Mark Steyn is pretty much as fed up with James Comey as the rest of us.

Readers have demanded to know what I think of the James Comey hearing. In the words of Daffy Duck, shoot me now.

Okay, the slightly longer answer is: I don’t think about it. And there isn’t enough money in the world to pay me to think about it. But, if you insist, I will make a couple of points:

1) The FBI should not be in the counter-intelligence business. There are, as Democrats never tire of pointing out, “17 intelligence agencies”, which is, by my count, 15 too many. We should at least get it down to 16, by eliminating what’s meant to be a domestic policing agency.

2) As I’ve pointed out in recent weeks, someone seems to be holding the US Constitution upside down: We have courtrooms presuming to be legislatures, and the legislature pretending to be a courtroom. Both perversions are part of the systemic dysfunction that obstructs proper representative government. The allegedly Republican Congress should investigate less, and try legislating some of the President’s agenda.

3) On October 19th last year I called Comey “a 6′ 8″ gummi worm”. That was very much on display on Thursday, as the straight arrow writhed and agonized over what he might have done had he been a “stronger man”. He is far too psychologically weird and insecure ever to have got close to being FBI Director (far weirder than Hoover, even if you believe every single story about the guy), and the fact that he did ought to be deeply unnerving to Americans.

4) As everyone more sentient than an earthworm should know by now, “the Russia investigation” is Deep State dinner-theatre. I wrote a while back that, in today’s Hollywood, what Hitchcock used to call “the MacGuffin” – the pretext that sets the caper afoot, the secret papers, the microfilm – has degenerated into a MacNuffin: there’s no longer even a pretense that these stories are about anything. The “Russia investigation” is the ne plus ultra of MacNuffins, so smoothly transferred from Los Angeles to Washington that one vaguely suspects some studio vice-prez who bundled for Hillary came up with the idea as a reality-show pilot that accidentally bust out of the laboratory.

How do we know there’s no there there? Well, consider Marco Rubio’s question to Comey:

Rubio marveled at how many leaks have occurred during the Trump-Russia investigation, saying “we’ve learned more from the newspapers sometimes than we do from our open hearings.”

“Do you ever wonder why, of all the things in this investigation, the only thing that’s never been leaked is the fact that the president was not personally under investigation, despite the fact that Democrats and Republicans and the leadership of Congress knew that and have known that for weeks?” he asked.

It seems Comey doesn’t ever “wonder” about it, being too busy – like everybody else – leaking stuff himself. The leaks, as have often been pointed out, are the only actual crimes here.

RTWT

Partisan hipsters watching Comey hearing in Brooklyn bar. More here.

El Rushbo is laughing.

This is great. I have been laughing all morning long. I have been laughing starting with last night. Can we agree that Donald Trump is probably enjoying this more than anybody wants to admit or that anybody knows? So he fires Comey yesterday. Who’s he meeting with today? (laughing) He’s meeting with the Soviet, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov! I mean, what an epic troll this is. The Democrat Party is going bananas — completely, totally unhinged — on the road to literal insanity. …

This has gone beyond mere political posturing. These people on the left — led by the media and the Democrat Party and the political apparatus — I’m telling you, are sick. I have never seen… I wasn’t thinking about it last night. I’m 66 years old. I have been following politics honestly since I was 10. I’m not kidding. I have seen unhinged behavior. I have seen the wild allegations that Democrats make and repeated. I have never seen this degree of collective insanity. I have never seen this degree of so many people literally being out of touch, devoid reality, and unhinged.

I’ve never seen this degree of hate. I understand it because of what’s happened. Trump has totally embarrassed every one of these people inside the Washington Beltway, and he’s taunting them, meeting with the Soviet (chuckling) Russian ambassador today, after the Democrats are convinced the Russians stole the election! They have repeated it so many times; they actually believe it now. The only way this rage can exist is if they really believe this election was stolen, and if the really believe the Russians colluded with Trump.

Nine months and not a shred of evidence, and most recently this was acknowledged by Clapper and Sally Yates. It’s been acknowledged by Comey himself in recent congressional testimony. It’s been acknowledged by Dianne Feinstein. There isn’t any! It was acknowledged by Maxine Waters yesterday. There isn’t any. And yet they believe it. That’s all they’ve got. They cannot, will not blame themselves. So they literally believe that the Russians somehow colluded with Trump, even though there’s no evidence for it.

They really believe Trump fired Comey because he might have been getting close, under the assinine belief that firing Comey’s gonna stop the investigation? How many investigations are there? The House has one. The Senate has one. The FBI’s got their own. Do you know who’s running the FBI today? McCabe, a Democrat! His wife ran for the Senate or ran for governor of Virginia. He’s very close to The Punk, Terry McAuliffe. The guy is a hardened Democrat. He’s now running the FBI. He’s in charge of the investigation to get Trump.

Nothing comes to a screeching halt here just because Comey’s been let go. But the hysteria and the panic and the outrage is rooted in raw hate. The Democrats, wherever you find ’em — in the media, think tanks, don’t care where you find ’em — they’re being consumed by it, folks. They’re literally being eaten alive with an irrational, raw hatred literally absorbing them. Nothing good for them can come of this kind of hate and resulting derangement. Nothing good. This is not how you put together winning movements.

This is not how you build or grow anything, this kind of raw, unfettered hate that they now have lost total control over — and Trump is just taunting them. Trump is just feeding it. He’s doing everything he can to drive them even crazier, and they’re falling for it each and every occasion. Now, nobody’s focusing on the detail that Comey has told Trump three times there’s nothing there. Three times Comey has told Trump, “I’m not investigating you.” They’re looking past that. They’re not even seeing that.

