Left Jabs

  It was 2018, and Sen. Kamala Harris was sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee, questioning Brett Kavanaugh about the Mueller Report. It was his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, and it wasn’t going well at all. We remember that hearing, mostly for the sexual assault allegations of Christine Blasey Ford, but also for the FBI’s refusal to investigate those allegations, and for Kavanaugh’s insistence that beer was a major food group. But Harris was less interested in Kavanaugh’s creepy youth than in his furtive sidestepping of a question she undoubtedly knew the answer to. Specifically, she wanted to know if he’d ever discussed the Mueller Report with anyone from Trump’s personal law firm. It was a yes-or-no question, and Kavanaugh took great pains to avoid answering it. If he said yes, he’d be confessing to a major ethical breach. If he said no, he’d be lying to Congress, and Harris would have the receipts to prove it. But it wasn’t the substance of Harr

  He was there to patch a crack in our foundation. It was a tricky job that had, over the course of a year, vexed several other repair guys who were supposed to know what they were doing. The foundation was still under warranty, so we didn’t much care how many tries it took, as long it got fixed. But our builder, who was ultimately responsible for the warranty, wanted to get this off his plate, so he finally splurged and sent in Bill, the foundation whisperer. Every trade has one, the go-to guy, the hotshot who’s more expensive, but worth it. As Bill was happy to tell us himself. Fifty-something, loud and gregarious, oozing self-confidence, he looked over the crack, turned up his nose at the previous repairs, then told us he’d have it fixed in an hour and a half. Which he proceeded to do, and apparently quite well, though we haven’t yet had enough rain to really test the repair. All of which would have added up to a reasonably satisfying experience if we could