Similarly, as David French points out, if the recently declassified FISA warrant is the fraud the president and his most ardent defenders claim it is, there’s no reason to leave any of the redactions in it stand. The president has absolute authority to declassify anything he wants. I disagree with my friend Andy McCarthy’s interpretation of the FISA warrant — something I do with considerable trepidation — but if he’s right about the truth of the thing, let’s get the whole truth of it.

But back to my larger point. For months, I’ve been banging my spoon on my highchair about how the legislative branch is acting like a Parliament of Pundits. Senators and congressmen on the right and left seem more concerned with getting primetime spots on cable-news shows than actually legislating. As a result, politicians are using their positions to craft entertaining talking-points for TV debates and diatribes that have only passing relationship to reality. They’re going along with the Thermians, playing to their faith in shadows and making little effort to engage with the truth. On the left, the mess at the border can’t just be bad, it must be Kristallnacht and Auschwitz. On the right, the idea that the president colluded — whatever that may mean — with Russia is the “greatest mass hysteria” in American history and a “total witch hunt.”At least until very recently. This week, the allegation Trump colluded with Russia is suddenly no longer an insane conspiracy theory and slander, it’s not really a problem at all.