Okay, y'all, my beloved Yankees are having ... let us call it a slow start to this playoff series. We're going to get it back, of course, and crush our historic enemies into fine, red-and-white dust. But in the meantime, I'm breathing deeply and focusing on my happy place. This seems like a good time to tweetstorm my most recent two--and I hope, final--columns on The Kavanaugh Saga.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/no-ma…

washingtonpost.com/opinions/there…

I think there are a few things that tie them together.

Collins starts ripping into the people who promulgated the "outlandish" Swetnick allegation. Which comports with something that I've observed: the sense that media & Democrats had prejudged the case radicalized a lot of moderate Republicans who had been dubious about nomination. A lot of people are responding with some version of "If moderate Republicans are so delicate and fickle, to heck with them." I've stripped out the profanity and the vulgar suggestions about things I could do to myself because this is a family twitter feed.

A number of people have asked me what I think of the NYTimes omnibus on Trump's inheritance.

In no particular order: 1) Almost everyone seems to be missing that this was tax arbitrage, not tax evasion. He was converting estate taxed money into income-taxed income. The size of the net benefit is somewhat uncertain because the conversion lost the benefits of tax deferral until death.

Cosign. People are manufacturing statements that he never drank, or got drunk, then beating the snot out of their strawman. He tried to frame his drinking in the best possible light, but he didn't lie about it, and no, that's not perjury. Temperament & partisanship are real q's.

https://twitter.com/jadler1969/status/1046767566256050176

Also, I'm more than willing to believe that he lied about dumb phrases in his yearbook. But those bro-tastic phrases were--however awful--not even approaching corroboration that he's a rapist.

It's Sunday morning. Let's do a forensic dive into the question of Mark Judge's employment at the Potomac Village Safeway in 1982, which for some reason, the FBI is apparently not authorized to investigate. Let's talk about why, and how much, it matters. Why does it matter? Because Ford testified that she had seen Mark Judge six to eight weeks after the attack, when he was working in that Safeway. washingtonpost.com/news/national/…

Okay, my new column on the Kavanaugh debacle is up: washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-par…

I'm going to lay out my position first, which is that this nomination should be held for at least a time-limited FBI investigation.

And then I'm going to detail how badly Democrats handled this. Mitchell's questioning yesterday raised a few small questions about Ford's story. But it raised immense and infuriating questions about the cynical ways Democrats managed this.

It is now simply untenable to argue that this was not a strategic leak to try to delay past midterms.

My curtain-raiser went up a little late: hold the hearing, then open an FBI investigation.

washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-par… Look, if Republicans think that the calls for an FBI investigation are disingenuous, and this is all a witch hunt, call the bluff! See who actually wants to talk to the FBI, and what they're willing to say to those agents. Release all the interviews publicly.

Okay, I have to stick up for prep school kids a little bit.

I didn't really enjoy high school. I don't have a close network of lifelong friends from my high school; I haven't spoken to anyone except the best friend I came into high school with in about 10 years. Looking back, prep school was incredibly insular and is a great way to give your children some very funny notions about money and class. If I had kids I wouldn't send them there.

So my print column is out, on the dangers to #MeToo of journalists letting weak accusations through:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/metoo… For that argument, you'll have to read the column. (Have I mentioned that Amazon Prime offers such magnificently cheap subscriptions that you'd have to be crazy to pass them up?)

Ramirez's attorney says they have attempted to schedule with the committee and GOP keeps attaching conditions. Meanwhile, it looks like attorney has conditions of his own, specifically FBI investigation.

So this strikes me as the heart of the problem with MMT proponents: you artificially chop off the tails and shorten the timeframe of analysis and then say "See! Free money!" pllqt.it/IboYVr Yes, if you have a fifteen year mortgage, as I do, you're putting more into debt service every month. So why would someone who writes about finance do something insane, like *increasing* their debt service load? Especially when working in an ailing industry?

My latest column on Kavanaugh is now up: washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-par… A couple of points to make that were brushed on, but which I didn't have the space to develop more fully.

First, on the possibility of misidentification.

Fun fact: in 1832, Texas was only the size of a walk-in closet.

https://twitter.com/ebruenig/status/1043336968015433728

There's an interesting technical aspect to forecasting future growth: due to a phenomenon known as "decreasing returns to scale", each additional two feet will be less good, on average, than prior two feet, making Texas, on average, less great.

Like many people, Kavanaugh events have made me think back to growing up in the 1980s. Particularly, my relationship to authority.

Both because conservatives are asking "Why didn't she tell anyone?" and "Why isn't she filing police reports on these death threats?" For starters, perhaps she has filed police reports on the death threats. But I've gotten my fair share, and I never have.

Nor can I imagine telling my parents or police about what she says happened in that room.

There's no reason to rush the hearing to Monday. But if Ford's attorney and Democrats don't start cooperating immediately to establish a firm and expeditious timetable, Republicans will be justified in holding it then, and confirming Kavanaugh.

washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-par… I didn't have room for this in the column, but I'll say it here: of course I understand why Ford would be reluctant to tell (even a perfectly true) story under such pressure

But it's simply absurd to say that it should have no bearing on her credibility if she refuses to testify

I like to tell a funny story about death threats. Some years ago, a relative developed some emotional problems around my grandmother's death. This person began inundating my mother (who was executor) with many emails a day, fantastically abusive ones.

https://twitter.com/SeanTrende/status/1042747798419124224

Eventually, these escalate to musings like "the world would be better off without you in it."

A quick tweetstorm on my latest column, which asks what, in general we should do with people who commit crimes as teens and are caught decades later.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-… Obviously, this was inspired by the Kavanaugh accusations. During a dinner-table conversation about it, I off-handedly mentioned that at least one man in his fifties had been tried as a juvenile for a crime committed decades ago. Which inspired me to look up the case.

Collins and Murkowski seem to be signalling that unless she testifies, they'll vote to confirm. I think that's the right call: an allegation that someone is unwilling to deliver under oath is substantially less credible than one they're willing to testify about. I say this understanding that this puts big burden on Ford: coming to Washington, going through the emotional havoc of questioning. But you cannot refuse to confirm a nominee over allegations that the accuser is unwilling to offer under oath.

Something that I think not enough people are considering when they talk about the Kavanaugh case is that Maryland appears to have no statute of limitation for attempted rape. (Whether they did in 1982, I don't know). So if you're asking why Kavanaugh hasn't just admitted what he did and apologized to the woman (if indeed he did it & remembers), then keep in mind that you're asking why he hasn't confessed to a felony for which he could still be tried.

There are some really bad takes flying around twitter about Christine Blasey Ford right now.

Starting with: she waited so long to come forward, it's obviously a hit job.

She told her therapist about it in 2012. At the time, the line among Democrats was that there would never be another Republican president because of demographics. Setting up your hit job for a nomination that you never expected to be possible would be ... crystal ball level prescience for a "Democratic activist".

The Cynthia Nixon cinnamon-bagel-with-lox fiasco reminds me of a story my Dad's old bookkeeper once told me. During the Great Depression, her Mom put a raisin-bread and Velveeta sandwich into her father's lunchbox because that was all they had in the house. Her father doesn't want Mom to feel bad, so he tells her how much he LOVED the raisin-bread-and-velveeta.

You know what happened next, don't you?

She bought more raisin bread and velveeta.