ANY INSTITUTION THE LEFT DOESN’T CONTROL IS ILLEGITIMATE: The Assault on the Supreme Court: The revival of smears against Kavanaugh is part of a campaign.

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh will apparently receive continuing education in the politics of personal destruction, and this weekend came another round of rumor-mill accusations over his conduct in college. It’s important to understand that this assault on the Justice is part of the left’s larger campaign against the legitimacy of the current Supreme Court and an independent judiciary.

By now readers have seen Democrats running for President calling for Justice Kavanaugh to be impeached, including Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Beto O’Rourke. These Democrats know there is zero chance of a Republican Senate voting to remove Mr. Kavanaugh from office.

The attacks on Justice Kavanaugh are an attempt at intimidation to influence his opinions. But if Democrats fail in that, they want to portray conservative opinions of the current Court as illegitimate. Even Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota now says the Judiciary confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh was “a sham.” She knows better but so much for her self-styling as a “moderate.” . . .

This is the most radical attack on the judiciary in decades. These aren’t crank voices like those posting “Impeach Earl Warren ” billboards in the 1950s. This campaign is led by the power center of the Democratic Party, including Members of the Judiciary Committee such as Ms. Harris who vet judicial nominations. Their attack on a core democratic institution is exactly what they claim President Trump is doing, but Mr. Trump is mostly bluster.

This assault on the judiciary is being carried out with conviction and malice, as the character assassination against Justice Kavanaugh shows. One motivation is that everything on the left’s new agenda, from the Green New Deal to a wealth tax, depends on favorable court rulings. The left is used to running the nation’s law schools and controlling the courts.

But the Senate has confirmed more than 150 judicial nominees since President Trump took office. And progressives would now rather attempt a hostile takeover of Article III courts than wait to win the old-fashioned way: at the ballot box.

Chief Justice John Roberts, by yielding to bullying over ObamaCare and telling himself he was preserving the reputation of the Court, instead invited this assault. The only solution now is to refuse to give in further.