Syndicated columns

If the United States’ worst enemies had schemed to design a more divisive, more demoralizing, more hurtful episode than the hearings on Brett Kavanaugh and the Supreme Court, they could not have done so.

There are many reasons for rejecting Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Here are a few.

I can understand why Brett Kavanaugh erupted with anger. It was the lack of humility and decorum and contrition that canceled any human emotion I could have had for him as he fought back tears during the hearing over his imperiled Supreme Court nomination.

Whether our democracy is permanently altered depends on whether the Senate rejects this campaign of character assassination and confirms Brett Kavanaugh. We’ll find out the answer shortly.

If Republicans succeed in keeping the House in November, it will have been bought for them by corporations and the rich – quite literally.

Here’s a question for America’s consumers: Are low prices always in our best interests? And what is the end game should giant online retailers become the only place to shop?

President Trump’s speech on Tuesday at the United Nations was an intelligent – at times eloquent – presentation of his “America First” worldview. He laid out an approach of pursuing narrow self-interest over broader global ones and privileging unilateral action over multilateral cooperation. But Trump might not recognize that as he withdraws America from these global arenas, the rest of the world is moving on without Washington. Wittingly or not, Trump seems to be hastening the arrival of a post-American world. Take one of his first major actions, pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the sweeping trade deal conceived during the George W. Bush administration and negotiated by Barack Obama’s administration. It was an attempt to open long-closed markets like Japan but also to create a grouping that could stand up to China’s growing muscle in trade matters.

Thursday’s session in the Senate Judiciary Committee reaffirmed the unrivaled and compelling power of personal testimony, not only in providing information but in assessing competing narratives.

Sisters, wear what you want, but do not labor under the delusion that sartorial rebellion in the office will draw anything more than stares.

With the Brett Kavanaugh hearings – and possibly a collective nervous breakdown – approaching like a Category 4 hurricane, I humbly offer a media user’s guide to the week ahead.

The basic purpose of politics is to resolve conflicts, but the choices are being evaded. The political systems of many advanced countries have broken down – or are in the process of doing so.

There is something about viewing other people on screens – viewing them at a remove – that tends to objectify them, make them not quite real. And there is something about the anonymity of social media that does not encourage us to be our best and most compassionate selves.

Anthony Bourdain never wanted to be called a journalist, but that’s exactly what he became. In fact, I suspect he’ll end up being remembered as one of the most influential television correspondents ever.

Americans can be forgiven for thinking that everything involved in Supreme Court nominations – all the institutions, traditions, principles, procedures, solemn oaths and columned buildings – are merely a cover, a disguise for the will to power. Where there is no authority, all that remains is a contest of power.

Every chip in Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s pile has been shoved into the center of the table. His high-stakes gamble for conservative control of the Supreme Court may be decided in the coming week.

It doesn’t surprise me one bit that for more than 30 years, Christine Blasey Ford didn’t talk about the assault she remembers, the one she accuses Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of committing.

I served as director of President Barack Obama’s presidential personnel office and oversaw hundreds of appointments across the U.S. government. So I know firsthand that Judiciary Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley’s claim that “it is not the FBI’s role to investigate” the allegations that Judge Brett Kavanaugh assaulted a woman when they were in high school is downright false. The FBI, which would already have performed an extensive background check on Kavanaugh in connection with his nomination to the Supreme Court, can pick up its investigation and check into the issues that the woman accusing Kavanaugh of assault has raised more quickly, more effectively and more sensitively than untrained Senate committee staffers can. Such an FBI investigation should certainly come before Christine Ford Blasey is subjected to questioning from the Senate or its staff members – not only because that’s what Ford has requested but because it’s only fair for senators to question her (or Kavanaugh) with the additional information that the FBI’s work would surely yield, and because it gets us closer to the truth.

Last weekend, I attended a wedding in Atlanta between a brilliant Afghan writer and an equally brilliant young Chinese American doctoral student. Their stories and their wedding are a graphic illustration of the vital contribution immigrants make to American society.

When a big, black SUV would pull up to my house at about 2 a.m., I knew it would be a while before I’d be getting back to sleep. As the CIA’s deputy director, and later acting director, in the early 2000s, I was frequently awakened via secure communications at home. But when a car showed up, it meant that something needed my official signature – usually a warrant request under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. The FBI would be asking me to sign off because the request contained foreign intelligence material, often relating to a terrorism suspect. These things typically ran 40 to 60 pages. They would contain reporting from human sources (foreign agents), technical intelligence such as intercepted communications, and open-source material. These were woven together into a request aimed at showing “probable cause” to investigate further by carrying out some kind of search.