The Nunes Memo

Something everybody seems to be forgetting at the moment is that the FISA court was created specifically to add a veneer of "due process" respectability to the desire of Federal agents to spy on anybody, anywhere, for any purpose whatsoever.  Although created in the post-911 panic, nowhere in the authorizing legislation does it say that the subject of intrusive surveillance has to be named Mohammed.

Getting the FISA court to issue a warrant is easier than getting the proverbial grand jury to indict the proverbial ham sandwich — there's nobody there to oppose the warrant, it is assumed that the warrant is, well, warranted, and the judges want to go to lunch.  If there isn't a big rubber stamp to mark "APPROVED" on every application, it's just another example of gross government inefficiency.

Carter Page, notoriously sleazy, might have justified a warrant by reputation alone.  Personally, I still don't see why the Russians would have needed Republican help to interfere in our election, although compromising some idiots in the Tr*mp campaign probably was just too easy a proposition to pass up.  The cover-up, as usual, is likely to be worse than the crime.