All they’re seeing is that Trump put it in the letter, and that must mean that Trump’s got something to hide or he’s trying to put Comey on the spot or there’s some kind of power play going on. They’re incapable of rationality. They are incapable of reason. They are incapable of just taking a moment to absorb things. They are into knee-jerk reactions based on whatever triggers set them off, and they have stopped thinking, they have stopped pondering, they have stopped considering, and they’re just reacting like spoiled brat little kids.

RTWT

Michael Goodwin, in the New York Post, defends Trump and mocks democrat hysteria.

Comey’s power-grabbing arrogance is why I called him “J. Edgar Comey” two months ago. His willingness to play politics, while insisting he was above it all, smacked of Washington at its worst. He was the keeper of secrets, until they served his purpose.

As such, the president did to Comey what no president had the courage to do to J. Edgar Hoover. Five presidents wanted to fire Hoover, with Harry Truman accusing him of running a police state and of blackmail. But all were afraid of Hoover, so he died in office.

Trump acted before Comey could get that kind of lifetime protection, which has no place in American democracy. At our best, we are a nation of laws, not of people who accumulate power and ruthlessly wield it without accountability. …

Democrats who not so long ago were furious with Comey over the Clinton probe [are seen now] rushing out condemnations of Trump for firing him.

“Nixonian” was a common theme, a shot both cheap and predictable. When you’re a hammer, everything is a nail. When you’re a Democrat, everything is Watergate.

A must-read.

Trump gets well-deserved applause from Kurt Schlichter for firing that crook Comey.

We always knew Donald Trump was brassy, but until he sent half-stepping ex-FBI Director James Comey packing, we didn’t know that his manparts were made of brass. You gotta be hardcore to step up to that sanctimonious tool, that Kasich-With-A-Badge, and cut him off at the knees in the face of the inevitable monsoon of fake news media panic, girlish Democrat howling, and sputtering Menschian Russianoia.

No hesitation. No apologies. When it became inarguable that this pumped up functionary with delusions of omnipotence had finally passed his sell-by date, Trump pulled the trigger. That’s taking charge. That’s leading from the front. That’s regulating. Damn, it’s nice to once again have a chief executive who’s not a simpering femboy.

The pathetic Democrats were caught so utterly off-guard, and were so completely bought-into their spittle-flicking Comey hate, that their 180 from calling for Comey’s head to calling for his restoration will give them mental whiplash. They’ll be in figurative neck braces just like the one their hero Ted Kennedy wore after he left Mary Jo in the pond.

RTWT

Which ought to remind everyone that Comey was always a left-wing partisan tool.

Daily Caller:

he D.C. Court of Appeals reinstated Former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, to the bar. Libby was previously convicted of lying in relation to the Valerie Plame scandal and can now freely practice law again. He was disbarred in the District of Columbia in 2008.

According to the National Law Journal, Libby entered the courtroom with 11 letters of support from a federal appeals judge and other legal dignitaries.

Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit wrote that Libby had a “reputation as a skilled and ethical government official.”

Disciplinary officials noted in their Sept. 23 report about Libby that he was found to be “forthright, candid, present, and recognized his situation with grace.”

Libby requested over the summer that the D.C. Court of Appeals reinstate him to the D.C. Bar. On Thursday, exactly 11 years to the day following arraignment, he the court granted his request.

Washington D.C.-based former U.S. Attorney Joe DiGenova believes the Libby decision is a “terrible blow” to FBI Director James Comey, who announced Sunday that the agency had no new conclusions on Hillary Clinton and her private server from the 650,000 new emails found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.

“Scooter Libby was restored to the practice of law by the DC court of appeals because they believed that Scooter Libby presented evidence that his original trial had been corrupted by false testimony. And that false testimony was coerced by Jim Comey’s friend Patrick Fitzgerald and Comey was part of the team to destroy the vice president of the United States and it didn’t happen,” DiGenova said.

He added,” It’s such a smack in the face to Jim Comey. Comey and Fitzgerald tried to frame Scooter Libby, and they did, but then they didn’t get it done. And then of course that idiot George W. Bush didn’t give him a pardon he only commuted his sentence.”

Read the whole thing.

——————————————

——————————————

——————————————

——————————————

I heard both Weiner and Comey died in an auto accident tomorrow.

Red State explains how the Justice Department two-step worked:

James Comey was facing a revolt among his professional staff. If the case were sent to Lynch for adjudication, which is the usual process, the story would be that the FBI had “cleared” Clinton and therefore Justice was closing the case. In this case, Comey knew that one or more of his senior people, in order to defend the FBI, would either walk (unlikely because no one has principles that are going to cost them a six-figure income) or leak like a sieve (highly likely). This would make Comey the bad guy. It would make him corrupt to the core instead of merely the feckless p***y he’s has been revealed to be.

Unable to go for prosecution, because that would have required integrity, and fully aware that taking a pass on the case would make her unemployable as anything other than a punchline in political jokes for the next generation, she needed to unload this particular ticking time bomb. Unfortunately, she had no real reason to recuse herself from the process as her department was overseeing the case.

Enter the “chance meeting.” Last week this looked like one of the most boneheaded moves ever made by an attorney general. It turned out to be an inspired bit of political theater. This enabled Bill Clinton to throw his old friend a lifeline. By meeting informally and in near secrecy with Clinton, Lynch suddenly had a reason to essentially recuse herself from the case by “accepting the FBI’s recommendation.” …

By deferring to the FBI recommendation, Lynch has pinned the bull’s-eye firmly on Comey and his senior leadership.

Thus we have the FBI Director rendering a scathing public indictment of Hillary Clinton is every particular of the case. In fact, he goes out of his way to demolish everything she has said. And then he, Pontius Pilate-like, walks away leaving the American founding concept of the rule of law in utter shambles.