What About the FISA Court?

Ever since this dog-and-pony show culminating in today’s articles of impeachment got started, something has been on my mind.

It’s clear the FBI is corrupt at the upper most levels. Chief Weasel Jim Comey, and the dishonor roll of his underlings: McCabe, Strzok, Page, and lots more are all partisan hacks. We know this. We know they used the absolutely bogus Steele dossier to justify the need to monitor American citizens to the FISA courts (overview). Borepatch started the day with post that it’s time to Disband the FBI. Count me on board with that. While, from all I know, the majority of the agents and lower level staff are still honorable, there’s a saying in management classes (I originally heard it was taken from the mafia) that goes, “the fish rots from the head down.” If there are systemic problems in an organization, the problem lies in the top management’s offices.

What I’ve been saying since this whole mess started is “what about the FISA courts?” In my mind, if they were honest and honorable, they’d bust the FBI like 13 year olds pretending to be college students at spring break in south Florida.* I’d very publicly and loudly tell the FBI, “you’ve proven you’re not trustworthy. Because of that, from now on there will be no warrants issued to you unless you bring 10 times the amount of justification we used to require, and you’d better have far more than one source. You will be questioned about it relentlessly, and you’d better damned well have every last detail documented.” Or something similar. Let everybody know the FBI is getting their chops busted for their partisan politics.

The fact that this hasn’t happened doesn’t mean the FISA courts didn’t slap down the FBI in some classified meetings that we’re not allowed to know about. The fact that it wasn’t public, though, implies that the FISA court is just as rotten as the heads of the FBI fish. They could have dressed them down in secret but made a public statement about how shocked – shocked! I tell you – and how appalled the court is at having been lied to by the FBI. The fact that didn’t happen tells you the FISA court needs to be disbanded, just like the FBI. The whole Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act needs to be torn up and started again from blank paper.