"Democratic senators announced at the outset of the Kavanaugh nomination that they would do what it took to stop him. They have held to their word, believing that any means necessary is morally defensible.

"Republican senators, however, seem to lack the discernment to understand when they're getting played by people who hate them and want them destroyed.

"It's not just that they're losing a political battle, but that they're allowing Democrats and the media to destroy a man and his family for political gain. There is no virtue in allowing a man to be smeared without evidence."

"Damned if you do. Damned if you don't.

"That is the dilemma President Donald Trump faces as he decides whether to fire Rod Rosenstein following revelations that the deputy attorney general allegedly talked about taping the president and rounding up Cabinet officials to invoke the 25th Amendment.

"There were several people present at this meeting in the aftermath of the firing of former FBI Director James Comey. Despite the fact that Rosenstein wrote the key memo trashing Comey for his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, he reportedly was angry and uncertain after the president actually did it, using his memo as a justification.

"The prime source for this information appears to be none other than fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who faces investigation by a grand jury and whose memos are being declassified. McCabe appears to be even angrier at the Department of Justice (DOJ) brass who fired and humiliated him just for leaking and lying when he may have far worse on his comrades.

"This is the deep state unraveling.

"People bristle when I sometimes adopt and use that term: 'deep state.' But as an outside observer, watching the unmasking of the actions of one official after another at the FBI, CIA and DOJ, I have come to accept that an unelected group of well-educated, experienced individuals running these departments became inebriated with their own power during the last election campaign and apparently came to believe they were on a mission to stop, defeat or remove President Trump and his associates for crimes they would find or, if necessary, manufacture."

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"When the New York Times launched an ad campaign after Trump's inauguration proclaiming truth is 'more important now than ever,' we rolled our eyes. The truth is always important. No White House resident changes that.

"But with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court on the line and allegations of sexual assault rattling the nation's capital, the truth really is more important now than on many other occasions. ...

"A substantial number of major news outlets are not rising to the occasion. Under pressure from not least the opposed forces of their ideological agenda on the one hand and the importance of the nomination on the other, they are losing their cool, abandoning standards, and showing bias more than usual.

"The one thing these reports and misleading tweets all have in common is that they cast Kavanaugh in a bad light. This is the greatest indicator yet that many in news media are less interested in facts and more interested in achieving a political end.

"Curious, considering the truth is supposed to be more important now than ever."

"The only thing I am sure of now is that Senator Dianne Feinstein has behaved outrageously. Because no matter what you choose to believe, she waited too long to reveal the accusation.

"Feinstein knew about these allegations in July. She made no attempt to ask Kavanaugh about them, even in closed session. If she believed the allegations were true or credible, she should have acted on them. If she didn't -- as has been reported -- going public as a desperate ploy to derail or delay his confirmation is an act of grotesque cynicism, particularly when she had no idea whether Kavanaugh's accuser would come forward.

"Feinstein's gambit may pay off. Republicans are understandably wary of cross-examining an alleged victim of sexual assault, particularly ahead of the midterms, given that the GOP is bleeding support among moderate female voters.

"But the conservative base also remembers the slander of Judge Robert Bork and has no appetite to surrender to such tactics ever again. If the White House or Senate Republicans do surrender, the populist rage from the right will be terrifying.

"So congratulations, Senator Feinstein, you've done the unimaginable: You've made our politics even uglier."

"Christine Blasey Ford's lawyer has announced that Ms. Ford will not testify until the FBI completes yet another investigation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh that everyone knows will never happen.

"It was already highly unlikely she was ever going to testify; this is a convenient excuse, a stalling game. But it is more than the usual cheap political stunt. It's vicious, ugly, and more than slightly sadistic. In regards to Judge Kavanaugh, Democrats are channeling Comrade Beria's famous dictum: 'Show me the man and I'll show you the crime.'

"Not only are they despicable to Kavanaugh -- a man with an impeccable reputation as far as women are concerned -- and his family, but in using the hapless Ms. Ford as a pawn, they are making a mockery of the #MeToo movement, increasing suspicion of women (and men) who come forward in cases of sexual abuse where there is genuine proof and corroboration, not, as in this situation, an amorphous memory without time, place, witness, or remotely contemporary report.

"Even Ford's sponsor, Dianne Feinstein, admitted in a rare moment of candor -- or was it guilty conscience -- that she wasn't sure of the accuser's veracity. Feinstein, a coward terrified of her left flank, walked it back quickly. The California senator has much to answer for, not just the unconscionable sandbagging of Judge Kavanaugh, but also the extraordinary enrichment of her family by the Chinese at the very time she was being chauffeured by one of the communists' spies."

