"One of the unfortunate ironies of the manufactured 'Russiagate' controversy," my colleague Sheldon Richman writes in his most recent column, is the perception of the FBI as a friend of liberty and justice." He's dead right about that, but just whom is he addressing? 

He can't mean conservatives, who, these days, are sounding like the ACLU in their increasingly radical critique of the "Deep State," a phrase that has migrated from inside baseball accounts of the national security Establishment to the Sean Hannity Show.

I don't know many libertarians who are fans of the feds, unless we're talking about the "liberal-tarians" over at the Niskanen Center, who recently tweeted their determination to take it to the streets if anyone looks cross-eyed at Robert Mueller. (This may have something to do with it.) Richman may not have noticed that, but surely he's noticed that the liberals the Niskanenites are sucking up to have become the biggest cheering squad for the FBI since the anti-Communists of the 1950s made J. Edgar Hoover their patron saint.