Day Two of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings moved from soliloquy to dialogue, as the senators took turns quizzing the nominee on matters of varying degrees of substance. The solemnity was not improved by another round of the local hobbyists whose avocation seems to be competing for the least flattering photo of themselves being dragged away by the Capitol Police. The circus was empty, and all the clowns were all there.

In the center of the three rings, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., attacked Kavanaugh’s opinion in PHH Corp. v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which held that the removal protections that Dodd-Frank provided the CFPB director were inconsistent with the structure of the Constitution. In Klobuchar’s imagination, this radical view defined Kavanaugh as the wrecking ball of the administrative state. Ignoring the Supreme Court’s approval of independent agencies in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, he struck down an agency, undermining the consumer protections Congress sought to assure, and is looking forward to striking down the rest. What of the Social Security Administration, she demanded, predicting Kavanaugh would smash that idol as well.