the policies of the universities that employed her.

On Monday Sen. Warren, who used to call herself Cherokee, presented an analysis of her DNA suggesting that she had a Native American ancestor “in the range of 6-10 generations ago.” Later that day, the Cherokee Nation in Ms. Warren’s home state of Oklahoma rejected this latest effort to justify her claim of Native American status.

One might have expected the senator to simply acknowledge the tribal statement and apologize. But a campaign website is still featuring a story about her “Native American Heritage.” And she’s not the only one who still has a few questions to answer. Her former employers in the Ivy League have offered explanations about her years as a law professor that are hard to reconcile with their schools’ stated efforts to recruit, promote and encourage minority faculty.

Here’s the Monday statement from the Cherokee Nation.:

“A DNA test is useless to determine tribal citizenship. Current DNA tests do not even distinguish whether a person’s ancestors were indigenous to North or South America,” Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr. said. “Sovereign tribal nations set their own legal requirements for citizenship, and while DNA tests can be used to determine lineage, such as paternity to an individual, it is not evidence for tribal affiliation. Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong. 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.”

It is hard to see how the senator will be able to stick with her claim of Native American heritage when the relevant tribe has rejected it. Leaders of other federally-recognized Cherokee tribes have been more kind to Ms. Warren in their responses and specifically the chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee has lauded Ms. Warren’s policy work, but none is embracing her DNA claim. According to the Associated Press:

The DNA test that Sen. Elizabeth Warren used to try to rebut the ridicule of President Donald Trump angered some Native Americans, who complained that the genetic analysis cheapens the identities of tribal members with deeper ties to the Indian past… she’s not a member of any tribe, and many Indians take exception to anyone who claims to be part Indian without being enrolled in a tribe, especially for political purposes.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/two-minnesota-republican-candidates-assaulted/

Two Republican candidates for state office in Minnesota have been physically assaulted in recent days, leading prominent Republican lawmakers to caution their Democratic colleagues against employing inflammatory rhetoric.

Republican state representative Sarah Anderson was punched in the arm last week after confronting a man who was destroying yard signs promoting Republican candidates.

“It was just insane. He was charging at me, saying, ‘Why don’t you go kill yourself?’” Anderson told the Washington Free Beacon. “To have someone physically coming after you and attacking you is just disheartening.”

Shane Mekeland, a first-time Republican candidate for the state legislature, suffered a concussion over the weekend after he was sucker punched while meeting with constituents at a local restaurant.

“I was so overtaken by surprise and shock, and if this is the new norm, this is not what I signed up for,” said Mekeland, who has suffered from memory loss and sensitivity to light since the incident.

Local police confirmed that a suspect had been identified in connection with both assaults and said charges will likely be filed in the coming days.

The attacks took place days after the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party suspended a communications staffer for one week for writing in a Facebook post that Democrats would “bring [Republicans] to the guillotine” in the coming elections.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/17/carter-page

If you are the karma-believing type, this week is filled with events that should nourish your political soul. A few of the masterminds behind the bogus Trump-Russia collusion tale finally are getting some payback—and one of their targets is going to court to get his reputation back.

Two years ago this week, the Obama Administration’s FBI sought and received an order to spy on Carter Page, a private citizen who briefly volunteered for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. On October 21, 2016, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved an application to wiretap the former Naval officer amid suspicions he was a working for Russia and engaged in “clandestine intelligence activities…on behalf of a foreign power.”

Although the information was presented to the secret court as legitimate intelligence from reliable sources, it actually was nothing more than manufactured political dirt on the Trump campaign commissioned by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. The shady opposition research was produced by Fusion GPS, a consulting firm headed by Glenn Simpson, retained in mid-2016 by the DNC and Clinton team to sabotage Trump’s campaign.

The sketchy allegations about Page’s ties to Russia—contained in the so-called Steele dossier—made several unsubstantiated but explosive claims; it nonetheless was peddled to top law enforcement officials, lawmakers, and journalists as credible material just weeks before the election.

During the same time period, the dossier’s author, ex-British spy turned hired gun Christopher Steele, and Simpson personally were meeting with reporters to seed the story that the Trump campaign nefariously was conspiring with the Kremlin to influence the election. News articles about the FBI’s interest in Page began appearing in the media in late September, and continued until Election Day.

Thus, the Trump-Russia election collusion “crime” was born.

Now, two years later, Page is seeking redemption while the perpetrators of the case against him run for cover. On Monday, Page filed a lawsuit in federal court against the DNC and Perkins Coie, the connected law firm that was the payment conduit between the DNC, Clinton campaign and Fusion. (Law firms are hired in order to circumvent election reporting laws that would reveal which political consulting shops are being paid.) Two Perkins Coie principals are individually named as defendants.

Page’s defamation lawsuit accuses the parties of “directly expos[ing] Dr. Page to public hatred, contempt, ridicule and obloquy, which severely deprived him of public confidence, and injured him severely in all his occupations, and tended to scandalize both his colleagues and friends.”