"If Franz Kafka had written about confirmation hearings, he couldn't have come up with a better scenario than the one now unfolding in the US Senate.

"Brett Kavanaugh, who the day before yesterday was an unimpeachable pillar of the legal establishment, stands accused of a heinous offense that it is almost impossible to definitively rebut.

"Even if he is completely innocent of the charge that he sexually assaulted a teenage girl at a high-school party 35 years ago, he will be forever considered guilty of it by some portion of the public. This is not due process, or any kind of decent process at all, but how the Senate conducts its business, especially if you are a conservative jurist on the cusp of confirmation to the Supreme Court. ...

"The confirmation process for the Supreme Court has long been badly broken, a forum for sheer bloodsport. If, based on what we know now, and this accusation keeps Kavanaugh from the court, it will be a new low. The Senate will have embraced a new world where the existence of an allegation, regardless of whether it can be proven, is enough to stop a nominee and destroy his good name."

"I fear we are about to relive at least part of the national psychodrama over Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill. That ideological maelstrom transfixed the country and divided it into bitter warring camps of Thomas supporters and Hill sympathizers. And that was when there was just one 24-hour cable news channel and no Internet or social media.

"As we enter what's likely to be another sad episode in the borking of Supreme Court nominees, we'd do well to remember that after the American people heard both sides in the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill slugfest, they believed Thomas by a two-to-one margin. Something similar may happen again, but if liberals fail to derail Kavanaugh, they will still try for a consolation prize.

"After Clarence Thomas was confirmed by a vote of 52 to 48 in 1991, we had a drumbeat of books, articles, and conferences all dedicated to rewriting the history of the incident. Two years later, a Newsweek poll showed that most of those surveyed believed Hill, even though no new evidence had been uncovered.

"So even if Brett Kavanaugh takes his seat on the Supreme Court, liberals will have extracted a pound of flesh. Just as with the Florida recount of 2000 and the Trump election of 2016, any confirmation will be branded as suspect and accomplished only through brutish tactics and the wholesale disregard for the truth. The effort to sink Kavanaugh is not just a naked attempt to change a confirmation vote but to forever brand him as illegitimate."

"Over the eight years of the Obama presidency, the stock market climbed, corporate profits climbed, and the economy grew. But for most of those eight years, wages were stagnant.

"That's finally changing. We've hit full employment, and working Americans are finally seeing their wages increase.

"Median household income hit $61,400 last year, according to Census Bureau figures announced Wednesday. That's the highest level ever. Put another way, wages have finally gotten back to (and just beyond) where they were before the financial crisis. ...

"It's easy for folks who watch the economy to look at the headline numbers of GDP and the stock market. But for real people, wages are what matter. Those are still climbing, and climbing to record levels. That's real economic success."

"A federal judge ruled Tuesday that California's ban on handgun advertising is unconstitutional.

"Judge Troy Nunley of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, an Obama appointee, ruled California could no longer enforce Section 26820 of the California Penal Code, which dates back to 1923. That law banned gun stores from displaying signs promoting the sale of handguns. California argued the ban was necessary to prevent suicides and murders but Judge Nunley said it violates constitutional protections on free speech.

"'California may not accomplish its goals by violating the First Amendment,' Nunley wrote in his ruling. 'Accordingly, [the law] is unconstitutional on its face.'"

"Democrats are convinced that the 'blue wave' they've been counting on to set the stage for President Donald Trump's impeachment in a House of Representatives they control is out there and building. They continue to enjoy a four to six point 'generic' advantage in the polls, and there is evidence that their voters are more anxious to turn out and vote than their Republican counterparts -- two indicators that combine with the media's continuing effort to demonize Mr. Trump to give them more than a fighting chance to take the House. ...

"Victory is far from guaranteed, however, because many of today's Democratic leaders are staking out positions so extreme that they are risking driving away some of the voters they can usually count on. Republicans faced a similar problem when purely ideological candidates who split rather than united Republican voters allowed Democrats to hold onto seats they might otherwise have lost in 2014.

"Rhetorical over-reach can be a real problem in a campaign and that is exactly what we're witnessing today as Democratic candidates and their fellow-travelling pundits tout 'socialism,' declare their desire to impeach a president, raise taxes and continue to attack not the candidates with whom they disagree, but the voters who support them."