Gone are the heady days when Americans could laugh at the ineptitude of government as a gaggle of befuddled politicians offering unworkable solutions for misunderstood problems to be executed by bureaucratic ignoramuses.

Now the survival of the country is at stake, threatened by Islamic terrorism and permanent political corruption.

During a hearing this week before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, FBI director James Comey faced pointed questions about recent terrorist shootings and bombings in the United States and about his failure to recommend indictment for Hillary Clinton in her private server scandal.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, referring to multiple instances of the FBI failing to act on evidence that it had on various terrorist suspects before they killed Americans, asked “Is it your position that no mistakes were made in each of these in judging them not to be credible threats?”

Channeling his inner Glenn Beck, a man now famous for his serial public melt-downs, Comey conceded that he is a “deeply flawed and fallible human” who failed to stop some terrorist attacks before they happened.

The FBI Director also admitted that he was out-maneuvered by Hillary Clinton’s aide Cheryl Mills during the Clinton email inquiry.

Pleading incompetence, Comey said “we are not perfect people,” noting that a pending inspector general investigation will help the FBI learn from its mistakes.

At that point, I had fully expected Comey to dunk his face in a bowl of crushed Cheetos.

Making mistakes in a sincere effort to thwart Islamic terrorism or to bring criminals to justice is unfortunate, but forgivable. Pursuing terrorist suspects through the filter of political correctness and not referring cases for criminal prosecution on the basis of political expediency are not.

There is now little doubt that the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails was a sham from the beginning, that the Bureau never had any intention of prosecuting her, turning its back on its own traditions of rising above partisan politics in the pursuit of justice.

Just how much Comey and the FBI punted on “EmailGate” has become painfully obvious, as noted by former National Security Agency analyst John Schindler:

“Redacted FBI documents from that investigation, dumped on the Friday afternoon before the long Labor Day weekend, revealed that Hillary Clinton either willfully lied to the Bureau, repeatedly, about her email habits as secretary of state, or she is far too dumb to be our commander-in-chief.

Worse, the FBI completely ignored the appearance of highly classified signals intelligence in Hillary’s email, including information lifted verbatim from above-Top Secret NSA reports back in 2011. This crime, representing the worst compromise of classified information in EmailGate – that the public knows of, at least – was somehow deemed so uninteresting that nobody at the FBI bothered to ask anybody on Team Clinton about it.”

[dcquiz] That travesty of justice is further compounded by the revelation of Comey’s connection to the Clinton Foundation, a potential serious conflict of interest as leader of the FBI investigation into Hillary’s misuse of classified material.

Comey’s performance in office is symptomatic of a problem that cuts across the entire political-media establishment, namely the desperate attempts being undertaken by those trying to preserve the corrupt status quo.

As part of that effort, the FBI Director joins a long list of aspiring office holders and fawning journalists willing to exchange integrity for the opportunity to audition for a seat at Hillary Clinton’s Presidential dinner table.

President Trump should fire James Comey.

Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired US Army Reserve colonel, a command and control subject matter expert, trained in Arabic and Kurdish, and a veteran of Afghanistan, northern Iraq and a humanitarian mission to West Africa. He receives email at lawrence.sellin@gmail.com.