ROGER KIMBALL: It’s All Gone: The Democrats’ Dead Ideals.

Democratic jackals on the Senate Judiciary Committee, aided and abetted by their loyal public relations firms — the mainstream media — and hectoring unpleasant people funded by George Soros heap mud on Brett Kavanaugh for weeks and then step back and say: “He’s got mud all over him! Let’s move on to a more pristine victim.”

This is of a piece with the spurious claim that Judge Kavanaugh’s impassioned testimony last week shows that he lack the requisite judicial temperament to be a Supreme Court Justice. Andy McCarthy dispensed with that ridiculous meme with some portion of the contempt it deserves. But since some of the squealers in the press have castigated Judge Kavanaugh for the condign anger he displayed in answering the scurrilous attacks on his character, let’s give the last word to Aristotle on the just deployment of anger. “We praise a man,” says Aristotle, “who feels anger on the right grounds and against the right persons, and also in the right manner and at the right moment and for the right length of time.” Indeed, those who do not get angry at things it is right to be angry at “are considered foolish.” After having been groundlessly accused of drunkenness, belligerence, and rape, Judge Kavanaugh was right to display anger towards those who had slandered him. He did so in a fitting manner, in an eloquent, heartfelt address. And he did so at the right moment, the Senate hearings, and for the right amount of time.

The travesty that was the smear campaign against Brett Kavanaugh is disintegrating. He will be confirmed, but the mephitic stench of the attack against him and the rule of law will linger.

Needless to say, read the whole thing.