NOAH ROTHMAN: The Social-Justice Injustice. “What Brett Kavanaugh’s trial by fire was really all about.”

For the social-justice left, Brett Kavanaugh represented a dominant demographic group, and he was therefore due a comeuppance for that reason alone. To those for whom Kavanaugh’s guilt was a foregone conclusion, not only was the presumption of innocence an overly charitable dispensation; so, too, was the notion that he should be allowed to defend himself. At the very least, his most fervent critics appeared to suggest, Kavanaugh should have had the decency to let the allegations against him stand, as a courtesy to his accuser and those like her.

To Quartz’s Ephrat Livni, Kavanaugh wasn’t entitled to “any process” whatsoever. Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution argued that “Kavanaugh cannot blame or attack or seek to discredit a woman who purports to have suffered a sexual-assault at his hands.” If he did, he’d be no better than Harvey Weinstein, smearing his victims in a final, flailing effort to save himself. Yahoo’s Matt Bai said Kavanaugh “makes a victim of [Ford] all over again by essentially calling her delusional.” As a service to the #MeToo moment’s reckoning with the abusive men hiding in plain sight, Bai suggested that Kavanaugh should at least allow for the possibility that he was guilty of a sex crime. Bai even drafted a confession for the judge.

Plus: “This is nothing less than an assault on the rule of law, which is based on the proposition that we judge allegations of malfeasance on a case-by-case basis according to the facts alone.”

Well, yes. But mob rule is always the goal of power-seekers skilled at whipping up mobs.