"So much for backing the blue," wrote the ever-so-clever James Hohmann of the Washington Post on Friday.

The point, such that it is, is very, very stupid. It makes sense, then, that former Vice President Mike Pence was among those to make it. "The Republican Party is the party of law and order," he said last week in New Hampshire. "Our party stands with the men and women who serve on the thin blue line at the federal, state, and local levels. These attacks on the FBI must stop."

If you didn't react to that by gagging, I assume you haven't been following the shockingly fast deterioration of the FBI as a legitimate agency. Here's a cursory review of its greatest hits in recent years:

- This year, for the first time ever, FBI agents raided the home of a former president, who has endured more scrutiny by that same agency than any president in history. The latest information indicates that it was for the purpose of retrieving "social media records" (?) and documents of "official business" that Trump White House aides "had conducted on their personal electronic messaging accounts."