Kavanaugh Confirmed: Ending one of the nastiest Supreme Court nomination fights in American history, US Appeals Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in to the highest court in a private ceremony only a few hours after he was confirmed by a 50-48 vote.

Although the quick swearing was tantamount to an admission of shame over Kavanaugh’s appointment, President Trump said. “He’s going to go down as a totally brilliant Supreme Court justice for many years.” Trump barely knows him.

Despite large protests, Trump claimed women were on Kavanaugh’s side after he was accused of sexual assault as a high school teenager and at Yale.  “Women, I feel, were in many ways stronger than the men in this fight,” the president said. “Women were outraged at what happened to Brett Kavanaugh. Outraged.”

Kavanaugh’s placement on the court gives the Republican party what it has been seeking since Ronald Reagan was president, a solid conservative majority on the court that will determine constitutional law for the next 20 or 30 years. Interpretation of the law is likely to move to the right on the most bitterly fought public issues including abortion, affirmative action, voting, and gun rights.

Republicans, who prevented President Obama’s court nominee from ever getting a hearing let alone a vote, claimed victimhood in the Democrats’ attempt to evaluate whether Kavanaugh had the character and judgement to be a Supreme Court  Justice. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said one of his proudest was when he told President Obama that he would never get his Supreme Court appointment, said, “We can vote to turn away from the darkness. We can vote to set a precedent about fairness and judgement that will define this body for the better.”

Democratic leader, Chick Schumer said, “When the history of the Senate is written, this chapter will be a flashing red warning light of what to avoid.”

The question remains whether the Kavanaugh confirmation is, at last, the act that makes the Supreme Court a political body rather than a neutral arbiter of constitutional law. He was appointed with the expectation that he would vote in conformity with Republican political goals

Anyone But Her: Republicans in the mid-term elections next month may actually have gotten a political boost from the bitter Kavanaugh fight.

But days before Maine’s Republican Sen. Susan Collins voted to confirm Kavanaugh, a fund was established on Crowdpac to support her as-yet un-named and undeclared opponent in the 2020 election. Shortly after the Kavanaugh vote, the website crashed because so many people wanted to give money.

  By 7:30 this morning it was $3.75 million.

Missing: Turkish investigators believe that a well-known Saudi dissident who went into his country’s consulate in Istanbul to get a marriage document and never came out was killed to silence him.

Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancée says he entered the consulate on Tuesday while she stayed outside.

The NY Timesreports that Saudi agents were waiting for him. Saudi authorities say they have no idea where  Khashoggi is. The 59-year-old has been one of the kingdom’s most prominent journalists and a critic-in-exile of  Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 33-year-old ruler who has brought some moderate social reforms.

If the prince ordered Khashoggi killed, it’s proof that he’s not such a reformer after all.

The Manchurian Microchip: Computer boards that serve everything from Amazon Prime video to defense department computers and Navy ships have a tiny extra feature in them according to Bloomberg News. It’s a spy chip the size of a grain of rice inserted into the boards at a Chinese factory that makes parts for the American company Super Micro Computer.

Bloomberg reports that the extra chip allows access to any computer network to which it is connected. “The chips had been inserted during the manufacturing process, two officials say, by operatives from a unit of the People’s Liberation Army,” the news service says.

The story says, “This attack was something graver than the software-based incidents the world has grown accustomed to seeing. Hardware hacks are more difficult to pull off and potentially more devastating, promising the kind of long-term, stealth access that spy agencies are willing to invest millions of dollars and many years to get.”

Six current and former national security officials confirmed the story, according to Bloomberg. But, deepening the mystery, several major companies including Apple and Amazon reported to have bought computer boards infected with the spy chip deny that it happened.

In a Name: Newspaper names are a great American tradition. The Charlotte Observer; New Orleans Times-Picayune; St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The Chicago Tribune is owned by a company that used to be called Tribune Publishing, which made sense. Then two years ago in the age of internet fascination, the company name was changed to “Tronc,” which stood for Tribune Online News Content. Good reporting was reduced to the label “content” and the name sounded like a social disease. This past week better minds announced that Tribune would revert to its original name, Tribune Publishing.

Dunkin’ Donuts is still trying to make it as just “Dunkin’.”

Horse Manure: Therapeutic animals are the big thing these days. A lot of people claim their dogs are emotional companions so they can bring them into restaurants and public vegetable markets. A woman even tried to bring her peacock on an airline fight. Alaska airlines announced that it will allow miniature horses on flights as service animals. They average two feet tall and weigh about 100 pounds. Evidently Alaska didn’t ask the opinion of the passenger in the middle seat.

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