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.

What next?

Assuming both Houses of Congress vote to approve the temporary Republican capitulation and send the bill to the President before midnight, we've squeaked through again.  The interesting part, this time, was that Obama finally drew a "red line" and didn't move it — but I suspect the thanks for a resolution should go to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, Wall Street lobbying firms, and a bunch of other essentially Republican organizations.

The question now is, "Have they learned anything?"  Keep your fingers crossed.

So called "moderate" Republicans — that is, not the ones Devin Nunes (R-CA) described as "lemmings with suicide vests" — just might get some more corporate support.  Yes, a lot of those "moderates" are afraid of primary challenges from the Tea Party lemmings, but wouldn't it be nice if some of those corporate interests got into those safe, perfectly gerrymandered Republican districts and financed primary challenges against right wing radicals by Republicans a little closer to the center?