NOT SATIRE: In His First Day On The Job, Kavanaugh Hired As Many Black Law Clerks As RBG Has In Her Entire Tenure.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh has hired a black law clerk for his new chambers at the U.S. Supreme Court, matching Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s record of African-American clerkship hiring during her tenure on the nation’s highest judicial tribunal.

With his first clerkship hires, Kavanaugh also set a gender composition record, an apparent attempt to buck the high court’s hiring patterns, which tend to favor white, male graduates of elite law schools.

Since joining the high court in 1993, Ginsburg has hired over 100 law clerks, just one of whom is black.

Where are the protestors?

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: 3 Horrible Things We Learned About Liberals From the Kavanaugh Hearings.

WAR ON THE PRESS (CONT’D): ‘Chilling message’: Hong Kong refuses to explain FT journalist visa denial.

The unprecedented denial of a visa to a Financial Times journalist “sends a chilling message to everyone in Hong Kong,” the paper said Sunday, as press groups and politicians in the city continued to denounce the move.

Asia news editor Victor Mallet was informed Friday that his visa renewal — usually a procedural matter — had been refused, weeks after he hosted a controversial pro-independence activist in his role as vice president of the city’s Foreign Correspondent’s Club (FCC).

“No criticism has been offered of his work as a journalist,” the FT editorial board said. “In the absence of any proper explanation for the decision, it is therefore hard to resist the conclusion that it amounts to retribution for his role as (FCC vice president).”

A huge amount of pressure was applied to the FCC by both the Hong Kong and Chinese governments to cancel the talk by Andy Chan, founder of the Hong Kong National Party in August.

The Hong Kong National Party has since been banned — itself an unprecedented move — though it was completely legal at the time of his speech.

Over the last couple of days we’ve had an (allegedly) murdered Saudi journalist at a Saudi consulate in Turkey, a murdered Bulgarian journalist in Europe, and now this.

It’s almost as though the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands anywhere else.

YOU DON’T SAY: Some anti-Kavanaugh protesters were paid to help make ‘viral moments,’ Vice News editor says.

MAKE THEM PLAY BY THEIR OWN RULES: “Believe Survivors” Democrat STILL silent about donor arrested for sexual assault.

WARMONGERING, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG: Mike Pompeo Says ‘Significant progress’ in denuclearization talks with North Korea.

GOOD LORD: The body of a Bulgarian journalist investigating EU corruption has been found dumped near the Danube River. “Prosecutors said she was raped, then beaten and suffocated. Marinova had been investigating an alleged corruption case involving EU funds. Bulgaria’s interior minister said there was no evidence to suggest that her death was linked to her work as a journalist. But European officials are urging Bulgaria to conduct a fast investigation into the murder, which is the third murder of a journalist in the EU this year.”

BUT THE NARRATIVE! Boys More Likely to Be Victims of Dating Violence than Girls.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Elites are the ones who are dividing America.

Salina Zito:

Darcelle Slappy says Democrats and Republicans who live in places like this part of Western Pennsylvania are a lot closer than how they’re portrayed on TV.

“Unlike Washington, we are all just a few notches from each other in either direction. We have much more that draws us together than divides us,” Slappy says.

In fact, she says the divide in this country isn’t Republican versus Democrat. “The real division is between the elites and us.”

In a New York Times column last weekentitled “The American Civil War, Part II,” Thomas L. Friedman stated that “he began his career covering a civil war in Lebanon” and that he’d never thought he’d end it “covering a civil war in America.”

“Across the land, before dinner parties or block parties, the refrain ‘I hope none of them will be there’ is uttered with increasing frequency, referring no longer to people of another race or religion — bad enough — but to people from a different political party,” he wrote.

But Slappy, who is attending the annual Heritage Festival at the state park, doesn’t see her community that way. The Democrat, along with her husband, Tony, their 14-year-old son, Damani, and their infant granddaughter, Ivy, is wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with words: Darcelle Slappy, Green Party Candidate, PA State Representative, District 10.

Slappy was forced to run on the Green Party ticket because the current incumbent, Republican Rep. Aaron Bernstine, won the general election nomination as both a Republican and a Democrat — a common move that should have assured himself no opposition.

Read the whole thing.

WELL, GOOD: Pro-Choice Man, Who Allegedly Kicked Pro-Life Woman, Is In More Trouble Than We Thought.

Hunt is charged in this case with eight counts of assault and seven counts of mischief under $5,000 for this allegation, cops said. This isn’t the only claim he faces.

Police said they responded to a call for an assault back on August 2 at about noon. It was claimed that a man on a bicycle approached a group of anti-abortion protesters. He allegedly tried to grab one of their signs, and then he pushed a woman into a pole, police said. This attacker fled the scene.

Hunt has been charged in this incident: one count of assault.

And if you missed it over the weekend, here’s the video of the more recent attack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7SqtIe5rZQ

It’s the New Civility — in action.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Columbus Day and Much, Much More. “Immediately after the contentious Kavanaugh vote in the Senate on Saturday, Kavanaugh and family snuck into the SCOTUS building to get sworn in. A more formal swearing with the President in will take place this evening. The #resistance was not pleased about Kavanaugh’s confirmation and swearing in.”

