Response to the Nunes memo: "That's it?"

Folks, these two responses, from James Comey and from John McCain, were in my postscript  to yesterday's post;  but they are so pertinent I want to repeat them today for emphasis.  Oh, and by the way, both men are Republicans.

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When former FBI Director James Comey finally saw the Nunes memo, his reaction was an incredulous, "That's it? . . . [a] dishonest and misleading memo wrecked the House Intel committee, destroyed trust with Intelligence community, damaged relationship with FISA court, and inexcusably exposed classified investigation of an American citizen.   For what?"

Senator John McCain, writing from home in Arizona as he deals with brain cancer treatment, said:   "The latest attacks against the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests -- no party's, no President's, only Putin's. . . .  If we continue to undermine our own rule of law, we are doing Putin's job for him."

And from The Guardian's Walter Shapiro:
"Ever since Watergate, the standard for any scandal is whether there is a smokiing gun left next to a corpse.  In the case of the Nunes memo, we lack a body and the gun is a child's toy pistol."

From Carl Bernstein's interview on CNN with Jake Tapper (reported by Mary Papenfuss).   Bernstein, along with Bob Woodward, were the Washington Post reporters who broke open the Nixon/Watergate scandal.

Bernstein warned that the Trump administration may be ushering in the darkest days since Joe McCarthy, who conducted the notorious anti-communist "witch hunts" in the 1950s Cold War era.   He also called the Nunes memo a "disinghenuous partisan document . . . . a red herring intended to derail special counsel Mueller's investigation.

He went on:  "In the whole Cold War, the Russians were not able to do what Putin has done through Donald Trump -- to destabilize the United States and its democratic institutions.   It's stunning.   It's ruinous."    He said he hopes the Republicans will stop following the president in "lockstep" and "get hold of their senses. . . . [and] see how Donald Trump has been manipulated. . . ."