It's been almost a year since Brett Kavanaugh was narrowly confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court after a wrenching series of hearings.

On Saturday, The New York Times published a story by reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly—the authors of an upcoming book, The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation—that basically rips open our collective scab.

They dug deep into the allegation that when the Supreme Court justice was a student at Yale, he pulled down his pants at a party and thrust his penis at classmate Deborah Ramirez "prompting her to swat it away and inadvertently touch it."

The reporters found that at least seven people heard about the incident long before Kavanaugh became a federal judge. 

The reporters also uncovered a previously unreported incident at another drunken dorm party where once again Kavanaugh allegedly "pushed his penis into the hand of a female student." (The Times updated the story to note that the alleged victim refused to be interviewed and friends say she does not recall the episode).

The Times reporters also found the FBI in its supplemental investigation declined to interview any of the witnesses, even though several of them "tried in vain to reach the FBI on their own."

So what to make of this? 

President Trump tweeted that Kavanaugh "should start suing people for libel, or the Justice Department should come to his rescue." (No, I don't know what he means by that. Also, in Trump's original tweet, the president wrote that Kavanaugh should sue people for "liable.")

I think it's safe to assume that Kavanaugh (who declined to be interviewed for the Times story) is not going to resign from the high court. 

After the Times story ran, Democrats including Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Julián Castro called for his impeachment. But even if the House voted to do so, it seems inconceivable that a supermajority of senators would vote to remove him from office.

But it's hard to square Kavanaugh's blanket denials during his confirmation hearing with so many witnesses who seemingly corroborate Ramirez's account. So we're left with the impression that a Supreme Court justice may have lied under oath, and that the FBI's supplemental investigation was a sham. And the legitimacy of institutions that are supposed to be a bedrock of our government keep eroding.