So, on Wednesday, Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina, and Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, called a press conference to talk about what their committee is planning to do regarding the involvement of Russian entities in the 2016 election. They were grim death. You could feel the stakes rising around you.

Burr, for example, was deadly serious about attaching what happened here to what has happened, and what is happening, in elections across Europe. They said they've asked 20 people already to testify. Not all of these are going to be spooks. Some of them are going to be civilians of whom we already know a great deal.

I still think that there has to be an independent counsel appointed to look into this mess. (Burr, for all his earnestness, still was an adviser to the Trump campaign.) However, these two guys are very much the face of the Washington establishment. The Senate's self-regard is nearly limitless and, when the Senate looks in the mirror, it sees these two guys. Devin Nunes is a small and insignificant player by comparison.

There was behind their press conference a sense that some great, grinding machine had been placed in gear. This is the kind of thing that is easier to engage than it ever is to stop.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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