Your Monday Morning Update on the Outlook for the Senate

Today on NRO

ELBRIDGE COLBY: Why Obama's a traitor to realist foreign policy. The Unrealist.

JOHN FUND: Most voters polled support Scottish independence, which could have some happy results for British Tories. Britain on the Brink of a Breakup.

QUIN HILLYER: The United States must cope with many hazards. Mulligans for Obama.

TOM ROGAN: In Ukraine and against the Islamic State, action is required, not rhetoric. The Complexity of Coalitions.

SLIDESHOW: Explain a Film Plot Badly.

Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty

September 8, 2014

Your Monday Morning Update on the Outlook for the Senate

For what it's worth, the latest CBS News/New York Times Upshot/YouGov Battleground Tracker gives Republicans pretty good news in Senate races in Alaska, Arkansas, Michigan, North Carolina, and probably Louisiana. In Colorado and Iowa, the news wasn't so great. McConnell looks safe in Kentucky and Purdue looks okay in Georgia.

NBC News released a slew of Marist polls, showing good news for Republicans in Arkansas and Kentucky. But they had Cory Gardner down in Colorado, too.

You know you want to come! Get complete info at NRCruise.com.

When I refer to Louisiana, I'm referring to the reelection bid of Mary Landrieu, but perhaps I should refer to her as the District of Columbia's senator. Note that on her voter registration, Senator Landrieu listed her Washington, D.C. address, then crossed it out and listed her Louisiana address.

How You Checking Your Phone at a Red Light Assists the Nanny State

Dear driver in front of me of the left-turn only lane,

It appears you're reading this message on a smart phone during a pause that began as a red light, but became a green light while you were staring at this phone instead of the traffic light in front of you. And now we're behind you, honking our horns.

I have a feeling you've been here before. You're familiar with this intersection, right? This is the left turn lane, and we have a green arrow for maybe twenty seconds, tops. If everyone's paying attention, we can get six cars through, maybe seven if we really push it and slip through in the closing seconds of yellow. We're all sitting here, trying to get to the preschool. We all have roughly the same drop-off time. We all want to get on with our day, just like you do.

I understand the temptation to check your smart phone. We all know that this is a long light — if you miss the green or yellow arrow, you're sitting there for another two or three minutes. I can tell you're not checking your rear view mirror, but if you did, you would see a lot of us back here.

Those of us back here are sitting here — weekday morning after weekday morning — because you feel the need to check your smartphone when you're the first car in line in the left turn lane. And with frustratingly metronomic regularity, you're looking at your phone when the light turns green, and those of us back here have to honk our horns to alert you to the fact that the light has changed, and you and maybe one or two cars get through, and the rest of us are waiting another couple minutes for the lights to cycle again.

This is a basic matter of consideration for your fellow human beings. Yes, it is boring to just look at a traffic light. But you're prioritizing your need to interrupt just a few minutes of boredom over our need to get moving when the light turns green.

In Virginia, texting while driving now gets you a $125 fine, $250 for a second offense. It was recently upgraded to a "primary offense," which means police can pull you over if they suspect you of texting while driving." But we don't really need to throw the book at the people unlucky or unwise enough to check their phones while behind the wheel in front of a cop. We just need people to not look at their farshtunken phone while driving, or while sitting at a red light!

Government and police enforcement are not really needed to deal with you, driver in front of me. It just requires you to use a little better judgment and think about the people behind you. It's a lot easier to preserve personal liberties when people practice personal responsibility. The touchy-feely communitarians always want to put the needs of the community first — well, their chosen definition of the community's needs first — above the rights of the individual. Their instinct to try to make a rule, regulation, homeowner's association bylaw, or law for every single circumstance is a pain in the tush, but they have an easier case to make every time you behave in a manner that prizes only your interests and needs and disregards everyone else's.

Unfortunately, every time you delay the rest of us, you create a problem that Authenticity Woods busybodies will want to turn into a crime.

In Greatest Outlander-TV-Series Publicity Stunt of All Time, Scotland Inches Closer to Independence

Oh, hey, as if we didn't have enough foreign-policy headaches, Scotland might become its own country.

Shaken by polls showing momentum shifting toward independence for Scotland, the British government will offer proposals for greater political and fiscal autonomy for the Scots if they vote to remain within the United Kingdom in a referendum on Sept. 18, George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, said on Sunday.

The narrowing polls have caused considerable anxiety among politicians and business leaders, driving down the value of the pound and raising questions among investors about the stability of the economy and the fate of the current British government.

Hey, not like we needed an ally like the United Kingdom that was actually united as we took on a world full of dangers, threats, and maniacs, right?

Independent Scotland would probably be the first country to give up all nuclear weapons:

A timetable proposed by the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament would see nuclear submarines recalled to the Faslane naval base and their missiles disabled inside eight days. Within a year, all nuclear warheads could be disabled and within two years, the warheads removed from Scotland.

Finally, within four years the process of dismantling the weapons could be completed. The practicality of the timetable has received broad support from a range of experts including Dr Bruce Blair, Professor Richard Garwin, Professor Frank von Hippel, and Professor Malcolm Chalmers. The current Scottish Government's view (as set out in "Scotland's Future: Your Guide to an Independent Scotland") is that agreement would be required for the 'speediest safe' removal of the weapons — at some point within the first term of an independent Scottish Government. It would then be for the UK government to decide whether to rehouse the weapons elsewhere.

But the move would also transform the politics of the remaining portion of the United Kingdom:

Scottish voters are currently much more hostile than the U.K. electorate overall to free markets -- Scots view capitalism as the basis for the Thatcher government's decision to close unprofitable Scottish industries in the 1980s. Currently, Scotland sends only one Conservative member of parliament to Westminister. The departure of Scottish MPs from Westminster would be dramatic: If 59 Labour-party and Scottish National MPs from Scotland leave Westminster, Tories in the current House of Commons would go from being 21 seats short of a majority to having an outright 20-seat majority. "It is unlikely that without Scotland the rest of the United Kingdom would elect a majority Labour government anytime soon," says Eamonn Butler of the Adam Smith Institute.

ADDENDA: Save a prayer or a thought or two for Mandy Nagy, a.k.a. Liberty Chick.

That was fast. The "Jim and Mickey Show" has its first affiliate. Listen on Soundcloud and yes, for everyone who asked, we will set it up on iTunes as well. Our mostly-pop-culture-with-a-dash-of-politics formula is aimed to be light, quick-moving weekend listening. More shows are coming down the pike soon. If you're a radio station looking for an hour of programming, reach out to Mickey or Dave, since they're the ones who know what they're doing.

. . . How was your weekend? You probably had a better one than Cleveland Browns punter Spencer Lanning:

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