Feinstein owes it to all of us to answer Kavanaugh queries

Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, needs to answer some basic questions.

Were it not for her string of ridiculous decisions, the current firestorm would never have started.

Palo Alto University psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford has rocked the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh with her explosive sexual assault accusation against him.

According to her interview with The Washington Post, she claims Judge Kavanaugh “pushed her into a bedroom along with his former classmate Mark Judge and attempted to remove her clothes. She also alleges that Kavanaugh put her hand over her mouth when she attempted to scream.” Judge Kavanaugh and Mr. Judge have denied the allegation. Judge Kavanaugh offered to testify under oath before he was asked to do so and denies he ever even attended the party she describes.

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Democrats taking back the House not a forgone conclusion

Anyone who claims to know what will happen regarding the balance of power on Capitol Hill on Nov. 6 is guessing. This midterm election is a volatile mess.

Experienced analysts generally think the Democrats have the wind at their back and the benefit of history. This is true.

First, Democratic enthusiasm is consistently high. Second, with only two exceptions, every first midterm election in the last 100 years has gone against the party in control of the White House.

But the range of factors that will determine control of Congress are broader than these two things.

Let us begin with the math.

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As Democrats flail, Kavanaugh sailing to court

This week’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh served their purpose for the panel’s Democrats.

Resigned to the knowledge that Judge Kavanaugh has the votes for confirmation and is eminently qualified, Senate Democrats have chosen to “pound the desk,” rather than “pound the facts” or “pound the law,” as Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz suggested.

Think of it this way: A Supreme Court confirmation hearing has been debased to the point that it has become performance art, not a serious consideration of a momentous choice.

Presidential aspirants were all preening for the cameras. Sen. Cory Booker, New Jersey Democrat, tried nearly every quarter-hour to delay the hearing on the first day. Meanwhile he disgracefully sent out a fundraising appeal during the hearing — while seated on the dais. We all can see where his priorities are.

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Reeling Catholic Church must give full accounting of its sins

I have been a Catholic since 1990.

For me, the Catholic Church has always been appealing because it offers moral clarity, timeless beliefs, the divine rite of Communion and absolution through the rite of Confession.

It gives me no pleasure to express this, but I now have deep concern about the church’s future.

The sexual abuse scandal inside the Catholic Church has been public knowledge for more than 15 years now.

All practicing Catholics have been disgusted by the reports of active priests abusing children. Even worse, senior leaders in the church have looked the other way and transferred many of these priests rather than remove them from the priesthood, allowing the abuse to continue. Anyone who transferred an abusing priest is complicit in every additional crime that priest committed.

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Hysteria over Nunes memo masks fears of its findings

Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but I wanted to read the memo prepared by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes on possible misuse of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act before forming an opinion about it.

The hysteria about the memo, which was jointly developed by the California Republican, his committee staff and fellow Republican House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, surely was not commensurate with its importance.

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Sullen Democrats sit out Trump’s offer of bipartisanship

The maxim that a picture is worth a thousand words was never truer than during President Trump’s first State of the Union address.

Everything in Washington these days has a partisan element to it, but last night was particularly striking.

Here is an incomplete list of unobjectionable topics that those sedentary congressional Democrats refused to celebrate: record low jobless rates for blacks and Hispanics; worker bonuses tied to the new tax cut law; 2.4 million jobs created last year; the need to respect the American flag; the need to fight the opioid epidemic; a more secure border; recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital; and, even, the national motto “In God We Trust.”

When the Congressional Black Caucus refuses to celebrate record low black unemployment, it makes you wonder what their organizational mission is.

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Washington Times: Schumer’s very bad week and the Democratic dilemma

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer is having a rough week.

After taking his fellow Senate Democrats over a cliff late last week by forcing a shutdown of the federal government, the New Yorker lost the messaging battle to President Trump and congressional Republicans, who stayed united. Why did this fight go against Mr. Schumer? It’s simple — Democrats went into battle already divided.

With 10 Senate Democrats facing reelection in 2018 from states that Mr. Trump won, the list of defectors was ripe for the picking, depending on the policy issue. Mr. Schumer was abandoned by his own most vulnerable incumbents.

As it turns out, shutting down the government in January to protect a subset of illegal immigrants who face a March deadline was not just irresponsible — it was political malpractice.

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Washington Times: How a sane and stable president drives his detractors crazy

Perhaps you have heard the coastal elites make the argument that the vice president and the Cabinet should use the 25th Amendment to remove Donald Trump as president.

Has this irresponsible chatter been confined to the fever swamps of the far left? No — it has been openly discussed on CNN and MSNBC and in the pages of The Washington Post and Time magazine, to name just a few mainstream media outlets.

A Google search of “Trump” and the “25th Amendment” quickly pulls up more than 54,000 results.

For the uninitiated — specifically those who have not watched “24,” “The West Wing” or “House of Cards” — the 25th Amendment specifies the way that a president can be removed from office if he or she is incapacitated.

Let’s stipulate this inconvenient fact: President Trump is not incapacitated. He is not “mentally unfit” to be president.

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Washington Times: Time to block the crushing new Obamacare tax

The issue of health care issue is maddeningly complex. The politics of health care are even more challenging.

No matter where you are on the ideological spectrum, all Americans should agree that the 2018 Health Insurance Tax (HIT), which just went into effect and is already hammering small businesses and seniors, should be repealed.

In an election year, there are a myriad of reasons for Capitol Hill to not do something. But with so many members up for reelection, repealing a costly, poorly conceived tax increase should be broadly popular.

How did this happen in the first place?

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Washington Times: Inheriting a mess, Trump needs sure-footed North Korea response

You can blame Donald Trump for a lot of things, but the North Korean dilemma is not one of them.

The Obama team gift-wrapped a highly complex and urgent foreign policy challenge, after doing nothing of consequence for eight years to deter or interrupt the efforts of Kim Jong Un’s regime to build nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles that threaten the U.S. mainland.

It should surprise no one that Wendy Sherman, the same State Department diplomat who negotiated the Iran deal for Mr. Obama, negotiated a similar deal with North Korea during the Clinton administration.

This week dropped several consequential developments from the Korean crisis on Mr. Trump’s desk.

Kim Jong Un delivered a New Year’s message that was both bellicose and comforting.

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