To say the very least.

IT SURE LOOKS THAT WAY: Did Jane Mayer, Ronan Farrow, and Michael Avenatti give Trump his biggest victory yet?

The Avenatti-Swetnick story represented the moment when the anti-Kavanaugh forces jumped the shark. The allegation was off-the-scale serious: Who knew Brett Kavanaugh was a high-school Bill Cosby? But Swetnick produced no witnesses to the events she alleged, nor could she produce witnesses who confirmed even that such events occurred, nor could she produce witnesses who confirmed her presence at any such events, and, she was not even part of Kavanaugh’s social circle at the time (Swetnick was older than the others and from a more distant suburb of Washington and attended public school there, outside the tight-knit group of private school students with whom Kavanaugh hung out).

In short, Avenatti and Swetnick had nothing beyond an incendiary accusation. Nevertheless, some Democrats embraced the story to push the notion that there was an accumulating weight of sexual misconduct accusations against Kavanaugh.

“We already have three credible reports of sexual misconduct by Judge Kavanaugh,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono, referring to Ford, Ramirez, and Swetnick. Pressing for an FBI investigation, Hirono said it “certainly should cover the three credible reports that have come forward.”

“We now have three credible accusers of sexual assault,” said Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, issued a press release headlined: “Senate Democrats: FBI Must Investigate All Three Credible Allegations of Sexual Assault Against Judge Brett Kavanaugh.” Other Democrats on the committee sent out the same release.

The talking point got some pickup in the press. ABC News asked President Trump: “Mr. President, there are now three women accusing Judge Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct. Are you saying that all three of these women are liars?”

Democrats had their pattern. They demanded Trump order the FBI to interview people who might have knowledge about all three accusations.

Releasing the FBI report might make for an excellent October Surprise.

HMM: Silicon Valley-Loving Saudi Prince at Center of Scandal Over Missing, Possibly Murdered Journalist.

BLUE-CHECK MAFIA:

I’ve become more diligent in recent weeks about my range time.

CYBERSECURITY: US Homeland Security statement plays down Bloomberg spy chips claim. “The US Department of Homeland Security has issued a statement that seems to refute Bloomberg’s claim that a significant number of US companies had been compromised due to clandestine microchips reporting sensitive data back to China. Amazon Web Services and Apple have also rebuked the article’s content.”

Plus:

An article published by Bloomberg Businessweek this week, called “The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate US Companies,” has created something of a ruckus in the cybersecurity sector. In a nutshell, the piece states unnamed sources saying that Chinese intelligence agents had managed to install chips on motherboards manufactured by a company called Supermicro, which were then used in servers operated by companies like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Apple and even in systems utilized by the US Department of Defense and the CIA.

Bloomberg has stuck by its report, insisting on its veracity. However, Apple, Supermicro, and AWS have denied the allegations, with Apple publishing an unambiguous statement that completely rejects the notion of malicious chips being found in any servers. Now the press secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security has offered a rather terser statement in regard to the subject:

“The Department of Homeland Security is aware of the media reports of a technology supply chain compromise. Like our partners in the UK, the National Cyber Security Centre, at this time we have no reason to doubt the statements from the companies named in the story.”

It’s looking more and more like Bloomberg really stepped in it.

NATION OF HOSTAGES: Venezuela Demands Citizens Pay for Passports With Petro. “New Venezuelan passports will cost two petros, equivalent to 7,200 bolivars ($115 USD) or four minimum monthly wages, Maduro’s deputy, Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez stated Friday during a televised press conference, local and foreign media reported. By the way, the token has not even been issued to the public yet – it’s expected to go on sale on November 5.”

OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE IS OVER JUST BEGINNING: Susan Rice Raises Hand When Jen Psaki Asks for Susan Collins Challengers.

OH: ‘Believe Survivors’ Democrat Opposed to Kavanaugh Silent on Donor Accused of Sexual Assault.

BREAKING: Collins and Manchin Will Vote for Kavanaugh, All but Ensuring His Confirmation.

D. C. MCALLISTER: Women to Crazed Feminists: We Will Fight You To Defend Our Men.

SPENGLER: Chinese hardware hack shows that the US needs more than tariffs to contain the dragon.

SCRAPPLEFACE: As Kavanaugh Show Ends, Netflix May Pick It Up.

BREAKING: Sens. Manchin and Murkowski break from parties with early Kavanaugh votes.

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh advanced in the Senate Friday by a 51-49 margin, prevailing on a critical procedural measure and setting up a final confirmation vote likely on Saturday.

Two senators broke with their parties to produce the result, as Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) voted against ending debate and proceeding to the final vote, and Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) voted in favor.

“I believe we are dealing with issues that are bigger than a nominee,” Ms. Murkowski said, adding that her vote had been the “most difficult” decision she has ever had to make. “I believe he is a good man,” Ms. Murkowski told reporters, but “in my view, he’s not the best man for the court at this time.”

This being Washington, I suspect some kabuki going on.

BOOM:

It’s a safe bet that McConnell has the votes.

STEPHEN KRUISER: In This Weirdest of Weeks, Kathy Griffin Has a Moment of Political Clarity. “No, really.”