Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

We should remember that the FISA warrants often referred to as “warrants to wiretap Carter Page” (which should never have been re-authorized, even once, without detailed FBI/DOJ reporting as to what treasonous activities had been revealed and why more listening time was still needed) were nothing of the sort.

(The “judges” never bothered to ask why Page was never charged with espionage, by the way?)

These were NOT “Title 3” warrants. These were “Title 1” warrants, for the issuance of which the DOJ/FBI had to swear and certify to the court that they KNEW Carter Page was an active Russian spy. “Title 1” warrants are, in the vernacular, two- or even “three-hop” warrants. In this case, they authorized (albeit probably retroactively) the scum at the FBI and DOJ to wiretap and otherwise illegally surveil anyone who was contacted by anyone who was contacted by Carter Page (Not a typo: “anyone who was contacted by anyone who was contacted by Carter Page”), potentially reaching back as far as five years.

In other words, given that Carter Page (even though he was a relatively minor “foreign policy advisor”) had certainly traded emails or phone calls with one or more staffers in the Trump campaign, who in turn had certainly talked or emailed someone who in turn had doubtless talked to or emailed Donald Trump himself, the court authorized the otherwise illegal surveillance not merely of FBI plant Carter page, but of Donald Trump and EVERYONE WORKING ON OR IN CONTACT WITH his presidential campaign OR HIS TRANSITION TEAM OR FIRST-YEAR ADMINISTRATION.

EVERYONE.

Yet—despite a bunch of disingenuous hand-wringing by FISA Head “Judge” Rosemary Collyer about whether it would be “appropriate” to release the transcripts of the secret court hearings after which these warrants were OKd by her or some other stooge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, on 9/1/18 Judicial Watch reported “In response to a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, the Justice Department (DOJ) admitted in a court filing last night that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court HELD NO HEARINGS on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) spy warrant applications targeting Carter Page, a former Trump campaign part-time advisor who was the subject of four controversial FISA warrants.”

A court that holds no hearings? They just had the clerk stamp a big red “APPROVED” on these things WITHOUT ASKING A SINGLE QUESTION because they didn’t want to miss this next segment on “Judge Judy” or “Dr. Phil” or “The Price Is Right”? On a set of search warrants that demolished a 220-year tradition of government bureaucrats not seeking to spy on campaigns and thus sabotage our PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS? (What was Dick Nixon booted for, by the way? Whose office was clumsily burgled at the Watergate, one time only?)

Many a small-town police reporter can tell you stories about local magistrates who used to hand the cops a sheaf of pre-signed blank search warrants, “Fill out as needed,” so no one would have to wake them up in the middle of the night.

Where did Collyer’s FISC “judges” get their legal training—watching old re-runs of Sheriff Taylor, Barney Fife and Gomer Pyle on “Mayberry R.F.D.”?

As the “walls start to close in” on the Russia Conspiracy lunatics in the media, in Hollywood, and in the Schiff-Nadler-Lewis congressional monkey house, and we start to compile our lists of necessary changes after two years of this debilitating madness (wherein fine patriotic Americans like Gen. Michael Flynn were driven to bankruptcy by million-dollar legal fees, coerced into taking “plea bargains” to avoid seeing THEIR WIVES OR CHILDREN INDICTED, while Herr Mueller and his despicable strong-arm gang of course ignored tens of millions of dollars in Russian “Uranium One” bribes thinly disguised as “donations to the non-profit Clinton Foundation”—which surely would have rendered Miss Hillary the more attractive candidate to Comrade Putin, given that he already had her “price list”), let’s not forget that the U.S. Constitution makes no provision at all for the creation or retention of an arrogant, incompetent, and murderous “Federal Bureau of Investigation” or a “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court,” which in fact have been eroding our liberties for only 84 and 41 years, respectively.

Get rid of them.

Bill Clinton’s FBI tanks burning 75 people (25 children) to death in a church near Waco, Texas, April 19, 1993. No machine guns were ever found.