The case does have a very strong political and moral basis. And it could have a legal basis, too, if anybody would bother trying to establish one. So, either charge Marjorie Taylor Greene under the federal insurrection law — or at least start treating January 6 as an insurrection as a matter of law — or defeat her at the polls. The last thing this country needs is another disreputable, sneaky, underhanded, pretextual legal case. The end is a worthy one, but the means would be corrupting.

If it were up to me, the federal government would be obliged to buy up real estate all over Leavenworth, Kan., to accommodate all the miscreants involved in this shameful episode. But Attorney General Merrick Garland is, not to put too fine a point on it, a coward who is not up to the job.

If we had functioning political parties — and if the Republican Party a.d. 2022 were not the yellowest, most timorous, most gutless, grasping, worthless, indefensible, and chickensh** political organ the world had ever seen — then Representative Greene might be dealt with at the party level. (Given the practical alternatives, that old “smoke-filled room” is starting to look pretty good.) As it stands, the GOP is entirely incapable of taking a stand even for its own long-term partisan interests, with the top party chieftains believing that a big win in November will allow them to brazen it out and memory-hole the role of its leading figures in Donald Trump’s attempted coup d’état.