Where’s Woodward and Bernstein when we need ‘em?

It used to be that the Democrats would reflexively invoke the bad ol’ days of Richard Nixon to describe the misdeeds of a current Republican administration. They even invented a catch-all adjective to describe a particular offense: It’s downright Nixonian! they’d shriek.

Strange, but they don’t seem to do it as much these days. Perhaps it’s because Nixon left office half a century ago, and because most Democrat voters couldn’t coherently explain the first thing about Watergate. Or perhaps it’s because they realize, way down deep, that they’ve become precisely that which they once decried.

Take, for example, yesterday’s Fox News revelation that then-Special Counsel Jack Smith, the Democrats’ favorite hatchet man, “was allegedly tracking the phone calls of GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and GOP Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania.”

The smoking gun, in this case, is an incriminating document labeled “Arctic Frost” and “Sensitive Investigative Matter.”

You’re telling us it’s sensitive. Since when does the party in power spy on its political opposition? Oh, uh, never mind.

What we have here, then, is one more piece in a grand conspiracy to get Donald Trump and his strongest supporters — at all costs. As Iowa Republican and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley posted yesterday in a tweet: “This document shows the Biden FBI spied on 8 of my Republican Senate colleagues during its Arctic Frost investigation into ‘election conspiracy.’ Arctic Frost later became Jack Smith’s elector case against Trump. BIDEN FBI WEAPONIZATION = WORSE THAN WATERGATE.”

It turns out that Smith’s Arctic Frost Get Trump J6 fishing expedition involved not just the targeting of 92 Republican groups and individuals, including Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, but also a group of sitting lawmakers. As one of the list’s targets, Josh Hawley, added on X:

The truth comes out. Biden’s Stasi who claimed to be saving ‘our sacred democracy’ in fact worked overtime to destroy it — all for power. They spied on Catholic churches, prosecuted pro-lifers, deployed the FBI against parents at school board meetings — and tried to tap the phones of their political enemies. Including mine.

This is an abuse of power beyond Watergate, beyond J. Edgar Hoover, one that directly strikes at the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the First Amendment. We need a full investigation of all involved: who knew about it, who ordered it, and who approved it. Anyone and everyone who violated the law must be prosecuted. The way to save the country is to restore the rule of law.

We’ll see about prosecutions. So far, at least, the Republicans have been long on strident rhetoric and short on perp walks.

Still, it gives us great pride here in our humble Tennessee shop to note that both of our state’s senators were targeted by Smith. If they’re drawing fire, they must be over the target, right? Seriously, though: What we have here is an honest-to-badness enemies list — a list of Donald Trump’s strongest senatorial supporters and the America-hating Biden administration’s most ardent and effective opposition.

And here we thought Smith got off snooping through Melania’s underwear drawer. “It is a disgrace,” said FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, “that I have to stand on Capitol Hill and reveal this — that the FBI was once weaponized to track the private communications of U.S. lawmakers for political purposes. That era is over.”

Now, I’m no lawyer, but I don’t need a law degree to figure out what an unconstitutional scumbag Jack Smith is.

First, let’s consider his successful prosecution of former Virginia Republican Governor Bob McDonnell on corruption charges. In 2016, that conviction was overturned 9-0 by a typically tightly divided Supreme Court. Set aside, for a moment, the fact that Smith’s prosecution cost an innocent man $28 million in legal fees and nearly four years of torment for his family. Think of just how sleazy one’s prosecutorial tactics must be to warrant a unanimous beatdown by eight ideologically diverse but brilliant legal minds and one Sonia Sotomayor.

Smith’s other dubious legal overreaches include colluding with Lois Lerner of IRS infamy to target certain conservatives for auditing, and botching the cases against two Democrats — former vice presidential candidate John Edwards and New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez.

All this is to say that the Democrats no longer play by the rules, and the Republicans had better make them feel some prosecutorial pain. Otherwise, what’s to make them stop?